Hot Air Quality

Nothing I would consider being truly substantial news in Section A of The Times, so I shall venture back into The Metro Section (B) where a tall tale is being told by former New Jersey Governor and former Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, that neither she nor others at the agency set about to mislead New Yorkers and rescue workers when stating that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe after September 11th, 2001. Oh wait, excuse me, she said that it was only safe for residents; the rescue workers on the other hand… Now granted, the E.P.A. issued “…strong and repeated warnings to workers on the debris pile to wear protective equipment, but that her agency had no ability or authority to enforce that requirement,” yet perhaps said ‘strong and repeated warnings’ could have stood to be less vague. It seems as though if these workers were truly made aware of the dire consequences and true danger they were in by undertaking (no pun intended) such a gargantuan task, they would not have gone ahead and risked their lives. By the same token, if the government was truly concerned with the well being of potential workers, then they would have taken stronger precautions than mere ‘strong and repeated warnings’. Even a 2003 report BY the E.P.A.’s inspector general concluded that in the week following September the 11th, Whitman DID NOT have sufficient scientific evidence to make the claims that the air was safe to breathe. Being a New York City resident, this part of the article truly slays me: “Mrs. Whitman urged Lower Manhattan residents whose apartments had been contaminated to consider having them professionally cleaned. After the statement was sent to the White House for review, the phrase about professional cleaning was removed.” Yeah – I guess the professional cleaners’ lobby doesn’t throw much dough the GOP’s way. It really is astounding though that this is what was going on behind the scenes after the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history: Do we really wanna keep that bit in about the professional cleaning?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/nyregion/26whitman.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin