Image courtesy of CDC
“I know that I was exposed to things that no human being should be exposed to,” Gulack says. “Not only have I been exposed to asbestos but probably a number of other life-threatening contaminants. I’m 53, I have a wife and kids, and I don’t want to be taken away from them. There was no reason to subject me to those dangers—no justification for this at all.”
As a union steward, Gulack has advocated for employee health concerns and has closely monitored the EPA’s actions since 9/11. He believes that instead of learning from all its mistakes, the EPA remains unprepared for another crisis.
“New victims are being claimed every day as a result of this contamination,” Gulack says. “The EPA has officially taken their bad choices and made it their model. Now all crises will be handled politically, through the White House.”
The EPA’s calamitous handling of the 9/11 cleanup brings White House involvement into question. The damning OIG report showed that important public-health information was held back by Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, and evidence also suggests that critical press releases were altered, making them contradict scientific fact. As the report noted, “the White House Council on Environmental Quality . . . influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.”
Gulack’s concerns are substantiated by another indictment of the EPA—this time in their handling of the hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. A June 2007 report from the GAO contains an eerily reminiscent passage: “EPA’s assurance that the public health is being protected from the risks associated with the inhalation of asbestos fibers is limited because the agency has not deployed air monitors in and around New Orleans neighborhoods where demolition and renovation activities are concentrated.”
Within sight of Ground Zero quietly stands the Statue of Liberty, seemingly ignored in our post-9/11 world. But like an oracle from a distant time, she offers prophetic words of concern. In the shadow of the attacks, the inscription at her base no longer seems to address immigrants but rather speaks directly to New Yorkers who now find themselves disenfranchised and suffocating with disease: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The damning OIG report showed that important public-health information was held back by Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality.
Yet some leaders are speaking up for sickened New Yorkers. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Vito Fossella of New York introduced the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which would expand the current health programs for first responders, area residents, office workers, and students. New York representative Jerrold Nadler tirelessly champions decisive action on behalf of New Yorkers who are still susceptible to toxins.
“We have to clean this up; it was never done properly,” says Nadler, who also says cleanup efforts could run several billion dollars, but there is no exact figure because nobody knows how extensive the contamination is and if it extends to Brooklyn as well.
Because adequate testing has yet to be conducted, nobody knows for certain just how toxic Lower Manhattan remains, but there are plenty of indicators that the 9/11 attacks are still dismantling the downtown infrastructure. Two former Deutsche Bank buildings downtown will soon be demolished as a direct result of 9/11 contamination, and more demolitions are expected.
“To clean it up, it costs between $10,000 and $20,000 per apartment,” Nadler says about the current price of adequate cleaning. “Are you going to ask a resident to pay that?”
On June 25, 2007, former EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman testified before a congressional hearing and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or culpability in the EPA’s handling of the disaster. Nadler, who represents nearly all of Lower Manhattan, presided over the hearings.
“Let’s be clear: There are people to blame,” Whitman said. “They are the terrorists who attacked the United States.”
Nadler offered me a distinction.
“I divide the population of affected people in different ways,” he says. “First are the ones that were killed, and you can blame the terrorists for those. Then there was the plume—we think about 30,000 people were caught in it. And those people were also sickened by the terrorists. But the others are first responders on the pile, and most of those are sick due to exposure—there you can blame public officials who permitted them to work on the pile.” Nadler also includes area residents and workers among the victims of public officials.
During the hearings, Whitman acknowledged that some first responders were sickened by the contamination because they did not wear respirators.
“After the first three days, it is not a rescue operation,” Nadler says. “It is simply a cleanup, and there is no excuse for not doing it properly. At the Pentagon site, nobody got sick there because they enforced the safety laws.” Workers who did not comply with safety regulations were not permitted on-site at the Pentagon-run cleanup.
“Every action taken by the EPA during the response to this horrific event was designed to provide the most comprehensive protection and the most accurate information to the residents of Manhattan,” Whitman stated in a press release. Her remarks, however, only served to enrage already traumatized New Yorkers.
Through a spokesperson, Whitman declined to answer any questions for this article, instead offering a prepared statement citing her congressional testimony.
“It is clear there are laws and regulations that were in place, which, had they been followed, would have prevented all this,” Nadler says. “They weren’t followed.”
While the courts try to determine who is responsible for the environmental debacle following 9/11, countless New Yorkers continue to live and work near Lower Manhattan with the assumption that it is safe. The dust is now out of sight, out of mind, and possibly in their lungs, hearts, and bloodstreams.
