Here's an article that will 'SHOCK YOUR CONSCIENCE."
Look at the date of this article, September 10, 2006, the media is just as guilty, why did it take 5 years and why isn't this story on the front page of every newspaper in this country. This is one school, do you have any idea how many schools are in lower Manhattan? Here's just one excerpt, read the whole article and keep in mind who in the White House censored all the EPA's press releases. The same woman who testified "We never imagined they would use airplanes to crash into buildings!" This is Pandora's Box, it's time we open it, the world needs to know the TRUTH!
"By then, students and teachers were already getting sick. Of the 224 Stuyvesant employees who responded to a federal survey, half had suffered ailments related to 9-11, including bloody noses, itchy throats, and persistent coughs. Parents heard their kids complain about similar problems, and conducted their own survey of students. Of the 430 responses, two-thirds reported yet more symptoms, from rashes to respiratory infections."
The Week That Never Ended
Some Kids Left Behind
Stuyvesant alums finally join the fight for 9-11 health benefits
by Kristen Lombardi
September 10th, 2006 7:31 PM
Lila Nordstrom's 9-11 awakening came late�five years late, to be exact. Last fall, as she entered her final year at Vassar College, she finally began noticing all the headlines about the fallout from the World Trade Center disaster�stories about people getting sick from the toxic dust, for example. In January, she read about the premature death of a first responder who had worked on the pile, four blocks from Stuyvesant High, where Nordstrom had started her senior year, and where she and her classmates would spend the next several months breathing air of much the same quality.
In February, she read about residents and office workers who've gotten ill and are now suing the Environmental Protection Agency for telling the public the air in lower Manhattan was fit to breathe (see "Truth Out," February 28). And then, in March, she went to a career forum, where academic advisers warned that entry-level positions offer low salaries and scant benefits these days. Nordstrom, just shy of graduation, had an epiphany of sorts. "I thought, �What if I develop some kind of illness because of 9-11?'" says Nordstrom, now 22 and living in Chelsea, working and without a health plan. "And what if I don't have insurance? I'd be screwed."
At home, she composed an open letter to her elected officials. She laid out the EPA's false assurances, as well as the city's promise that Stuyvesant had been wiped entirely free of WTC-related pollution�a promise that turned out to be untrue. Noting that 3,000 or so alumni went to the Chambers Street high school during the 2001-2002 academic year, she wrote:
"As victims of 9/11, and, especially, victims of the misinformation campaign, we served as �draftees' in the media campaign to reassure the American people. At the least, in recognition of the risks we undertook simply by attending school, we should be guaranteed health insurance for the rest of our lives."
She urged city and federal lawmakers to back a bill that would give Stuyvesant students the same coverage some first responders already receive: medical monitoring and, for those who develop pollution-related diseases, treatment. Nordstorm e-mailed the letter to friends, who passed it along to their friends. She later sent a mass mailing to all 500 students in the Stuyvesant Class of 2002, asking them to sign and spread the word. Students wrote to fellow alums on Facebook, the networking website. Nordstrom posted the letter on a blog, and the alumni magazine ran a blurb about it.
The students are an obvious constituency. "There's a fair amount of enthusiasm for this idea," says Anna Cummings, of the Class of 2003, an active organizer. To date, the letter has drawn 170 signatures and counting.
Some would say they're late to the movement. For years, frustrated activists, aided by a handful of local lawmakers, have tried to call attention to the health effects of 9-11. First responders, residents, office workers�all have asked for health coverage for people exposed to Trade Center dust. Activists have included "school children" on their list of neglected victims; six schools, with a total of more than 23,000 students, sit within blocks of ground zero. But Stuyvesant kids have stayed out of the fight, not testifying at hearings, not lobbying on Capitol Hill.
"This is the first I'm hearing about the Stuyvesant kids," reports Congressman Vito Fossella, a Staten Island Republican leading the push to address unmet health needs for what he calls the "innocent people who had to live in the aftermath of 9-11." He thinks their newfound activism comes at the right time. Five years after September 11, he says, the public can no longer ignore the growing health crisis. Indeed, last week's findings from the Mount Sinai 9-11 study showing that seven out of 10 ground zero workers have developed new respiratory illnesses pretty much confirms the crisis.
"Anyone who has been affected should state your case now," Fossella advises. "Or else."
Nordstrom and friends may be late, it seems, but they're not yet forgotten.
To hear the students tell it, anxiety about the fallout from 9-11 has always been at least in the backs of their minds. Stuyvesant students evacuated their building as the 110-story twin towers came crashing down. They ran north, engulfed by clouds of dust and smoke.
Within one month, on October 9, they were ordered back to Stuyvesant High, with official word that the building had been properly cleaned. Education officials assured their parents that the city had spent $1 million on a full asbestos abatement. Four months later, families would discover the vents hadn't been wiped at all.
Even with the government assurances, students couldn't ignore the danger signs. There were police checkpoints along Chambers Street, manned by cops wearing gas masks. Inside the school, signs were posted warning them not to drink from water fountains or open windows. Then came the engineers dressed in orange suits. They visited classrooms almost daily, setting up equipment, taking air samples.
"They'd say to us, �Everything is great,'" recalls Danny Newman, of the Class of 2002, who works at a Manhattan financial firm today. "It was surreal."
It didn't help that the students could look out their classroom windows and see the gaping hole at ground zero. They could watch the first responders working on the pile, hauling rubble to the Hudson River pier next to their building. Every day, for 24 hours straight, trucks would thunder past the classrooms and unload debris onto a nearby barge, bound for Staten Island.
"Contaminants would rise up in the air and end up in the school," says Brian Edwards, a 14-year-old sophomore at the time. All that year, he wore a mask to and from Stuyvesant. "It was scary because you didn't know how bad the air really was."
That winter parents hired an engineer, who found high levels of asbestos and lead in the building. Education officials stonewalled, until Senator Hillary Clinton forced them to admit the truth about the vents at a hearing in February 2002. When parents filed a lawsuit, the school department agreed to clean the ventilation system�in the summer of 2002.
By then, students and teachers were already getting sick. Of the 224 Stuyvesant employees who responded to a federal survey, half had suffered ailments related to 9-11, including bloody noses, itchy throats, and persistent coughs. Parents heard their kids complain about similar problems, and conducted their own survey of students. Of the 430 responses, two-thirds reported yet more symptoms, from rashes to respiratory infections.
Some kids, like Nordstrom, noticed childhood asthma worsening. Almost from the moment she returned to school, she began experiencing symptoms she hadn't had in years. Her chest tightened. Her attacks increased. She still suffers bouts of what she calls "a mysterious, deep cough." Is it coincidence? Or something more?
"It makes me wonder what the connection to 9-11 is," she says.
Stuyvesant students say they did their best to block out worries at the time. But over the years, they've come to grips with their experiences, realizing that they were forced to go back to school months before other students were, that they were duped into returning to a building full of toxins.
Today, their sense of injustice is profound. "We deserve something. They lied like crazy to us, you know what I mean?" says Newman. Since his present job has a health plan, he adds, "I'm motivated by the justice of the cause."
So are tens of thousands of other 9-11 victims, of course. All those first responders, residents, and office workers were misled by the EPA about the air quality in lower Manhattan, just like the Stuyvesant alum. And plenty of them don't have adequate health insurance to cover their mounting medical costs�remember those day laborers who cleaned up the downtown skyscrapers?
Stuyvesant students may have an edge in the sympathy department over their older counterparts, as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer suggests. He responded to their open letter after Nordstrom cornered him at an anti-war demonstration in May. "She made a very compelling argument," he tells the Voice. Unlike other 9-11 victims, she reminded the politician, Stuyvesant students were minors and thus unable to make their own decisions about whether to return downtown. "All you have to do is look at what has happened to ground zero workers and you say, �Hey, wait a minute. There has to be a way to help these kids,'" explains Stringer, whose office is seeking public and private funds to include the students in a tiny 9-11 screening program for uninsured people in Chinatown and other nearby neighborhoods, at Bellevue Hospital. That's on top of the $16 million that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the city will allocate to expand the program over the next five years.
On Capitol Hill, though, the students' argument might not hold much weight. After all, the vast majority of 9-11 victims have gotten little help for their health needs so far. No federal tracking programs exist for residents, office workers, and school children, let alone treatment. Only ground zero workers, whose numbers of respiratory diseases are escalating, have received any funding for medical monitoring�about $102 million at last count. Last week, the administration finally agreed to free up $75 million that's sitting in the country's treasury for treatment as well.
"Here it is, five years after 9-11, and the Bush administration has spent not one federal dollar on treatment for ground zero workers," declares Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Manhattan Democrat who has long pushed for a federal response to the health crisis. Back in 2004, she filed a bill that would give health benefits to a wide array of victims, including Stuyvesant students. Today, however, it's stuck in committee, with little hope of passage.
"This is a long, protracted battle," says Amy Rutkin, chief of staff for Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who represents lower Manhattan. She sees some progress: The Bush administration has appointed a 9-11 health czar to coordinate a federal response; an initial report on health problems could come as early as this month. And Rutkin's boss has filed his own bill to provide health coverage to those who were exposed to the toxic dust and who have gotten sick. Its language includes anyone who "attended school" in a building full of toxins from the World Trade Center disaster.
Still, Rutkin adds, "No one will wave a magic wand and give these students their health insurance tomorrow."
Nordstrom figured that out in March, after she had sent her first letters to politicians. She was met with silence from Senator Clinton, who's sponsoring a companion bill to Nadler's in the Senate, as well as from Senator Chuck Schumer, whose daughter, Jessica, attended Stuyvesant, in the Class of 2002.
Yet Nordstrom is giving Nadler's latest bill the thumbs up. "It's just what we wanted," she says, at a press event for it last week. Standing alongside firefighters, residents, and office workers, she looks ready for the fight ahead. She sounds ready, too. "We're not asking for anything outrageous," she observes. "My feeling is that the government was negligent in our case. Frankly, our situation down there was ridiculous."
send a letter to the editor[/B]
RICE OK'D CLAIM OF 'SAFE AIR'
AFTER 9/11
By SUSAN EDELMAN, HEATHER GILMORE and BRAD HAMILTON
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHRISTIE WHITMAN
Press releases got vetted.
September 24, 2006 -- Condoleezza Rice's office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe," internal documents show.
Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
Scientists and lawmakers have since deemed the air rife with toxins.
Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of "competing priorities" such as national security and "opening Wall Street," according to a report by the EPA's inspector general.
The chief of staff for then-EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, Eileen McGinnis, told the inspector general of heated discussions, including "screaming telephone calls," about what to put in the press releases.
The notes come from a 2003 probe into public assurances made on Sept. 16, five days after the 9/11 attacks. They tell how a White House staffer "worked with Dr. Condoleezza Rice's press secretary" on reviewing the press releases for weeks.
Whitman said through a spokeswoman Friday that she never discussed her press releases directly with Rice. She also defended her collaboration with the White House.
Now-retired Inspector General Nikki Tinsley told The Post her auditors tried to question the head of President Bush's Environmental Quality Council, but "he would not talk to us."
Calls and e-mails to Rice were not returned.
susan.edelman@nypost.com
Sept. 15, 2006:
Senate Republicans to 9/11 rescue workers: Drop dead
Comment: A paltry $5,800 per year for sickened first responders — and Republicans say it's too much.
Have I told you lately how much I hate these tight-fisted ice-hearted soul-deprived Republicans? Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK
Sept. 6, 2006:
70% of 9/11 rescue workers have respiratory problems
Excerpt: Five years after Sept. 11, seven out of 10 first responders and workers who toiled at Ground Zero suffer from chronic lung ailments that probably will be lifelong, doctors said yesterday in announcing the largest-ever study of 9/11 health effects... Doctors at Mount Sinai also said they expect to find cancer among the study's participants in coming years.
Comment: It would be an appropriate gesture, commemorating five years since September 11, 2001, to finally, finally take care of the rescue workers.
Appropriate, but unlikely.
The Bush-Cheney administration uses the rescue workers' heroism for photo ops and propaganda, but when it comes to the heroes' health, White House policy is, You're screwed. Helen & Harry Highwater PERMANENT LINK
Aug. 13, 2006:
Dying nun wants her body autopsied to prove 9/11 toxicity killed her
Comment: Amidst this and so many other tragic stories, let's remember what the New York Post has forgotten:
The Environmental Protection Agency knew the air around Ground Zero was dangerous to breathe, and tried to announce that fact — but the Bush-Cheney administration instructed EPA to re-write its warning, "to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public."
The White House put public relations ahead of public health — and Americans are dying because of that choice. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK
July 28, 2006:
Bush executive order let EPA bury info on 9/11 health hazards
Excerpt: With New Yorkers already fuming about reports that the feds downplayed the danger of Ground Zero dust, the White House gave EPA chief Christie Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them "secret."
"I hereby designate the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to classify information originally as 'Secret,'" states the executive order, which was signed by President Bush on May 6, 2002.
March 23, 2006:
Another 9/11 emergency worker dies of lung cancer
Excerpt: Retired paramedic Deborah Reeve, 41, suffered from mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer typically associated with asbestos exposure. Reeve worked down at the World Trade Center site for several weeks following the terrorist attacks.
The cancer left the mother of two from the Bronx emaciated and unable to walk. Her husband David, also a paramedic, says his wife worked at the World Trade Center site morgue for a couple of days after the attacks.
Her doctor says exposure to carcinogens and asbestos is what led to her illness.
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In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.
Jan. 17, 2006:
Three more rescue workers die of 9/11 air pollution poisoning
Nov. 30, 2004:
"World Trade Center Cough" plagues 9/11 rescue workers
Aug. 22, 2004:
9/11 rescue dogs dying of cancer
Sept. 12, 2003:
Victims of White House lie about 9-11 pollution
sign up for study of how bad their health got f***ed up
Sept. 10, 2003:
Ground zero air quality was 'brutal' for months
Scientist concurs that EPA reports misled the public
Aug. 23, 2003:
White House ordered EPA to lie about 9/11 pollution danger
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.
That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.
"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced ... 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."
On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:
The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.
Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases.
A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."
Language in an EPA draft stating that asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."
This sentence was added to a Sept. 16 news release: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." It replaced a statement that initial monitors failed to turn up dangerous samples.
A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."
The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed that conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.
... The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Aug. 10, 2003:
Bad-health hell at WTC site
Thousands of New Yorkers say they still suffer from the World Trade Center attacks — and they are reaching out to help hot lines in numbers greater than last year, The Post has learned.
Callers are seeking assistance for health complaints — ranging from respiratory ailments and pneumonia to acid reflux — that many link to the toxic plume created when the Twin Towers fell, as well as for post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.
Medical-research workers at Ground Zero report complaints of persistent asthma, sinusitis and acute nose and throat irritation.
"People calling are preoccupied with their safety. There is sleeplessness, they're having a range of unwanted memories and flashbacks, there's a fear of going into public places and substance-abuse problems," said John Draper, director of Lifenet, a New York counseling service.
Lifenet received more than 6,300 calls last month — up more than 20 percent from July 2002, he said. Lifenet counselors say about one in seven recent callers exhibits signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Prior to 9/11, Lifenet got about 3,000 calls a month, with one in 200 showing such symptoms.
The Fire Department says counseling cases rose from 2,106 last July to 3,003 this year. And the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance has experienced a 30 percent increase since last year. ...
Aug. 10, 2003:
WTC soot may have made babies smaller
Air pollution from the World Trade Center attacks may have resulted in smaller babies among pregnant mothers who were in or near the collapsing towers, preliminary research suggests.
Exposed pregnant women in the study faced double the risk of delivering babies who were up to a half-pound smaller than babies born to non-exposed women.
The size differences among babies born to women exposed to dirt and soot from the attacks suggest a condition called intrauterine growth restriction which has been linked with exposure to air pollution.
Previous research also has found that babies affected by intrauterine growth restriction may be at increased risk for heart disease, hypertension and other health problems in adulthood, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of Mount Sinai School of Medicine's community and preventive medicine department, and one of the researchers.
While duration of the exposure was relatively short, ''the intensity of exposure to soot and dust was extraordinarily high,'' Landrigan said.
The study appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The pregnancy research involved 182 women, including 12 who were in the towers on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists slammed hijacked jets into the buildings. Most of the others were within a half-mile of the site. Their babies were compared with infants born at Mount Sinai's hospital in Manhattan to women who were pregnant during the attacks but weren't near the site.
Aug. 9, 2003:
White House ordered 9/11 EPA lies
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
And i have to ask, why not just wait for the air quality to improve, rather than lying about it. Oh, wait, thats right, they had to get that evidence cleared out of there in a hurry.
At the very least what we have here is the basis for the mother of all lawsuits, and much better would be the criminal negligence charges against the people who made these decisions.
Last month Dr. Cate Jenkins, a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote a letter to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and other members of the New York congressional delegation blasting the EPA for hiding dangerous toxins from Ground Zero workers in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Letter claimed that EPA-funded research on the toxicity of breathable alkaline dust at the site “falsified pH results” to make the substance appear benign, when it was, in reality, corrosive enough to cause first responders and other workers in lower Manhattan to later lose pulmonary functions and, in some cases, to die.
Jenkins wrote:
"These falsifications directly contributed not only to emergency personnel and citizens not taking adequate precautions to prevent exposures, but also prevented the subsequent correct diagnosis of the causative agents responsible for the pulmonary symptoms. Thus, appropriate treatment was prevented or misdirected, and loss of life and permanent disability undoubtedly resulted."
The website Raw Story obtained the entire letter which can be viewed here.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:8iNRm...us&ct=clnk&cd=5By noon on September 11, an EPA Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent was on the scene at the Pentagon, providing emergency response investigative support and facilitating site safety for EPA Region 3 Emergency Response personnel and the FBI. On September 12, the FBI declared the Pentagon a crime scene, and EPA Special Agents were on the scene assisting in decontamination, gathering crime scene evidence (photography, videotaping, evidence gathering, etc.) and supplying other investigative and technical support to the FBI. In addition, EPA Special Agents assisted with body recovery and site safety until September 27, when the agents departed after the FBI returned the site to the control of the Department of Defense and FEMA.
This explains why workers were suited and booted and being decontaminated at the Pentagon (above), however, if this is standard procedure, why is it that the rescue scene at ground zero in New York seems to have been much more casual? Workers there did not have protective suits, boots or full face masks, neither did they undergo decontamination, despite the fact that there was more destruction and more possibility of harmful dust, smoke and chemical inhalation.
