The air at Ground Zero
Subject: Health after the cleanup, 2001-present
Officials said the air was safe to breathe within days. It was not, they were told internally that the data did not support saying so, and the illnesses followed.
01The allegation
The allegation was that responders and residents were sent back into a toxic plume on the strength of public reassurance that the agencies issuing it could not support.
02Origin
Responders became ill in numbers that could not be explained away; unions, doctors at Mount Sinai and Bellevue, and eventually the EPA's own inspector general forced the issue.
03Accounts
Not collected for this entryAccounts are deliberately not collected here. This entry documents a historical case rather than a circulating remedy.
04What's known
This one is documented. The EPA's inspector general reported in 2003 that the agency did not have sufficient data to support its early "safe to breathe" statements and that White House involvement had altered its public messaging. The dust was strongly alkaline and laden with pulverised concrete, asbestos, silica and combustion products. The World Trade Center Health Program now covers tens of thousands of people, and the Zadroga Act funds their care because the connection was accepted. Here the public's distrust of official reassurance was straightforwardly correct.
Documented risk
Documented case: thousands of responders and residents developed respiratory disease and cancers linked to the exposure.