An issue close to me. US District Judge Deborah Batts refused to grant Christine Whitman immunity in a class-action suit brought by residents and workers in Manhattan and Brooklyn alleging that the EPA, among others, downplayed the environmental hazards there just after 9/11:
NEW YORK – A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.
U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the collapse of the World Trade Center.
“No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws,” the judge said.
She called Whitman’s actions “conscience-shocking,” saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air.
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The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and reimbursement for cleanup costs and asks the court to order that a medical monitoring fund be set up to track the health of those exposed to trade center dust.
In her ruling, Batts noted that the EPA and Whitman said repeatedly — beginning just two days after the attack — that the air appeared safe to breathe. The EPA’s internal watchdog later found that the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances.
Quoting a ruling in an earlier case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm’s way unless the conduct was so egregious as “to shock the contemporary conscience.” Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman’s reassurances after Sept. 11 were “without question conscience-shocking,” Batts said.
On 9/11, I worked for the City, in a building two blocks from the main WTC complex and kitty-corner from WTC 7. I wasn’t there that morning, since my home phone was being installed that day, but coworkers of mine were evacuated, to find an aircraft engine on the sidewalk outside the building. The building was hit by pieces of fusellage, and the windows in the office that I had moved out of the Friday before were smashed. The office remained under lockdown for many, many months afterwards, and was a crime scene for a long time.
I was out of work for a couple of weeks, and then we were called back in. We spent time in an office in Midtown for a week or two, just trying to contact the courts and our adversaries and see if we could get copies from their files, since ours were inaccessible. During all that time, I wasn’t able to smell the toxic cloud from Midtown, but I could see it and smell it from home, which was downwind but pretty far from downtown anyway (on this map, you can get an idea of the distance — the WTC is in the lower left corner of Manhattan, and I live at the southern tip of Prospect Park, which is the green spot in the middle of Brooklyn). I found large chunks of debris, mostly paper, near my home.
After a week or so at our first temporary office, my division found temporary office space downtown, in the Wall Street area. We were only a few blocks from the site, and also downwind. The building we were in had a large plaza and restaurant/store where many of us got our lunches. That fall, the weather was gorgeous (the sky was so blue and clear on 9/11 that it still freaks me out a bit to see that kind of sky), and I often would eat my lunch on the plaza, either at one of the tables in front of the restaurant or sitting on the edge of one of the big planters/flowerbeds. I was sitting at one of these flowerbeds one afternoon when I happened to look at the flowers and noticed that the dirt was gray. On closer inspection, I realized that it wasn’t dirt, it was ash from the disaster, probably consisting of asbestos, building materials, paper and human remains. I lifted up a piece and saw that it was a few inches thick.
I often went to the gym after work, which meant going up John Street to Wall Street, to the New York Sports Club across from the Stock Exchange and near the statute of Washington. In the evenings, while I was walking to the gym, there would often be crews out spraying down the dust that had collected during the day. I was never really aware of the dust unless I was out at this time, since I spent the day in an air-conditioned office, and the wet dust just seemed to stick more. Certainly it stuck to my teeth, which is where I noticed it. At the time, I was trying not to think that I had dead people stuck to my teeth. It didn’t occur to me then to worry that I might have asbestos there.
But as bad as it was there, it was worse closer to the site. We eventually got passes to go into the locked-down zone and retrieve files from the office. By that time, the building had already been cleaned out a couple of times, but the air inside the building was hazy in a way it just wasn’t on the other side of Broadway. Even with a dust mask, I could feel the dust on my teeth once I got behind the checkpoint. I went a couple of times, and others went more.
It was months before the fire died out, and longer than that before the smell stopped being so noticeable. I did asbestos litigation for a while, so I know what the stuff does, and I know how long it takes for symptoms to show up. I still have to wonder, how much do I have to worry about?
Via Atrios.
UPDATE: I wanted to reference this post by Steve Gilliard, which points out the recent sudden deaths of three police officers, two of whom had worked at Ground Zero. The one whose casket is being carried in the photo was only 31. Another was 37, and he dropped dead while on a call. Read the comments as well.