More Bush Cover-Up on Hazards at Ground Zero Clean Up

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/07/28/more-bush-cover-up-on-hazards-at-ground-zero-clean-up/

More Bush Cover-Up on Hazards at Ground Zero Clean Up

Even as reports continue to surface about increases in serious ailments, especially lung illnesses, among workers who toiled at ground zero in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, we continue to learn of all the ways the Bush administration has sought to cover up the chemical and other hazards workers faced.

Today’s New York Daily News reveals the White House gave then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them “secret” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“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.

Joel Kupferman of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project told the Daily News:

I think the rationale behind this was to not let people know what they were potentially exposed to. They’re using the secrecy thing to cover up their malfeasance and past deceptions.

[HockeyMom]

1. * only cared about getting Wall Street up and running

The M O N E Y flowing. Screw the people.

[MissWaverly]

3. No, he ALSO wanted the malls open and the planes running

[MissWaverly]

2. How can a public health hazard be declared a secret

and people think he is pro-life, what a joke, joke, joke.

[mom cat]

6. Czars have always been able to withhold any embarrasing info.

[MissWaverly]

9. if Rove and Team Bush were so Post-9-11

Why weren't they more with it on the health risks, Ostrich, meet sand, insert head

[mom cat]

11. They truly do not give a damn about us.

[MissWaverly]

12. What galls me is the sheer hypocrisy

How many times have we heard Bush on 9-11, not to provide adequate safeguards for the workers
at Ground Zero and New York City is like beating them up all over again at Ground Zero.

[knowbody0]

4. anyone watching had to know it was hazardous

it was my first thought.

[Monkeyman]

5. Yes mine too

[mhatrw]

14. But our OWN GOVERNMENT kept assuring us that it was A-OK.

Thousands of people who trusted our government will now be dying painful early deaths because of this.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Please read the last paragraph from my International union's magazine

http://www.afscme.org/publications/public_employee/2006/pemj0621.htm

Another 9/11 Victim

NEW YORK CITY

Cancer directly linked to asbestos has claimed the life of Deborah Reeve, a Local 2507 (DC 37) paramedic in New York City who was a first-responder at Ground Zero. Two 9/11 — and Local 2507 — colleagues perished some four years after beginning work at Ground Zero: EMT Tim Keller, 41, from complications of respiratory distress; and EMT Felix Hernandez, 31, from lung disease.

Family members say Reeve, who was 40, developed a persistent cough after working at the disaster site, and two years later was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a fatal cancer triggered by breathing airborne asbestos fibers.

Survivors of these AFSCME members have not received increased pension-fund payments from New York state for work-related injury resulting in death. "It's difficult to prove that the diseases are work related," explains Lee Clarke, director of Safety and Health for DC 37, which represents more than 3,000 rescuers and responders in the city. "If you jab yourself with a needle and get hepatitis C, you can prove injury. But 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina demonstrate that pension-compensation laws have not been written in ways that protect first-responders for illnesses resulting from disaster-related work."

[intheflow]

8. Yes, and wait until you hear about the post-Katrina ailments.

In New Orleans, there were major oil spills. In Mississippi, a Dupont plant that made dioxin-laden paint primer was flooded in Bay St. Louis, and an Agent Orange clean-up at the Navy base washed into ground water. I don't believe anything coming out of the EPA in this corrupt administration.

[bananas]

10. Now she's doing PR for the nuclear power industry

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x61914

[mhatrw]

13. This is SICK. If these people are religious, their religion is Satanism.

Remember, these are the exact same people who are revoking the Bill of Rights and telling us that we have to just trust them to do the right thing because "9/11 changes everything."

This scandal should, in itself, be more than enough to throw these criminals out of office. If they care so little about American lives that they would do this, what would you put past them? What makes them any better than the terrorist bogeymen that they are supposedly protecting us from?