The Guardian 27 April, 2005
Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
From 100 storeys high into a damp cloth
Remember those images of the collapse of the Twin Towers (and the third building nearby) in New York, as heat from jet-fuelled structural fires — heat estimated at 1,000 degrees Celsius — caused concrete to burn and reinforcing rods to melt and deform? The buildings imploded from about three quarters of the way up, collapsing in on themselves in a huge cloud of suffocating grey dust.
That dust included in its composition the vaporised or disintegrated remains of “over 10,000 personal computers, hundreds of copy machines, thousands of fluorescent lights, five million square feet of painted surfaces, seven million square feet of flooring, and 600,000 square feet of window glass” notes Brooklyn-based Vigilant in its e-bulletin WORLD WAR 4 REPORT Issue No 108 of April 16.
“Concrete, asbestos, jet-fuel, and many other unknowable hazardous materials were incinerated at temperatures … hot enough to produce toxic gas and ultra-fine particulates, or air-born dust, easily breathable and highly unsafe for humans.”
But this is the USA, so in addition “there were also millions of rounds of lead ammunition used in a Secret Service shooting range, and materials such as arsenic, mercury, and chromium which were housed in a US Customs laboratory in the complex”.
This toxic dust cloud coated much of lower Manhattan and drifted over the East River to fall on parts of Brooklyn. Dr. Michael Weiden, a medical officer for the New York Fire Department, called it “the largest single acute exposure to high-volume particulate matter in a modern urban environment”.
US capitalism’s financial centre was down for the count. Some of the fires continued for a week, and potentially toxic dust coated the area, so even if your building was intact, your work environment was less than optimum.
Pressure on the authorities from business and commercial interests must have been intense, and lo and behold, less than a week after the planes crashed into the Twin Towers the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a statement saying confidently (and astonishingly): “Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York’s Financial District.”
Financial District workers must have been understandably skeptical, for two days later, on September 18, EPA administrator Christie Whitman went to the trouble to reassure New Yorkers: “The air is safe to breathe.”
What was the basis for this remarkable claim? It certainly wasn’t scientific testing.
Wynde Priddy of Vigilant again: “There have been numerous independent studies and tests that reveal the true nature of the dust ... One dust sample tested by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project (NYELJP) showed five percent asbestos, towering above the EPA’s own one percent threshold for human risk.
“An indoor sample of World Trade Centre dust taken … five months after September 11 found levels of fibrous glass — a potent carcinogen — ranging from ten to fifteen percent.”
Fit to breathe? Only through a gas mask!
The EPA claimed their tests showed only “low levels of asbestos”. But significantly, the EPA did not rely on their own test methods when checking out their own building.
Even as environmental health experts were pointing out that the EPA was using outdated testing methods and its results were gravely underestimating the public health risk to people anywhere near “ground zero”, the EPA brought in an outside specialist asbestos-removal contractor using the most advanced methods to decontaminate their own offices.
But if the EPA knew what the risks were in reality, they did not pass this on to the people of New York. Apparently they weren’t allowed to.
According to Wynde Priddy, “In the weeks following September 11, all EPA press releases were filtered through the White House”. Ah ha!
In a 2003 report entitled EPA’s Response to the World Trade Center Collapse, the EPA’s own Office of Inspector General states: “It appeared that EPA’s best professional advice was over-ruled when relaying information to the public in the weeks immediately following the disaster. Politics, it appears, trumped science in the communication of risks to the public.”
Rather a dry way of putting it, but you can imagine the brouhaha in the White House at the time as they tried desperately to hose down a situation that was rapidly becoming much bigger than had been anticipated.
Every week brings a new revelation of the intimate connections between the 9/11 suspects and their associates on the one hand and the US intelligence community on the other.
But whether sections of the US intelligence community and the Bush Administration were involved in 9/11 or not, the White House certainly didn’t give a toss then — any more than it does now — about the long-term health of people living and working in the vicinity of the Twin Towers.
According to Wynde Priddy again, “EPA officials contend that they didn’t want to cause mass panic”. This is the excuse trotted out for not informing the public in every American disaster movie ever made.
I have always thought it was just weak scriptwriting, but apparently it is real! Only in American would it be deemed an acceptable excuse.
So, while the air was filled with a plethora of carcinogens and toxic dust settled over everything, the EPA solemnly advised New Yorkers to clean up the potentially lethal dust with a damp rag!