Stoking Ground Zero health worries

Following the attack of September 11th, public opinion polls showed a remarkable leap in Americans’ trust of their government. Some in New York City seem to be carving out an exception to that trust when it comes to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Fanned by some alarming news reports, there are doubts about whether the EPA has been telling the truth about the New York City air. In the weeks following the disaster, news reports accepted government reassurances that the downtown air was safe. But in late October, the New York Daily News declared, “A Toxic Nightmare at Disaster Site.” This breathless story put together a catalog of horrors in the air, from PCBs and dioxin to benzene, “a colorless liquid that evaporates quickly and can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage and other diseases in long-term exposure.” Just as alarming, these reports came from “internal government reports” that had only seen the light of day thanks to an activist group’s Freedom of Information Act request. This story glossed over the inconvenient details: the worst measurements were taken by probes within the smoldering pile of rubble, or represented brief transient readings amidst a large volume of reassuring results. To the credit of the non-tabloid press, reporters made some phone calls to follow up on this screaming headline, but didn’t deem the information meaningful enough to stimulate a media hog-pile on the subject. Instead, like the wreckage of the World Trade Center, this story smoldered out of sight for months. In early January, the Washington Post took its turn at the tiller of alarm, reporting among other things that — despite the EPA’s reassurances that the air was safe to breathe, a for-profit inspector discovered asbestos at 555 times the “suggested acceptable level” in an apartment building air vent. “Nearly four months after the World Trade Center attacks, the fires there are largely extinguished. But fears of the toxic brew left behind in lower Manhattan’s air remain — as do concerns that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies did not warn residents sufficiently or soon enough of the dangers.” This report followed a familiar pattern. It started with the obvious — that asbestos dust was produced when the buildings collapsed. It moved to the anecdotal — at least a few landlords didn’t do a thorough job of cleaning their buildings. Next, it inexplicably placed the blame for bad cleanups on the EPA, which had no legal role. And finally, it waltzed off to the land of speculation — that residents of lower Manhattan face a significant health hazard.