Bush says asbestos not bad for you...

Bush "reckless" on post-9/11 health risks, says report

By Mark Egan, Reuters
August 19, 2004

The Bush administration was guilty of reckless disregard by failing to
inform New Yorkers of health risks from toxic air after the collapse of
the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a leading
environmental group said Wednesday.

In a Sierra Club report titled, "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground
Zero: How the Bush Administration's Reckless Disregard of 9/11 Toxic
Hazards Poses Long-Term Threats for New York City and the Nation," the
influential group said the Bush administration's mistakes are now in
danger of becoming policy for handling future disasters.

"The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and
hardships suffered by the Ground Zero community, said the report's
author Suzanne Mattei. "Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any
future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."

The destruction of the twin towers shot pulverized asbestos, lead,
concrete, glass, and other debris into the air throughout lower
Manhattan.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismissed the report as "scare
tactics" and said it was committed to protecting the health of New
Yorkers and improving its emergency procedures.

"The American public should see this report for what it is: a blatant
attempt to use this tragedy for political gain," the EPA said in a
statement.

The Sierra Club report was highly critical of how the Bush
administration handled the environmental impact of the towers' collapse,
which claimed nearly 2,800 lives and blanketed lower Manhattan with dust
and debris.

Series of Charges

Among the charges made in the report:

* the Bush administration failed to warn the public immediately of
long-standing evidence that such a collapse would release toxins and
make the air unsafe to breathe.
**the EPA failed on at least a dozen occasions to change its safety
assurances even after it became clear people were getting sick.
* the Bush administration failed to enforce safety requirements among
workers on the Ground Zero clean-up effort.

Last year the EPA, in an internal report by its Inspector General Nikki
Tinsley, said the White House pressured the agency to make premature
statements that the air was safe to breathe.

The EPA issued an air quality statement Sept. 18, 2001, even though it
"did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the
EPA report said, adding that the White House "convinced the EPA to add
reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones." Among the information
withheld was the potential health hazards of breathing asbestos, lead,
concrete, and pulverized glass.

The Sierra Club report said hundreds of people were seriously ill as a
result of breathing contaminated air after the buildings fell. It said
much of the dust was as caustic as ammonia and had an effect akin to
drinking drain cleaner.

Noting President Bush will accept his party's nomination for re-election
in New York, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope urged him to take
steps to properly clean the remaining dust in lower Manhattan, fund
long-term medical monitoring and treatment, and retract false safety
assurances.

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"Conservatives love their country the way a four-year-old loves their
mommy. Everything Mommy does is good and anyone who criticizes Mommy is
bad." -- Al Franken