This is another story that is growing and could possibly gain some real
momentum in the near future:
A judge attacked former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine
Todd Whitman for reassuring Manhattan residents soon after the 2001
terrorist attacks that the environment was safe to return to homes and
offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.“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,” U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts wrote,
calling Whitman’s actions “conscience-shocking.”Whitman spokeswoman Heather Grizzle said Thursday that the former New
Jersey governor had no comment. Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller
said the government had no comment either. EPA spokeswoman Mary Mears said
the EPA was reviewing the lengthy opinion.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 dust and debris after the
Sept. 11, 2001 attack.The judge let the civil lawsuit proceed against the EPA and Whitman,
permitting residents, students and workers to try to prove that the agency
and its administrator endangered their health by their actions and
statements soon after the attack.
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What makes this of interest is something that hasn’t received much attention
from the mainstream media. That is the deaths which have occured and the number
of people with illness since being exposed to the atmosphere at ground zero
following the attacks.
All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and
colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by
their work at ground zero.While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site
have reported ailments such as “trade center cough†since the terrorist
attacks, some say that only now are the consequences of working at the site
becoming heartbreakingly clear.“I’m very fearful,†said Donald Faeth, an emergency medical technician
and officer in a union with two of the ground zero workers who died last
year. “I think that there are several people who died that day and didn’t
realize that they died that day.â€ÂÂ
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The ruling yesterday could also lead to further investigations into deaths
and illnesses such as these. Whitman will be the center focus of the
investigations and her defense should be interesting.
While at the EPA, Whitman continuously parted ways with Bush when it came to
the issue of global warming, however it was later proven that Whitman did
cooperate with the administration on the editing of environmental reports to
downplay the human effect on global warming. She has also become a focus point
of Republicans versus Conservatives and even authored a book “It’s My Party Too”
airing her complaints of the direction the Republican party has taken in the
past several years.
Publicly she seems like someone against Bush but there still seems to be a
hidden side to her that bows down to the boy king.