Dust And Toxins From 9/11

Floor Speech

DUST AND TOXINS FROM 9/11 -- (House of Representatives - May 09, 2007)

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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentlelady.

Mr. Speaker, when the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, the towers sent up a plume of poisonous dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and into New Jersey. A toxic mixture of lead, dioxin, asbestos, mercury, benzene and other hazardous contaminants swirled around the site of the disaster and far afield as rescue workers labored furiously in the wreckage, many without adequate protective
gear. Thousands of first responders inhaled this poisonous dust before it settled onto and into countless homes, shops and office buildings.

Immediately after the collapse, and for the weeks after that, the Environmental Protection Agency had the responsibility of being the lead agency responsible for ensuring the safety of the hundreds and thousands of people who live and work and attend school in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City, and of the first responders.

Instead, the EPA and the Federal Government betrayed the people who live in New York and betrayed all the first responders, the police officers and the fire officers, and the volunteers from all over who came to help us clean up. It betrayed them in two ways.

First, the EPA assured all that the environmental conditions in New York were not hazardous and that the health of those near the plume was not in danger. Former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman irresponsibly declared within a few days after 9/11 that the air was safe to breathe and the water was safe to drink, and EPA continued saying that when they had plenty of data to say it wasn't true. The EPA and the Federal Government lied, and because of these lies, people are sick and dying today. The air was not safe. There is no doubt the EPA initiated two separate cover-ups that go on to this day.

For years, the Federal Government, the State government, the city government insisted that there was no evidence, no proof that people who were getting sick, that fire officers and police officers who had annual exams and had been healthy all the time and who suddenly could not breathe and could not work, this had nothing to do with the World Trade Center. You couldn't prove it was because they were poisoned by the atmosphere.

It was only last September, in September 2006, 5 years after the World Trade Center collapsed, that this cover-up unraveled.

A study released last September by Mount Sinai Hospital found that of the more than 9,000 first responders examined in that study, 70 percent suffered health problems related to their work at Ground Zero.

The evidence continues to pile up. Yesterday, the New York Times reported a clear link between World Trade Center dust and life-threatening disease. And yet, until very recently, the Health Department and the City of New York continued to deny that this was the case.

The City of New York continues to contest every workers comp case filed because, obviously, these are all malingerers; nothing was true.

The article in yesterday's Time cites reports by doctors from the fire department of New York and the Albert Einstein Medical College which again confirm what we have known, that all honest people have known for years: that we are facing a major health crisis as a result of September 11th. And we know that these conditions are very often long-lasting, life-lasting and that they go on and on.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, New York City firefighters and police officers joined with workers and volunteers from all 50 States to aid in the colossal rescue and recovery effort. But more than 5 years later, the Federal Government has not begun to do its part.

To this day, there has been no comprehensive program by the Federal Government to monitor, as Mrs. Maloney said, to monitor the health of all the victims, the firefighters, the cleanup workers. There has been no provision of medical services.

The President finally, in this year's budget that we are now debating, proposes supplying $25 million. And yet we know that the cost of caring for these people will be probably in the neighborhood of $300 million per year for the indefinite future.

For every day that goes by, more and more people become sick and are diagnosed with illnesses that their doctors attribute to the contamination of the World Trade Center. That is why a number of pieces of legislation have been introduced. For instance, Senators CLINTON, MENENDEZ, SCHUMER and KENNEDY, and in this House, Congressman Towns, ENGEL, WEINER, and I have introduced the 9/11 Heroes Health Improvement Act of 2007, which would provide more than $1.9 billion in Federal funding for medical and mental health screening, testing, monitoring and treatment grants for institutions that provide care to those whose health was affected in the 9/11 attacks, for the next 6 years, this would cover.

And that is just the first cover-up. The second cover-up is that we know that the World Trade Center contamination settled in Lower Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in Queens, probably in Jersey City, in many neighborhoods, buildings and onto streets. Nature cleans up the outdoor air, but it doesn't clean up the indoor air. The rain washes away dust in the outdoors; the wind blows it away. But nothing removes the indoors. People were told, don't worry, it is safe to move back to Lower Manhattan. In high school, students were told to go back after a week. And yet, we know that the indoor contamination was not dealt with properly. We know that, unless properly cleaned up, professionally cleaned up, indoor spaces are still contaminated; that even if you went in, as the New York City Department of Health urged, and said, ``If you see World Trade Center dust in your apartment, clean it up with a wet mop and a wet rag,'' and the EPA echoed this advice. This, too, was a betrayal, because not only is that advice illegal because we know that much of that dust had asbestos in it, and it is illegal to remove asbestos-laden material, to move it, to touch it, to deal with it unless you are properly licensed to, certified to do so and wearing equipment. But EPA and the City of New York Health Department told people to remove it with a wet mop and a wet rag.

We also know that, if you did that, besides being illegal, you probably inhaled some of it. And the very often immigrant workers hired by fly-by-night firms, who, not professionally, did this probably inhaled a lot of it. And we also know that, if you did it, you didn't thoroughly do it; that the dust settled into the porous wood surfaces and into the carpets and the drapes and behind the refrigerator and into the HVAC systems. And where the toddler crawls on the rug today and loosens that dust into the air, that toddler is being poisoned today. We probably have thousands or tens of thousands of people all over Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens and Jersey City who are being poisoned today and who we will see come down with asbestosis and mesothelioma and lung cancer 15 years from now, because it has never been properly cleaned up because the EPA continues to deny its responsibility.

The EPA ombudsman's office was called in at my request in February and March of 2002, and held hearings to see what could be done about this. What happened? The EPA abolished the ombudsman's office.

The EPA set up, at Senator Clinton's request, a scientific advisory body to look into this. They started saying, ``Hey, wait a minute. We have got a major problem here.'' What happened? They were disbanded by the EPA.

The EPA inspector general's office looked into this, and came out with a report in August of 2003, saying that thousands of people are endangered by this; that what we have to do is randomly inspect indoor spaces, apartments and work spaces in concentric circles going out from the World Trade Center so that we can find out where the contamination still exists, maybe 3 blocks in one direction, maybe 3 miles in another direction. But, wherever it is, map it, delineate it, and wherever it is, go in on a building-by-building basis, clean it up so that people are not continually poisoned indefinitely.

Clean it up, so that people are not continually poisoned indefinitely. What happened to that report? It was ignored by the EPA, and the people in the Inspector General's Office are no longer there.

And again, at Senator Clinton's insistence and because CAROLYN MALONEY and I and others insisted, the EPA set up another scientific advisory body in 2005. What happened? They started saying, you know, the Inspector General is right and what the EPA has done is inadequate. What happened? They were disbanded before they could make official recommendations.

To this day, we know that we are poisoning large numbers of people continually and piling up unnecessary cases of fatal diseases that will come out in 10 and 15 years because the Federal Government and the city government of New York has ignored this problem and covered it up.

So, in summary, we have two separate cover-ups, one of which unraveled only within the last year. We are trying to deal with it. We still don't have the funds to deal with it. The Federal Government, the Bush administration has ignored it, basically. They have not come out with proper recommendations.

Some of us, Congresswoman Maloney, Congressman Shays, myself, Senator Clinton, have made legislative proposals for long-term care and monitoring of the medical conditions caused that will be with us for the next 50 years. We don't have administration support. We haven't enacted that legislation. We must.

But at least, because that cover-up unraveled last year, we're talking about it. But that second cover-up, they're still denying it. The City of New York is still denying it. The Federal Government is still denying it. And until they admit it, until we do the proper investigation in the way that the Inspector General recommended and look at all the areas and find out where the contamination is and go in and clean it up, and it may cost a couple of billion dollars to do that, but until we do that we will continue poisoning people, we will continue making sure that 10 and 15 and 20 years from now we will have thousands perhaps of unnecessary cases of fatal diseases.

So I say to you, Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. MALONEY for calling this special order tonight. But I say to you, we must enact a legislation such as CAROLYN has talked about, such as I have talked about, such as others have, to put into place systematic means of monitoring and providing medical services for the victims, the first responders. But we must also make sure that the EPA and the Federal Government step up to the plate, unravel that second cover-up, peel it away, see what the problem is, inspect the areas, find out where the contamination still is. And where it still is, go in and on a building by building basis clean it up so that we can know that people can live and work in areas without being poisoned and without coming down with additional diseases.

Without doing this, we are adding to the work of the terrorists. The Federal and city governments are becoming complicit in adding to the victims. It was bad enough the terrorists cost us 3,000 dead that day. The Federal and city government should not be adding to the victims as they still are.

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Mr. NADLER. Thank you, CAROLYN.

What struck me about the hearings was several things. We've had hearings for a number of years, and I remember the first hearing I attended was presided over by Senator Lieberman, a U.S. Senate hearing back in February of 2002. But none of this has changed. It's 5 years later, and it hasn't changed.

Number one, you see the victims, the first responders, the people who dropped everything they were doing to help, to help victims that we thought people might be still alive under the debris. They weren't. Who then helped with the cleanup to get, who worked on the pile for 40 and 50 days. And we heard story after story of how healthy people were no longer healthy and they could no longer work and they could no longer breathe, how they now had to take 20 and 30 and 40 different pills and medications a day, how they couldn't pay for the medications, how they had lost their jobs, and because they lost their jobs they lost their health coverage and how the workers comp system didn't work for them.

How a hero who was given an award for heroism at the World Trade Center, when he went for workers' comp, they said, Prove you were there.

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Mr. NADLER. So the first thing we saw at those hearings were these people testifying about how they selflessly worked, and we know that they did, and how they had been betrayed by every level of government in treating them, by the workers' comp and the State, by the Federal Government.

The second thing was it was clear from the heroic work done by the people at Mount Sinai and the Fire Department of the City of New York, in trying to deal with these sick people and who had to put the funding together for private philanthropic sources, that until last year there was no government funding for any of this whatsoever. Finally we got a few million dollars.

Mrs. MALONEY of New York. It is a scandal. An absolute scandal. And at the hearing remember the Health Commissioner testified that Zadroga did not die from 9/11? I couldn't believe it.

Mr. NADLER. The Health Commissioner testified that. There has been a denial, a straightforward denial, by City and State people because they don't want to admit liability.

The third thing was that even now, even now, when Dr. Agwunobi testified, he said we will have a plan. Well, we haven't seen the plan. We know now that it is going to cost about $300 million a year just to deal with the health conditions of the people we know about. Never mind the cleaning up of the contaminated areas, but just for the first responders, it is going to cost about $300 million a year. The President proposed $25 million, but it was made very clear at the hearing, the last hearing, that the plan that the Federal Government was going to come up with, if they actually come up with a plan, would not deal with residents, would not deal with the health problems of people who are living there, who were beseeched by the City and Federal Government to come back and live and work in lower Manhattan and are suffering because they listened to that.

Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Our legislation calls for that all the residents should be covered. But remember, at the last hearing that Congressman Towns had, Agwunobi testified that we no longer needed a plan, that he wasn't going to give us a plan.

They said they would give us a plan in February. Where is it? That is why we have a resolution calling for a plan on how we are going to monitor and treat these heroes and heroines.

Mr. NADLER. And that is a scandal also. The other thing that was very clear, and it has been clear from the EPA right up to date, is that the registry has dealt with people who live or who work in lower Manhattan, below Canal Street, as if there was a 30,000-foot high wall along Canal Street or a Star Trek-type force field along Canal Street and across the East River because, after all, anyone who lives north of Canal Street has no problem. And anybody who lives in Brooklyn, where we saw the satellite photos showed the plume went and where Congressman Weiner testified that at his office 10 miles away, debris was falling on the terrace at his office, and we know it was falling across all these neighborhoods across Brooklyn; we don't have to deal with that. We are going to be studiously ignorant of all the people in these other places outside of lower Manhattan. That was brought out very clearly in Congressman Towns' hearing. And the fact is, we have to look at all these hearings areas and do the job properly.

Mr. SHAYS. I would add to that but also make the point that this won't be the first city that will have to deal with this kind of issue. I mean, we want to be able to protect and prevent a terrorist attack, but there may be some other event. And what we also need is a protocol that makes sure that future first responders are never put in this condition and that residents around wherever an event takes place are notified and given good information. The bottom line is, no one was ever given good information from day one.

Mr. NADLER. That is a very good point.

Mrs. MALONEY of New York. That is very true. But I also want to build on what he said, that people are going to be watching how we treat these first responders. God forbid that we have another 9/11 attack or another terrorist attack, they are going to know that we weren't there to provide, at the very least, the health care and the monitoring that the heroes and heroines need, and that is a very important precedent. It is not only, do we need to take care of these men and women, Mr. McCormick, who is with us tonight in the Gallery, but we have to send a message that we are going to be there for our first responders.

Mr. NADLER. There are a couple of lessons that really should be learned here. One, Abraham Lincoln said, at the end of the Civil War, that you have to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. We are failing in doing that, when he who shall have borne the battle here are heroes who came in to help, and we are abandoning them.

Second, the EPA had a duty to do the job here. They failed in that duty. And that is a danger for the future. The law provides that the EPA must come in and classify the area and make sure and protect people, and the OSHA laws were enforced in Washington so no one got sick. They weren't enforced in New York, and 50,000 people are sick.

Mrs. MALONEY of New York. I know. There were lots of terrible mistakes that are causing people their health now.

And in closing in this final minute, I just want to underscore that we as a Nation must not forget the firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and all the other responders, volunteers and residents who bravely rushed down to save lives even as everyone else was running in the opposite direction. We must not forget the rescue, recovery and cleanup workers who stayed on for months at Ground Zero in service to our country. And we must not forget the residents, area workers and school children who lived, worked and studied through the toxins and have now become sick.

Once again, I stand on this floor of Congress and note that this was an attack against our Nation, and we know that the Nation responded. Every State has workers that were affected by the deadly toxins at Ground Zero. Every State had residents who rushed to our State and rushed down to Ground Zero to help. We will never forget them, and we will not stop. Both sides of the aisle, we are committed to making sure that everyone who was exposed to the deadly toxins is treated and everyone who is sick is going to get medical care. That is the least that we can do for these brave men and women.

I thank my colleagues and especially Ryan McCormick, who is here with us tonight, for coming. And I thank you for your work not only tonight on this Special Order tonight but throughout your year in Congress. Since 9/11, it has been a priority of yours. And my constituents, the thousands that were affected thank you for your efforts, and I thank you for having this opportunity of joining me in this Special Order.

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