Wait until this thing comes to a head...I was down there and the stench was strong in offices, which were also coated with the dust. I’d note that there are also several schools in the area.
Most of the workers on the pile were/are unionized as are the teachers in the nearby schools. The folks in the surrounding offices aren’t unionized, but a lot of them are high paid professionals, investment bankers, brokers, etc.
In short — the folks either on the pile or very close to the pile have extremely deep pockets and are not afraid to raise a fuss.
Please don’t put me as one defending EPA in any way shape or form.
I’m sure that just from the size and diversity of the local population that there will be some whose health has been severely or even terminally compromised from airborne contamination. It is inevitable.
Then there are those whose health has been affected less severely.
And then there are those who will be part of the ‘me too’ crowd...
Once the visible dust settles then what remains is the real health hazard, the microscopic respirable particles. If you can see them then you probably won’t actually breath them, they get caught on the way.
But I’m sure someone will expected the EPA to test the air in every office in every building on every street nearby.
I think now is when it’s starting to come to a head. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.
I lived uptown on 9/11 but I’ve been around the corner from Ground Zero for well over two years now. There’s a great deal of rebuilding and reconstruction going on & sometimes one wonders whether or not properties being demolished that had been untouched since 9/11 are the healthiest places to be around...but we don’t have much choice but to walk by them every day. Two years ago a demolition company started to do some work on Greenwich St...only to be halted because there was a local activist whistleblower who had discovered that they had not gone through the proper channels to take down a building that, not could, but almost certainly would, be releasing debris trapped inside since 9/11 into the air.
The air monitoring devices are now outside the Deutsche Bank Building, but they’ve been in various locations in the vicinity of the rear of the American Stock Exchange & the Marriott Hotel ever since I’ve been here.
I don’t like the gotcha games or the partisan finger-pointing any more than anyone else does. I do remember that there was a controversy a few years ago where Whitman claimed she had no choice but to acquiesce to White House pressure in order to return as much normalcy as possible to the cleanup effort. I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but I’ve always wondered about this.
One of the reasons the first responders & subsequent demolition workers refused to wear protective gear was because they claimed it hindered their ability to get any work done, to an unacceptable degree.
So if you force them to wear that gear, then you are potentially placing a significant restriction to get the work done.
I doubt that the toxins on the site itself were that much more prevalent over the first few days than they would’ve been over the next several weeks: unless I’m wrong, I would think that each & every piece of debris removed freed up more and more dust into the air. And the fires burned, towards the northeast section of the site, at least until December. During the first few days, after the cloud (which enveloped lower Manhattan & hit the northwest part of Brooklyn) dispersed, I think it’s quite possible the gradual removal of debris released toxins into the air on an ongoing basis.
If Giuliani & Whitman are to be pitted by Democrats into a pissing match...ugh. But, I think a little accountability would be in order here. I think it’s entirely possible that work would’ve been unacceptably restricted by wearing the protective gear (not the paper masks, mind you), and from that a decision was made to allow the work to continue, even with knowledge of unacceptable levels of exposure to toxins. I think we can all understand the need to rebuild sooner rather than later, but people live around here, too. At some point it would’ve been prudent for this to be addressed, whether or not someone had to admit blame, which would have avoided this blame game led by...Congressional Democrats.
A few weeks ago, following the announcement that demolition of the Deutsche Bank Building was now progressing after so many false starts due to recurring discoveries of human remains, I walked past the closed-off portion of Washington St., and had to wait for a sanitation-type truck filled with debris to pass. And that smell that anyone around here will never forget? There it was. And it lingered.
When you smell that you almost care less about the blame game, and want to see someone nailed on this. One way or another, it seems, it could’ve & should’ve been handled just a bit differently.