September 11 Claims Another Victim

No one who lives in New York looks at the police or firemen of the city quite the same way today as they did before September 11, 2001. They were the heroes who ran into the burning, doomed towers while everyone else was trying desperately to get out. Earlier this week, James Zadroga, who retired from Manhattan South's Homicide task force in 2004, joined the list of those who died because of the attack. Unlike the 2,752 who perished earlier, Detective Zadroga was killed not by Al Qaeda but by the Environmental Protection Agency, which told New Yorkers the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe."

Detective Zadroga died in January, but it took this long for the test results to come back. He logged over 500 hours at the attack site during the recovery effort, just one of thousands. Like many of those thousands, he had what is locally called "World Trade Center Cough." Mount Sinai Medical Center has a World Trade Center Screening Program with 16,000 or so names, half of whom need treatment. The Fire Department of New York, which lost more than 300 firefighters that morning, has 7,000 members who also have medical problems related to breathing the poison in the air around Ground Zero.

Anyone who was anywhere near the spot where the Twin Towers stood was treated to a noxious mix of concrete dust, the stench of melted and burnt steel, fumes from paper and wood fires, the gases from plastic that had vaporized, and the scent of cremated human beings (many of whom were alive when they were incinerated). The air burned the back of the throat, it colored the mucus lining for the nose for days after one left the area, and it made the eyes water. It also can?t be forgotten no matter how hard one tries.

The EPA was monitoring the site, but it clearly wasn?' getting the job done. The EPA declared on September 16, 2001, "The new samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern. New OSHA data also indicates that indoor air quality in downtown buildings will meet standards. EPA has found variable asbestos levels in bulk debris and dust on the ground, but EPA continues to believe that there is no significant health risk to the general public in the coming days." It is not inconceivable that more people will die from the respiratory suffering the air caused than by the actual attack.

There's a lawsuit against the EPA and Christie Todd Whitman, its head that day, and the judge in that trial said back in February, "By these actions she [Whitman] increased and may have in fact created the danger to plaintiffs. Without doubt, if plaintiffs had not been told by the head of a federal agency entrusted with monitoring the environment that it was safe, plaintiffs would not have so readily returned to the area so soon after the attacks." Judge Deborah Batts also described the EPA's assurances as "misleading" and "shocking the conscience."

No one should take this to imply that the US government should be blamed for the murders Al Qaeda committed that day (although just what the US government did to protect America that day isn't very impressive). However, once the damage had been done, the government had a responsibility to protect the rescue and recovery workers? lives. The EPA and Ms. Whitman failed. Not only is a civil suit appropriate, criminal charges must be considered. Someone killed Detective Zadroga through negligence, and the perpetrator is a cop killer. It's time for some righteous indignation.

? Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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