Metadish, Fresh from NYC

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It seems like after 9/11 the Environmental Protection Agency vacillated between telling Giuliani the air at Ground Zero was toxic amd trying to convince residents of the area that the air was was actually A-OK to breathe.

In 2002-2003 the EPA led a residential cleanup program for residents whose apartments had been contaminated by the toxic dust.  The only problem is they kept insisting that the air quality in the apartments was safe causing many residents to pass on the cleanup program not wanting to waste government resources.  After all the government was basically telling them they didn’t need the service they were offering.

More than 4,000 apartments in Lower Manhattan were professionally decontaminated in that program, and the agency reported that only a “very small” number of air samples taken in those residences showed unsafe levels of asbestos.

But the agency failed to explain that 80 percent of the air samples were taken after the apartments had already been cleaned.

Oops, did you want us to take the air samples before we professionally cleaned the apartments?

Based on that misleading information only 295 residents and apartment building owners opted to take part in the cleanup program.  A small fraction of the 20,000 apartments that were eligible to participate.

Hillary Clinton who led the subcommittee hearing where the report was made public said, “Residents are understandably reluctant to participate in what they consider to be a waste of time.”  Clinton went on to add that the data in the report painted “a very different picture from what the White House would like us to believe.”

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