Continuing the EPA’s parade of incompetence, there is an article in the New York Times regarding Whitman’s testimony on the EPA’s response to the 9-11 clean up.  Whitman repeatedly denied the agency downplayed their findings regarding air quality around the attack site in the days following 9-11.  Whitman might still be in denial, but the proof is in the pudding.  There was ample evidence of dangerous environmental conditions around the site immediately after 9-11, particularly evidence on dangerous levels of dust in the air, including hazardous silica dust and asbestos dust.  Now there is medical proof of the dangers in the worker’s afflicted with World Trade Center dust disease (see previous posts). 

Two quotes from the story:

“She (Whitman) said that she was addressing residents of Lower Manhattan — not workers at ground zero — when she said a week after the attack that the air was safe to breathe”,  and

“(s)everal members of the subcommittee also pressed Ms. Whitman to acknowledge that exposure to the dust from the collapsed twin towers had made workers and residents sick. Ms. Whitman declined to do so, saying that the evidence linking the dust to disease was not conclusive.  She said she had not read clinical reports from the Mount Sinai World Trade Center Screening and Monitoring Program. A preliminary study released last year showed that 70 percent of the first 9,000 workers examined had reported developing some kind of respiratory problem after working on the debris pile.”

She could have come to the hearing and taken responsibility for what she did, but she chose not to.  What a shame.