ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former EPA chief Christie Whitman heard booing and accusations yesterday at a hearing about her assurances that it had been safe to breathe the air around the fallen World Trade Center.
The confrontation between the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and her critics got heated at times. Some members of the audience shouted in anger, only to be gaveled down by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, who chaired the hearing.
For three hours Mrs. Whitman faced charges from Mr. Nadler and others that the EPA’s public statements after the September 11, 2001, attacks gave people a false sense of safety.
Mrs. Whitman said the government had warned those working on the toxic debris pile to use respirators, but that elsewhere in Lower Manhattan the air was safe for the general public.
“There are indeed people to blame. They are the terrorists who attacked the United States, not the men and women at all levels of government who worked heroically to protect and defend this country,” Mrs. Whitman said.
Since the attacks, independent government reviews have faulted the EPA’s handling of the immediate aftermath and the agency’s long-term cleanup program for nearby buildings.
A study of more than 20,000 people by Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York concluded that, since the attacks, 70 percent of ground zero workers have suffered some sort of respiratory illness. A separate study released last month found that rescue workers and firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring disease, at a rate of more than five times as high as in the years before the attacks.
Mr. Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes the World Trade Center site, called the hearing after years of criticizing federal officials for what he said was a negligent and incomplete cleanup.
He said the Bush administration “has continued to make false, misleading and inaccurate statements and refused to take remedial actions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.”
Mrs. Whitman called such accusations “misinformation, innuendo and downright falsehoods.”
She has long insisted that her statements that the “air is safe” were aimed at those living and working near ground zero — not those who actually toiled on the toxic pile that included asbestos.
“Was it wrong to try get the city back on its feet as quickly as possible in the safest way possible? Absolutely not,” she said, drawing catcalls from the crowd.
Dozens of activists and September 11 rescue workers came to the hearing, and some in the audience hissed when Mrs. Whitman said she felt former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s administration “did absolutely everything in its power to do what was right” in handling the health concerns.
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