Movie Review: 911 Dust and Deceit at the WTC

Movie Review: 911 Dust and Deceit at the WTC

“Epa adminstatrator Christine Todd Whitman announced to New Yorkers, shortly after the 911 attacks on the World Trade Towers that ‘I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington DC that their air safe to breathe’ and that we ‘ . . . need not be concerned about environmental issues as [we] return to [our] homes and workplaces’”

911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC: From the website: Director: Penny Little ©2006 Penny Little, Starring: Cate Jenkins; Rachel Hughes; Hugh Kaufman; Joel Kupferman; Carolyn Maloney; Jarrold Nadler; Jeffrey Smith; Phil McArdle; Marjorie Clarke; Gail Benzman; Robert Gulack; Suzanne Mattei; Jenna Orkin “This disturbing film by Penny Little “911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC”  exposes the environmental disaster of 9/11 through interviews with scientists, waste management specialists, government workers, volunteers, the heros and victims of the dust which permeated the air after 911.

Dustification of ManhattanBACKGROUND

“EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced to New Yorkers, shortly after the 911 attacks on the World Trade Towers that ‘. . . I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington DC that their air is safe to breathe’ and that we ‘ . . . need not be concerned about environmental issues as [we] return to [our] homes and workplaces’ At that time, she didn’t have the information to support those assurances or make recommendations. The White House itself, through its Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), actually manipulated the statements being released by the EPA so as to soft-pedal health concerns.

“The impact of the environmental disaster after 911 will continue for years. The health of those who were exposed to the toxic dust and told that the “Air was safe to breathe” and the continuing coverup of the problems has not been adequately reported in the mainstream media. Those who were most affected are often the least able to get the help they need.

“In 911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC, Filmmaker Penny Little interviews numerous experts, victims, and ground zero workers.

NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR:

“This film would not have been possible without the startup funds from Jimmy Walter. Jimmy Walter is a controversial figure, who has spent more than 7 million dollars funding the expose of fraud within the government’s story on 911.

“My movie – 911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC has nothing to do with any speculative theories about 911, including the one promulgated by the government. My movie focuses solely on the problems caused by the misrepresentations of various individuals within agencies in New York and Washington, who covered up the fact that the dust was toxic. There was little consideration for the collateral damage caused by the ongoing chemical attack on the people of New York in the form of this toxic dust. The citizens of New York were lied to and now thousands are sick, and a number have died as a direct result.

 . . . . The impact of the environmental disaster after 911 will continue for years. The health of those who were exposed to the toxic dust and told that the “Air was safe to breathe” and the continuing coverup of the problems has not been adequately reported in the mainstream media. Those who were most affected are often the least able to get the help they need. But In 911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC  proves what Carlyle wrote , “no lie can live forever. In 911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC, Filmmaker Penny Little interviews numerous experts, victims, and ground zero workers.

“When it comes to our health and safety,   the government treats us like we were mushrooms! —  They keep us in the dark and feed us ‘Bullshit’!” — Roland Sheppard

This film shows in thousands of picture frames (and each frame shows a thousand words) the wanton disregard for human life that I could only attempt to write about in my 2002 essay: 9/11 World Trade Center Dust Cloud: How Many Will Die! This film also shows that when it comes to our health and safety, the government treats us like we were mushrooms; They keep us in the dark and feed us ‘Bullshit’!

Just how toxic and overwhelming the clouds were are shown in the movie. Below are some photos, found on the web, that show the toxic cloud of highly alkaline (pH: 9.0–11.0) dust containing pulverized (alkaline) cement, pulverized metals, glass fibers, asbestos, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls, lead, mercury (PCBs), polychlorinated furans and dioxins, and other chemicals. It was a carcinogenic and toxic soups with all toxins acting in synergy with each other.

According to the video, the heavy dust accumulation in a building close to the WTC was 112,000times the legally permissible air levels for asbestos alone!

(The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) considers asbestos to be a potential occupational carcinogen and recommends that exposures be reduced to the lowest feasible concentration*. For asbestos fibers >5 micrometers in length, NIOSH

recommends a REL of 100,000 fibers per cubic meter of air (100,000 fibers/m3), which is equal to 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air (0.1 fiber/cm3), as determined by a 400-liter air sample collected over 100 minutes in accordance with NIOSH Analytical Method #7400. Airborne asbestos fibers are defined as those particles having (1) an aspect ratio of 3 to 1 or greater and (2) the mineralogical characteristics (that is, the crystal structure and elemental composition) of the asbestos minerals and their nonasbestiform analogs. The asbestos minerals are defined as chrysotile, crocidolite, amosite (cummingtonite-grunerite), anthophyllite, tremolite, and actinolite. In addition, airborne cleavage fragments from the nonasbestiform habits of the serpentine minerals antigorite and lizardite, and the amphibole minerals contained in the series cummingtonite-grunerite, tremolite-ferroactinolite, and glaucophane-riebeckite should also be counted as fibers provided they meet the criteria for a fiber when viewed microscopically.www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/nengapdx.html#a. * The term ‘lowest feasible concentration’ means what iseconomically feasible to maintain profits, which translates to one additional cancer per workers exposed.)

Collage  of Photos

In fact the level of asbestos was so high, on January 11, 2002, a memorandum was sent by Cate Jenkins, Ph.D., the head EPA hazardous waste investigator in lower Manhattan after 9/11. This memorandum compared the asbestos levels in the Montana, Libby Hazardous Waste Superfund Site to the levels she found in Lower Manhattan.  (In Libby, Montana almost 30% of the Libby residents were hurt by asbestos.) http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/36409_libby24.shtml Three months after 9/11, the levels of asbestos found in lower Manhattan were higher than the Libby Superfund site! And yet the EPA claims Manhattan to be “safe”!

Jenkins, who was the head EPA expert at the Libby site, was transferred, by the EPA, to Manhattan, after the twin towers events.  In her memo, she called for lower Manhattan to be covered by the Superfund Statute. A full copy of the memo, and her other memos on the same subject, can be found on the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) web site at:http://www.nycosh.org/environment_wtc/WTC-Libby-Jenkins-01-11.pdf.

The caustic dust contained an uncountable amount of carcinogens and other toxic compounds. I use the term ‘unaccountable’ less than 2% of all known chemical compounds, that have not even been tested by OSHA, and we have no knowledge of the combined synergistic effects from the dustification and oxidization of several tall skyscrapers. This dust spread throughout the metropolitan New York City area from New Jersey and beyond Brooklyn.

When the first responders came in, they were not trained in hazardous waste removal. Since they were told that the air was safe by the government, they did not wear nor were they required to wear the proper safety equipment for hazardous waste removal. Why? The federal government suspended the safety rules! (( Niosh sponsored and asked the RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute to organize a conference of individuals who  represented a wide range of occupations and skills: firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians, construction workers, union officials, and government representatives from local, state, and federal agencies. The conference was held December 9–11, 2001, in New York City, In January, 2002, I attended a panel discussion “reporting back” from this conference about the hazardous conditions from the implosion of the World Trade Center. This meeting was sponsored by Cal-OSHA, “Worksafe!,” and other safety organizations.The reporters explained that The Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard (HAZWOPER) cleanup regulations were suspended for the cleanup of the World Trade Center “dustpile.” OSHA was prevented from enforcing work safety regulations and relegated to merely an advisory status. (Employers thus faced no penalties for putting workers at risk.)))

To justify the suspension of the rules, all of the branches of the government determined, in statements to the public, that the air in ground zero was safe to breath.

To demonstrate how ‘safe’ the air was,  a day after the after  the collapse and subsequent dustification of the World Trade Center towers, September 12,  2001, New York Gov.   George Pataki, on   the left, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, center,  and  Sen. Hillary  Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., toured the site of  the World Trade Center disaster, with an absolute minimum of safety protection.

And two days later, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Defense Secretary Donald H.Rumsfeld were photographed by the New York Times at ground zero  with no safety  gear.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Defense Secretary Donald H.Rumsfeld

The overwhelming majority of “ground zero ‘first responder’” workers, having faith in the government, went to work with out any training in how to work with hazardous materials and thinking that the work environment was safe.

9/11 First responders suffering with cancer sue city

 

It is also clearly pointed out in 911 Dust and Deceit that the workers’ employers, who no long had liability for safety, instructed the workers at ground zero not to wear masks, in order to make the “public feel at ease”!  To add salt to the wounds,  this documentary film/video shows that the government and the regulatory agencies at first stated that everything was safe and then falsified and doctored the evidence  of the various hazards to support their previous lies! The justification for all of the this was made clear in the Aug. 21 EPA Inspector General’s report stated: “The EPA Inspector General’s report shows that in the minds of high government officials the need to re-open Wall Street took precedence over the need to give the public accurate information about the hazards in Lower Manhattan,” said William F. Henning Jr., chair of the NYCOSH Board of Directors.

The proof that the government was well aware of all the hazards and regulations necessary for the clean up of a dustification of a building was demonstrated by the EPA approach to the clean up of the much smaller 911 attack upon the Pentagon. From, Ground Zero Toxic Death Fumes Covered Up From Day One:

“By noon on September 11, an EPA Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent was on the scene at the Pentagon, providing emergency response investigative support and facilitating site safety for EPA Region 3 Emergency Response personnel and the FBI. On September 12, the FBI declared the Pentagon a crime scene, and EPA Special Agents were on the scene assisting in decontamination, gathering crime scene evidence (photography, videotaping, evidence gathering, etc.) and supplying other investigative and technical support to the FBI. In addition, EPA Special Agents assisted with body recovery and site safety until September 27, when the agents departed after the FBI returned the site to the control of the Department of Defense and FEMA.

“This explains why workers were suited and booted and being decontaminated at the Pentagon (above), however, if this is standard procedure, why is it that the rescue scene at ground zero in New York seems to have been much more casual? Workers there did not have protective suits, boots or full face masks, neither did they undergo decontamination, despite the fact that there was more destruction and more possibility of harmful dust, smoke and chemical inhalation.” Ground Zero Toxic Death Fumes Covered Up From Day One.

If one goes to the UCLA safety site, the HAZWOPER Standard (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response) requires health and safety training for persons managing hazardous waste or who are involved in an emergency response release such as leaks, spills, accidents or fires.

They recommend full face masks for the clean up of hazards. For example below are photos of the proper personal safety equipment that should have been supplied to the works at ground zero.

Hazwoper Photo 1 Hazwoper Photo 2

EPA workers on the job in full hazmat suits during the initial clean-up in Libby, Montana. Credit: A scene from ‘Libby, Montana’

When I was a Business Agent for Painters Local #4 in 1994, almost every building in the downtown Financial District of San Francisco underwent a floor by floor process of asbestos and lead abatement. All of the waste was contained and safely removed to a hazadous waste desposal site.  Below are photos of the type of safety equipment that the workers that performed the asbestos abatement were required to wear.

Workers removing Asbestos Asbestos removal requires special precautions for workers

Since regulations were suspended, the proper Hazmat removal and disposal was not performed and the building have not been properly cleaned. In the process of disposal and lack of containment of the waste, the government has been spreading carcinogenic and toxic compounds throughout the area much like  like Johnny Appleseed planted apple trees in the Ohio valley. A good percentage of the toxic cloud remains in the building of New York City, as a toxic hazard whenever it get disturbed. Not only were the workers put at risk at ground zero, but the entire population of almost 20 million people of the New York Metropolitan area has been permanently put at risk, jeopardizing their “unalienablerights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Along with everything that has happened, the federal and state governments have been fighting the granting of disability benefits to the victims of their lies!

As was stated on the film website:

The impact of the environmental disaster after 911 will continue for years. The health of those who were exposed to the toxic dust and told that the “Air was safe to breathe” and the continuing coverup of the problems has not been adequately reported in the mainstream media. Those who were most affected are often the least able to get the help they need.

This film/video is well worth the seeing and can be bought online at: Amazon.com

If you judge a country’s vitality by how it responds to catastrophes, then the United States’ vitality fails miserably, as shown by the examples of this catastrophe and the catastrophe after Hurricane Katrina. In 911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC, Filmmaker Penny Little interviews numerous experts, victims, and ground zero workers. They were:

• CATE JENKINS, PhD, a 22-year specialist with the EPA’s Hazardous Waste Identification Division and the author of a 432-page memo to the EPA’s Inspector General as background documentation for the recently released IG report.
• MARJORIE CLARKE, environmental scientist, former investivator for EPA, expert in waste management. Co-authored the paper “The Gold Standard “
• JOEL KUPFERMAN, New York Environmental Law & Justice Project. Lawyer involved in advocacy for victims. See current lawsuits.
• ROBERT GULACK, a lawyer for the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He worked in Tower 7, left before the collapse.
• RON ELUMN, Lower Manhattan resident who suffers from chemical asthma from inhaling dust from 9/11, He toured the world as a backup singer with the Inkspots. Now, he can barely talk.
• RACHEL HUGHES an artist, formerly managed high-powered website development, volunteered at Ground Zero, worked within blocks of the World Trade Center, now spends most of her time doing medical “protocols” , going to doctors. Rachel’s Picture Gallery coming soon.
• PHIL McARDLE, Uniformed Firefighters Association, “We did a very good job of taking care of the dead after September 11,” he
• SUZANNE MATTEI,NYC Executive for Sierra Club, authored report “911 Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero”
• JENNA ORKIN, of the World Trade Center Environmental Organization — WTCEO
• US Congressman Jerrold Nadler, New York’s Eighth Congressional District Immediately following September 11, 2001, Congressman Nadler launched an investigation into EPA’s wrongdoing, and documented EPA’s legal responsibilities in a White Paper issued in April 2002.  That white paper served as the initial basis for the lawsuit.
• HUGH KAUFMAN, senior engineer and former chief investigator for the EPA. Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since its inception in 1971, was the chief investigator for the EPA Ombudsman’s office until he was removed after issuing critical reports. read more .
• WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ – the janitor in the World Trade Center who had the master key to the stairwells and went back into the building to rescue numerous people. He was the last person to be pulled out from the rubble of the North Tower alive. He coughed blood and soot from the dust. Today, he must monitor his health.
• GAIL BAZEMAN, Lower Manhattan worker who suffers from chemical asthma from inhaling dust from 9/11. She can barely talk, has good days and bad days. She still works just a few blocks from Ground Zero.
• JFFREY SMITH had a business near Ground Zero. The paintings on his wall were destroyed by whatever was in the air. He has a litany of ailments, all of which began after 911.
• MAJID ALI , Professor of Medicine of  Capital University of Integrative Medicine and author of September 11, 2005 He works with immune problems, toxicity, and treats patients who have been affected by 911.