Of course, there's this:
Quote:HILLARY'S JUNK SCIENCE
By STEVEN MILLOY
September 10, 2003 -- SEN. Hillary Clinton says she'll block President Bush's nominee for chief of the Environmental Protection Agency because the EPA allegedly misled New Yorkers about health risks after the 9/11 attacks.
Overlooking the fact that the president's nominee, Mike Leavitt, was governor of Utah at the time and had no connection to the EPA's post-attack response, Clinton's criticism of the EPA's actions is groundless; she's using 9/11 as a smokescreen to attack the president's choice to head the EPA.
The EPA announced a week after the attacks that the air near Ground Zero was "safe" to breathe. Except for some rescue workers who were overexposed to fumes and dust from the wreckage, that assurance seems to have been correct.
While no one disputes that some overexposed and unprotected rescue workers in the immediate aftermath of the collapse experienced some health effects, there have been no credible reports that the ambient air quality near Ground Zero a week after the attacks, when the EPA made the statement, caused any significant, widespread or long-term harm to the public.
Moreover, an EPA risk evaluation completed a year after the attacks concluded that, after the first few days, ambient air levels were unlikely to cause short-term or long-term health effects to the general population.
But the EPA's inspector general reported in August that the agency "did not have sufficient data to make such a blanket statement" and that the agency gave New Yorkers misleading assurances about potential health risks from the air pollution generated by the World Trade Center collapse.
The IG says the White House Council on Environmental Quality "influenced the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public, through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
The report dismissed the EPA's year-after risk evaluation: The IG complains that the agency doesn't know how much air pollution people were exposed to, or the health status of the exposed population before the attacks.
But the IG's criticism is absurd because such data are impossible to obtain - they're not even necessary, because there's no indication any health problems were caused by whatever exposures occurred.
Also, the idea that it was inappropriate for the White House to push the EPA to proclaim the air to be safe is wrongheaded.
The EPA chief reports directly to the president. To say that the White House can't influence, much less order, the EPA to take a particular course of action would be to elevate the agency to a separate branch of government, on a par with the president, Congress and Supreme Court.
Moreover, in a time of national emergency, the White House should be directing the EPA. After all, this is an agency that spends most of its time chasing imaginary or infinitesimal health risks from the everyday environment. It's arguably not equipped to operate without supervision in an emergency.
But the report gave Clinton political cover to block Leavitt's nomination. She gets to pose as a protector of New Yorkers and score points with the eco-extremists who are Leavitt's only real foes.
President Bush nominated Leavitt as a political moderate and a consensus builder. "He respects the ability of state and local government to meet [environmental] standards. He rejects the old ways of command and control from above," said the president.
The eco-nuts, in contrast, say Leavitt represents a "hard right turn on the environment."
Finally, city and federal health officials started a project last Friday to track the health histories of 200,000 people exposed to pollution from the WTC. For the same reason that the GAO criticized the EPA's year-after risk evaluation, this project is a waste of time and money.
If Clinton feel the need to "block" something, that project would be a good start.
The article
Now, as I remember it, the Ground Zero workers weren't happy about the heavy, uncomfortable respirators they were supposed to be wearing ... prefering, if any protection at all, the strap-on paper "Painter's Masks" so recently popular in SARS neighborhoods. The Chem Suits didn't go over much bigger, either. There was some concern over this at the time, but you know how those things go. Just an annecdote, here ... a very good freind was there for about a week ... with his well trained rescue dog. The dog handlers (there were many), wore at least the paper masks most of the time, but there was no such protection for the dogs ... something bitched about, but lived with, in the interest of discharging duty and in recognition of the simple fact no dog-resperators were to be had, period. The dogs feet were cut up, despite kevlar booties on some of them, and they were constantly geting gashes and lacerations scrambling around in the shattered, hazard-studded debris field. "In the Pit", there was not only smoke and dust, but the sound and heat of fire from below, for many days. Rescue efforts, as we know, were futile. To keep up the dog's spirits, the handlers would stage "Rescues" here and there throughout the day, letting a dog "Find" a worker who had agreed to be part of "The Game" once in a whiile. I got the impression, from my freind, that the dogs knew it was a scam, but went along with it to keep the handlers from getting depressed. Probably, it went a lot in both ways. Anyway, my buddy remarked particularly about folks "In the Pit" who were op[enly disdainful of the guidelines, and even the minimum requirements, in place for personal safety. He called them "Nuts". A massive infection from a pad cut that refused to heal claimed his dog (a really sweet Lab/Shephard mix, named "Goldie", in March of 02 ... a little before what would have been her eighth birthday, I think). Some dogs died of respiratory problems too. One was shot by a cop somewhere, and another was killed by a car, none of which has anything to do with my point. But then, apart from a wet bandanna or a very strange-and-uncomfortable-to-a-dog bootie, the pups had no protective gear to choose to disregard.
