(CBS/AP)
Ex-EPA chief Christie Whitman was bombarded by boos and a host of accusations Monday at a hearing into 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 grew heated at times. Some members of the audience shouted in anger, only to be gaveled down by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chaired the hearing.
Nadler accused Whitman of deliberately misleading people in New York about the health risks, with devastating results, CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports.
“The administration has continued to make false, misleading and inaccurate statements, and refused to take remedial actions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence,” said Nadler, whose district includes the World Trade Center site.
For three hours Whitman faced charges from Nadler and others that the Environmental Protection Agency’s public statements after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gave people a false sense of safety.
Whitman maintained the government warned those working on the toxic debris pile to use respirators, while elsewhere in lower Manhattan the air was safe to 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,” 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 more than five times as high as in the years before the attacks. Continue reading →