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White House ordered 9/11 EPA liesAssociated PressAug. 9, 2003 WASHINGTON — An investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general into official statements about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center has found that White House officials instructed the agency to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the attack. The draft of the inspector general's report also says the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to make a "blanket statement" when it announced seven days after the attack that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe. "Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street, also played a role in EPA's air quality statements," the report said. The report, which has not yet been made public, is an evaluation of the agency's overall response to the attack on the World Trade Center. One chapter focuses on the role of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, in helping to shape the agency's communication after the attack. "As a result of the White House CEQ's influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information about the potential health effects from WTC debris were not included in the EPA's issued press releases," said the report, made available by people who said it was too harsh. "In addition, based on CEQ's influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and cautionary information was deleted from EPA's draft version of that press release." The inspector general is an investigator within the agency who is intended to be impartial and who audits and evaluates its programs, sometimes resulting in political tensions. Officials from the agency and from the White House criticized the report yesterday. The report bases its conclusions on changes made in two news releases and interviews with agency officials about information that was withheld. So far, researchers have found no significant harm to those who breathed the air around ground zero, which contained increased levels of benzene, lead, mercury, PCBs, asbestos and fiberglass, though one preliminary study published this week found a slight but significant increase in the percentage of small infants born to pregnant women who were at or near the site around the time of the attack. The EPA has been criticized before for the statements it made about air quality after the 2001 attack. At a Senate subcommittee hearing on post-Sept. 11 air quality in February, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., contended that the agency had misled the public by declaring that the air around the trade center was safe. The report notes that the agency's official position was that the levels of asbestos in outdoor air were safe for healthy adults, but that it lacked evidence about the potential health effects of indoor air and the risks of other contaminants or the effects on more vulnerable New Yorkers, including children and the elderly. The report notes that the agency's news releases did not mention these caveats and that "for the general public, EPA's overriding message was that there was no significant threat to human health." The report says an associate administrator considered adding to a news release information on the risks of exposure to fine dust particles for the more vulnerable segments of the population. But an official from the Council on Environmental Quality "discouraged her from doing so," the report says, arguing that information about health effects should not be in EPA news releases. The report also notes that an official from the White House council asked that a statement encouraging those who lived around ground zero to hire professional cleaners was deleted from a release. The report compares two news releases with their draft versions and concludes, "Every change that was suggested by the CEQ contact was made." Associated Press
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