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Air Today . . . Gone Tomorrow Article EPA Hit With Ground Zero
Lawsuit
By The Associated Press, March 11,
2004
Residents and workers in lower Manhattan
and Brooklyn sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, saying the agency
improperly let thousands of people return to their homes and businesses after the World
Trade Center collapsed.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan accused the agency of making
misleading statements about air quality after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, said the EPA left people "unnecessarily
exposed to potentially hazardous levels of asbestos and possibly other carcinogens and
toxic substances."
It accused the agency and its leaders, including former EPA Administrator Christie
Whitman, of "a shockingly deliberate indifference to human health."
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and reimbursement for cleanup and asks the court to
order a fund be set up to finance medical monitoring for conditions resulting from
exposure to trade center dust.
The agency, in a statement, said it had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment
directly on it, but defended its staff's "remarkable feats" after the attacks -
including the monitoring and sampling of air, dust, and river and drinking water.
The EPA also said it provided thousands of respirators for response workers, conducted
studies of indoor cleaning methods, and cleaned and tested thousands of homes in lower
Manhattan.
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