Pelosi To Meet Spitzer at Ground Zero
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will meet with Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer today and tour the World Trade Center site on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The trip coincides with a new proposal, the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, a bill to be introduced tomorrow in Congress that would provide comprehensive medical coverage and financial compensation to those who became ill after being exposed to dust at ground zero. As many as 400,000 people, including rescue workers and volunteers, firefighters, downtown residents, office workers, and students are estimated to have been exposed to toxic dust emitted from the collapsing World Trade Center, according to a recent study conducted by the city.
For six years, health issues stemming from the attacks have taken a backseat to concerns about economic development at ground zero, as a push to rebuild Lower Manhattan largely eclipsed anxieties about air quality in the aftermath of the attacks. Local elected officials, including Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, and Vito Fossella, as well as Senators Clinton and Schumer, have criticized the federal response as insufficient. To date, several bills that sought to address the health issues have been introduced in Washington but have failed to win passage into law.
Earlier this month, the representatives announced they would join forces and unite their efforts to seek additional federal funding to address the problem. There are outstanding questions as to how the compensation would be distributed, how much it could cost, and who would pay for it.
While Ms. Pelosi has not officially announced her support for the act, at least one New York lawmaker said she has indicated she will support the legislation.
“We have a commitment from Nancy Pelosi to sign this legislation,” Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat representing Queens and Brooklyn who is a supporter of the bill, said. “There is more forward momentum on this effort than it has had in six years.”
The issue of health effects stemming from the terrorist attacks is expected to take center stage in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee will convene a hearing to evaluate whether the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration protected workers from safety and health hazards at ground zero. The committee will also examine the role of New York City in protecting rescue workers following the attacks.
“Many thousands of the men and women who responded to 9/11 are still having health problems,” the chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Philip Landrigan, who plans to testify, said.
With such concerns coming to a head, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday announced the launch of a new World Trade Center health Web site. The site will contain the latest scientific research on health concerns related to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and will provide information on where to get free medical treatment and medication. The site fulfills one of 15 recommendations for addressing health conditions related to the attacks that the mayor adopted in February.
“On Tuesday, New Yorkers, and all Americans, will mark the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “We want people to know more about the potential health effects of 9/11 so that they can reach out for assessment and services.”
In recent weeks, research has linked exposure to dust at ground zero to higher rates of asthma among rescue workers, who were newly diagnosed with asthma at a rate 12 times that of the general population.
Most recently, an article published in the September 7 issue of Discover magazine outlined what it portrayed as a lack of an appropriate governmental response to health concerns following the attacks.
Titled “The 9/11 Cover-Up,” the article criticized public assurances about air quality and safety from Mayor Giuliani and the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christine Todd Whitman.
It also conveyed health concerns expressed by students, rescue workers, downtown residents, and professionals who were exposed to airborne toxins immediately after the attacks and in the months following the collapse of the World Trade Center.
“I was down there watching people working without respirators,” an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, David Newman, was quoted as saying. “Others took off their respirators to eat. It was a surreal, ridiculous, unacceptable situation.”
Ms. Pelosi’s presence today is expected to provide a significant boost to backers of the new health care bill, including Reps. Maloney and Nadler, both Democrats, and Rep. Fossella, a Republican. A spokesman for the speaker, Nadeam Elshami, would not confirm yesterday that she had committed specifically to the legislation. “This is an issue the Congress is examining,” he said.
Today, Ms. Pelosi will meet at City Hall with Mayor Bloomberg, who has a large federal agenda that ranges from gun control to the expansion of the earned-income tax credit. The speaker is also expected to tout the recent passage of legislation to enact the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Her support could further the health legislation whose previous incarnations were not approved by Congress.
“If the Speaker of the House signals that legislation has her support and she will try to impress upon the Democratic party members to support it, it’s very significant,” Mr. Fossella said.
“Up until now, it’s been a piecemeal approach,” he said. “The city of New York shouldn’t shoulder the responsibilities exclusively, the state of New York shouldn’t shoulder the funding needs exclusively. It should be, I believe, a federal response.”