Is George Bush addicted to lying? It’s bad enough that he’s gutting environmental regulations to help out the corporations who are pulling his strings, but he added insult to injury (or should that be “injury to injury”) by making the EPA lie about the air quality :

The burning ruins of the World Trade Center spewed toxic gases ?like a chemical factory? for at least six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despite government assurances the air was safe, according to a study released on Wednesday. The study follows the release of a government report that the White House directed the Environmental Protection Agency to give New Yorkers misleading assurances about the health risk.

The study found that the gases of toxic metals, acids and organics were capable of penetrating deeply into the lungs of workers at Ground Zero.

Lead study author Thomas Cahill, a professor of physics and engineering at the University of California at Davis, said conditions would have been ?brutal? for workers without respirators and slightly less so for those working or living in adjacent buildings.
. . .
Specifically, the study said samples from Ground Zero found four types of particles listed by the EPA as likely to harm human health:

Fine metals that can damage lungs.

Sulfuric acid that attacks lung cells.

Fine undissolvable particles of glass that can travel through the lungs to the bloodstream and heart.

High-temperature carcinogenic organic matter.

?For each of these four classes of pollutant,? Cahill said, ?we recorded the highest levels we have ever seen in over 7,000 measurements we have made of very fine air pollution throughout the world.?
. . .
Last month, an internal report by EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley said the White House pressured the agency to make premature statements that the air was safe to breathe.

The EPA issued an air quality statement on Sept. 18, 2001, even though it ?did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement,? the report said.

The White House ?convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones? by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the days after Sept. 11, the report said. Among the information withheld was the potential health hazards of breathing asbestos, lead, concrete and pulverized glass, the report said.

It’s funny to think that one of the main reasons Bush got the GOP nomination in 2000 was by attacking McCain for being soft on cancer research and the environment, but ironically Bush would make headlines a few years later by ignoring environmental concerns so much that it’s likely to cause hundreds of cases of cancer.