9/11 Whistleblower Who Exposed First Responder Risks Faces Another Blow From the Environmental Protection Agency

Another tragic story of an unprotected whistleblower.  

Dr. Cate Jenkins, a senior chemist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), publicly charged that due to falsified EPA standards, First Responders on 9/11 waded into dust so corrosive that it caused chemical burns deep within their respiratory systems. After raising the issue to the EPA Inspector General, Congress and the FBI, Dr. Jenkins was isolated, harassed and ultimately removed from her position in 2010 by the EPA, based upon an un-witnessed and contested claim that the soft-spoken, petite childhood polio survivor threatened her 6-foot male supervisor.

The EPA has not corrected the mistakes it made on 9/11. In 2011, PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) on Dr. Jenkins’ behalf filed a formal rule-making petition demanding that EPA dramatically tighten its corrosivity standard so that responders would be alerted to use personal protection equipment to prevent lung and respiratory tract damage. The petition would bring the U.S. into line with standards in force in the European Union, Canada and adopted by the United Nations since at least 1970. The EPA has yet to respond.

The film, "Dust to Dust" (no longer available on You Tube due to copyright infringement) describes the shoddy monitoring of the EPA in the days following the attack. EPA officials time and again declared that the site of the area of the wreckage was “not a health hazard”. The agency had only taken 10 air samples in the first few days and certain toxins were not tested. It was later established, however, that the ruins contained over 2,500 contaminants, including:

- Over 400 tons of asbestos
- 90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene
- Mercury from over half a million fluorescent lights
- 200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers
- Up to 2 million pounds of PAH from diesel-fueled fires
- 130,000 gallons of transformer oil containing PCBs
- Crystalline silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass
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