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Preventing Another 9/11 First Responders Tragedy
Irresponsible EPA Corrosive Dust Standards Uncorrected a Decade after WTC
WASHINGTON
On September 11, 2001, "First Responders" to the World Trade Center conflagration and nearby residents waded into dust so corrosive that it resulted in chemical burns to their respiratory system. These New York City police and firefighters were needlessly sacrificed due to woefully lax U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards which remain in effect but need correction, according to a rulemaking petition filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
After the horrific World Trade Center (WTC) implosion, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman assured a worried nation and terrified residents that the airborne hazardous substances at the site were "below background levels" and no worse than a "typical smoggy day." She could not have been more wrong.
WTC First Responders were subjected to dust so caustic as to cause respiratory disabilities and deaths. Yet, if a similar scenario occurred today, the same results would recur. That is because EPA misapplied the international corrosivity standard and then systematically failed to test and communicate the caustic properties of WTC dust. As a result, the EPA standard is ten times more lax than the presumed safe levels for alkaline corrosives set by the United Nations (UN).
Despite persistent efforts by one of its senior chemists, EPA has not reconsidered its mistake. Dr. Cate Jenkins, a determined 31-year agency employee, charges that the refusal to tighten the standard is fueled by both a fear of liability and industry pressure because the same health dangers, though on a smaller scale, attend workers and spectators at most building demolitions and people living around cement plants.
"This petition will right a monstrous wrong left uncorrected by official gross negligence," stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein, who co-filed the petition today with Dr. Jenkins. "It is past time for EPA to ensure that the heroic sacrifice of the WTC First Responders is never repeated."
The petition demands that EPA dramatically tighten its corrosivity standard so that responders would be alerted to use personal protection equipment to prevent lung respiratory damage. The petition would bring the U.S. into line with standards in force in the European Union and Canada, and adopted by the UN.
Robert Dellinger, one of the responsible EPA officials, explained the agency position in 2007:
"It seems that agency made a policy call to exempt these wastes by raising the pH level of the corrosivity characteristic. This was done in public manner, no law suit was filed, no petitions have been received asking us to change pH to 11.5."
"It is not the public's responsibility to detect falsifications by EPA, nor should they have to submit petitions or bring law suits to force EPA to perform its duty to act honestly in protecting the public," Dr. Jenkins. "Now that we have petitioned EPA to correct the standard, the agency has lost even this flimsy excuse for inaction."
After raising this issue to the EPA Inspector General, then Congress, Dr. Jenkins was isolated, harassed and ultimately removed from her position this year by EPA based upon a claim of threatening behavior. Dr. Jenkins is soft-spoken, petite, and suffered from polio as a child. The charge that she intimidated her 6-foot male supervisor has been upheld at a preliminary level, however.
"Unfortunately, senior EPA managers responsible for failure to protect the First Responders are the ones behind Dr. Jenkins' removal," added Dinerstein, one of the PEER attorneys representing Dr. Jenkins in legal challenges to restore her to her position at EPA. "The only thing Dr. Jenkins is guilty of is not suffering fools gladly."
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Read the petition
View EPA testimony on not reviewing its corrosivity standard
Look at EPA ouster of Dr. Jenkins
PEER protects public employees who protect our environment. We are a service organization for environmental and public health professionals, land managers, scientists, enforcement officers, and other civil servants dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values. We work with current and former federal, state, local, and tribal employees.
LATEST NEWS
100+ Economists, Scholars Demand End to Sanctions on Venezuela After Catastrophic Earthquakes
The experts laid out various policies they argued are "required to prevent avoidable deaths, stabilize a sanctioned economy, and allow Venezuelans to rebuild with dignity."
Jul 07, 2026
With at least 3,535 people dead, 16,740 injured, and tens of thousands still missing after a pair of major earthquakes hit Venezuela last month, over 100 economists and scholars on Tuesday jointly called for "immediate action to unfetter Venezuela's humanitarian response and reconstruction from ongoing economic and financial sanctions, asset freezes, and onerous debt burdens."
Such demands began to emerge shortly after the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes, both centered in Yaracuy, on June 24. The new letter, shared with Common Dreams by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, follows a similar message sent to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week by CEPR, Just Foreign Policy, Latin America Working Group, Venezuelan American Community Action, Peace Action, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a dozen other organizations.
The academics and economists, including several experts at CEPR as well as James Galbraith, Jayati Ghosh, Jason Hickel, Ann Pettifor, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Wade, and Isabella Weber, highlighted that "Venezuela enters this disaster after years of unilateral coercive measures, financial sanctions, and export controls that have damaged its economy and infrastructure."
That includes decades of US sanctions. On top of those economic moves, Trump earlier this year sent troops into Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro, then took control of the South American country's nationalized oil industry. The New York Times reported earlier this week that the Trump administration has seized at least $8 billion worth of Venezuela's oil wealth this year.
In a Tuesday piece for Just Security, a pair of experts who signed the new letter—George Lopez, professor emeritus of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Venezuelan economist and CEPR senior Research Fellow Francisco Rodríguez—noted that post-earthquakes, "the United States pledged $300 million to relief agencies, mobilized civilian and military teams to Venezuela that are trained on disaster relief, and issued a limited sanctions waiver for earthquake relief activities.
"But these measures are far from enough," they stressed, explaining that "the United Nations estimates the losses from the quakes stand at $37 billion," or 32% of Venezuela's gross domestic product. They suggested that "the United States should spearhead a major reconstruction effort and lift all remaining sanctions on the Venezuelan economy."
The US was eager to take control in Venezuela earlier this year.Now that the country is facing devastating loss after twin earthquakes, the US should spearhead a major reconstruction effort and lift all remaining sanctions.From Francisco Rodríguez and George A. Lopez:
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— Just Security (@justsecurity.org) July 7, 2026 at 9:06 AM
The broader group argued that "whatever one's position on Venezuela's internal politics, the current set of coercive economic measures directed at the country is an indiscriminate instrument. Sanctions on the central bank, public banking, oil industry, and debt transactions do not land surgically on officials; they incapacitate payment systems, raise import costs, block correspondent banking, freeze reserves, deter suppliers, and produce scarcity across an entire society. This is precisely the moment to remove any economic and financial obstacles to relief and reconstruction."
They called on the Trump administration specifically to lift all economic sanctions, "including any that may impact the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), government institutions, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), public financial institutions, the oil and mining sectors, banking, transportation, shipping, telecommunications, travel, and all related activities," and to immediately issue "the Section 25B certification that is required to enable the BCV to receive, control, use, and transact through its accounts and assets at the Federal Reserve and US banks."
The experts also took aim at the United Kingdom and the Portuguese, calling on the governments to respectively work with "the Bank of England to ensure the immediate unfreezing of the BCV's gold reserves, worth about $5 billion and representing a third of the central bank's reported assets," as well as with Novo Banco, "to return $1.2 billion belonging to Venezuela's development bank, BANDES, and PDVSA affiliates, as set out in a 2023 court decision."
They further pressured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to "ensure that Venezuela has full access to its approximately $5 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs) for emergency stabilization and imports," and to approve a $4 billion rapid financing instrument (RFI) disbursement immediately, using its emergency and natural disaster rationale, with no conditions."
Beyond those specific recommendations, the economists and scholars urged "a coordinated debt jubilee for Venezuela," writing that "all official bilateral creditors, multilateral creditors to the extent legally possible, and public agencies holding claims should cancel or suspend debt service, interest, penalties, and arrears, and pursue a comprehensive debt reduction consistent with a rights-based recovery and climate-resilient reconstruction."
"A new fund should be established—perhaps financed by the IMF's Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST)—to repurchase distressed debt from the secondary market, with legal protections against holdout litigation and asset seizures," they proposed. "Money owed to creditors cannot at the same time rebuild hospitals, schools, housing, water systems, and the grid. A debt crisis in these conditions is a developmental and humanitarian crisis."
"Venezuela's people must not be made to pay twice: first through disaster, and then through sanctions, frozen reserves, and unsustainable debt servicing," they concluded. "We urge governments, international financial institutions, and creditors to act now, on the principle that lives, public health, and economic recovery take precedence over coercion and collection. Emergency liquidity, full sanctions relief, SDR access, RFI financing, and debt cancellation are not acts of charity. They are the minimum policy response required to prevent avoidable deaths, stabilize a sanctioned economy, and allow Venezuelans to rebuild with dignity."
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Trump at NATO Summit: Greenland 'Should Be Controlled by the United States, Not by Denmark'
"This will not happen," Denmark's prime minister said for the umpteenth time.
Jul 07, 2026
President Donald Trump on Tuesday renewed his calls for US control of Greenland—an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark—in remarks delivered at the Atlantic alliance's summit in Türkiye.
Greenland "doesn't help Denmark," Trump told reporters in Ankara. "Denmark doesn't really spend money to help Greenland. But it's an important part for the United States."
Trump falsely claimed that the Arctic island "is surrounded by China ships and Russian ships" and "should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark."
"With all the money we spend to help [Europe] with Russia, we don't have to spend any money, we can remove all of our soldiers out of Europe," he said.
"Because as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago... and they better be careful with immigration and energy; if they're not careful with those two things, you're not gonna have a Europe anymore," Trump added.
Hours later, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the Ankara summit that she expected allies to respect her country's sovereignty and understand that Greenland is not for sale.
"I have heard what the American president has said," Frederiksen told Danish media. "It is a well-known position of the United States that it wishes to own and acquire Greenland. And I hope that it will continue to be, as always, a well-known position of the kabingdom of Denmark that this will not happen."
Trump has publicly floated acquiring Greenland since his first term, when he even reportedly mulled swapping the island for the hurricane-ravaged US territory of Puerto Rico. The president renewed talk of gaining control of Greenland "whether they like it or not" after returning to the White House last year, while threatening allies who opposed his plans with additional punitive tariffs amid his roller-coaster global trade war.
Greenlanders, Danes, NATO allies, and much of the world were alarmed by Trump's threats to take Greenland by any means necessary—including armed invasion—which came amid a surge in "Donroe Doctrine" militarism.
Trump ordered dubious airstrikes on boats his administration claimed without evidence were transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the brief invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro on what critics called trumped-up narcoterrorism charges. The self-proclaimed "peace president" also threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, and make Canada the "51st state."
Leaders of the European Union and NATO nations warned that any US attack on Greenland would effectively mean the end of the Atlantic alliance.
Only a handful of Greenland's 57,000 inhabitants want to join the United States. More than 8 in 10 favor independence amid often strained relations with Denmark and the legacy of a colonial history rife with abuses. Greenlanders enjoy a Nordic-style social welfare system that features universal healthcare; free higher education; and income, family, and employment benefits and protections that Americans lack.
In the United States, only 17% of those surveyed in a January Reuters/Ipsos poll said they favored acquiring Greenland by any means, and just 4% said it would be a "good idea" for Trump to seize the island by force.
Trump also said Tuesday that he "was very disappointed with NATO."
"We weren’t treated well because we did something in Iran," he said, referring to the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on the Mideast nation. "We don’t need anybody’s help, but before I asked they said they wouldn’t be there."
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US Strike on Iranian School Came After Commanders 'Bypassed Warnings' About Outdated Target Info
Sources told CNN that warnings were ignored due to "expediency."
Jul 07, 2026
US military commanders "bypassed warnings" indicating that their database of strike targets inside Iran was badly out of date shortly before launching a deadly attack on an Iranian primary school in the city of Minab, according to a Tuesday report from CNN.
Three sources told CNN that senior military officials received messages informing them that the intelligence behind the target list had been gathered years ago and "needed to be re-vetted."
Regardless, the proposed Iranian targets were added to a strike list shortly before the US launched an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, killing more than 150 schoolchildren along with over a dozen teachers.
Two of CNN's sources said senior commanders ignored the warnings out of "expediency," as they did not want to significantly delay providing target lists during the outset of the war, which Trump illegally launched in February without any authorization from the US Congress.
For months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly dodged questions about the strike on the school, insisting that he didn't want to comment on an ongoing Pentagon investigation.
However, one of CNN's sources said that US military officials "knew within days how the mistake happened," as the school was targeted based on "obviously old info."
CNN noted that old satellite images showed the school once belonged to the same compound as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. However, as recently as 2016, images showed "that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built."
Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Haque, noting that intelligence on many of the targets was more than a decade old, called the US decision to proceed with attacks "inexcusable."
The US Department of Defense has still not released its investigation into the bombing, drawing criticism from Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer, who reacted to the CNN report by describing the US military as being "quick to bomb, slow to investigate."
The slow pace of the investigation has also drawn criticism from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.
During a May congressional hearing, Smith grilled Adm. Brad Cooper about why the US hasn't taken responsibility for the school strike despite clear evidence that it was at fault.
"In the past, when we’ve had these type of mistakes, they’ve been quickly acknowledged," Smith said, "even if a further investigation is necessary to figure out prevention methods."
Smith also criticized Hegseth for showing a "callous disregard for any sort of rules of engagement or protecting of civilian life" during his tenure as defense secretary.
Last month, President Donald Trump brushed off responsibility for the strike on the school, stating that "mistakes are made" and "war is nasty."
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