Ground Zero Respirators

Newly available documents show an NYC Health official repeatedly asked the federal government to make workers at Ground Zero follow the rules and wear respirators during recovery operations in 2001 and 2002. The request was made at an October 7th, 2001 meeting and called on OSHA to enforce the rules because the contractors "fear" OSHA's ability to issue financial penalties and thus would comply with the rules. OSHA officials decided to play an advisory role because enforcement would have been too time consuming to be effective. At times fewer than 30% of Ground Zero workers were wearing proper respirators.

Draw your own conclusions.

The above was based on a small item in today's NY Times.

None of this applies to the firefighter, police and ems volunteers who worked on the pile and who were in the direct employ of the city.
Nor does it speak to the clouded issue of which, if any, of the owners of the site were in charge of what was happening there.