PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Kimberly Flynn, Founding Member of 9/11 Environmental Action, on Post-9/11 Environmental Health Concerns
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Kimberly Flynn, a founding member of 9/11 Environmental Action, testified about the failure of city officials to protect and inform the public about environmental hazards after 9/11. She criticized the lack of accurate information and proper cleanup efforts, highlighting the city's misleading statements about air safety and inadequate health guidance.
- Flynn emphasized that residents, workers, and families were left to fend for themselves against toxic exposures.
- She pointed out that the city's health department downplayed health effects and provided dangerous advice for cleaning contaminated areas.
- The testimony accused the city administration of prioritizing political considerations over public health needs, including censoring journalists who were reporting on the environmental issues.
Kimberly Flynn
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I'm Kimberly Flynn and a founding member of 9 11 act 9 11 Environmental Action.
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We thank council member Brewer who understands why we as a city need to know in detail how city officials and agencies failed to inform and protect responders and the community after 911.
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Downtown and Downwind resident school parents and local workers were left to struggle on their own to protect themselves and their families from toxic exposures.
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We had no access to accurate environmental information, public health guidance, or medical screenings.
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Instead, our concerns were met with official declarations that the air was safe and the WTC dust inside homes, schools, and workplaces was not harmful.
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These came not just from the EPA, but from the city of New York.
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As residents reported health effects, the city's health department responded that symptoms would disappear when the ground zero fires were out.
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Also, the EPA and the city denied the need for a proper environmental cleanup of the widespread toxic contamination that had permeated indoors.
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Instead, residents and others were instructed by a now infamous city health advisory to clean the toxic dust themselves, quote, with a wet rag or mop, and were told that no precautions needed to be taken by pregnant women or by parents to protect their children.
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Even though children's risks of being harmed by environmental exposures had been well documented by decades of research in children's environmental health.
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Instead of protecting New Yorkers' health, the city administration engaged in an extended campaign to lie, hide information, censor Juan Gonzales, Gonzales, then at the New York Daily News, and others who were uncovering the truth, and long delay, the establishment of a proper health and safety regime to protect responders.
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Political considerations overrode public health needs at every point.
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