Customer Reviews

Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Attack

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I live 5 blocks north of Ground Zero and have attended hearings and forums and read hundreds of articles, studies memos and reports about the post 9/11 environmental issues in Lower Manhattan. But my jaw dropped when I read Juan Gonzalez' book - here are the missing pieces, the things I'd heard but was never able to find in print - and lots of insider information that only someone as dedicated to this story as he was could have. It is a clear, readable summary of the case against the EPA, OSHA, NYC DEP - and, de facto, an indictment of all those newspapers whose reportage consistently minimized the issue. Not since the Vietnam War has there been so much media "disinformation."

If you live or work in lower Manhattan and/or have any interest in the true story of how our government knowingly and intentionally jepordized the lives and health of the rescue workers, residents and workers downtown after 9/11 while ensuring that their own health was well protected, this book is a "must read."

Juan Gonzalez is to be commended for his courage in bucking his editors to continue to cover this story.

Juan Gonzalez was the first journalist to grasp the impact of the environmental disaster of 9/11. His article on October 26, 2001 said what some of us already sensed: Contrary to the 'good news' being sold like sugarcoated poison by government officials who wanted Wall Street back up and running, the air was dense with astronomical levels of asbestos, lead, dioxin, mercury and hundreds of unpronouncable contaminants including some that had never previously existed.

Fallout is in this tradition of groundbreaking journalism.

Unfortunately Gonzalez is so ahead of the pack that when I showed his article to my son and exhusband, whom I was trying to convince that our son should not remain at Stuyvesant High School, four blocks north of the World Trade Center, they dismissed it as a red herring.

Fallout is a compelling account of this environmental disaster which may ultimately claim more lives than the attacks themselves.

Jenna Orkin
World Trade Center Environmental Organization

This is an extremely disturbing book. Perhaps because along with the well-documented facts concerning the unprecedented toxic environmental fallout from 9/11, it is the shocking realization that it's not just the NYC and federal goverment cover-up of this story -- it is the citizens themselves collectively turning away from the horrible reality of this disaster.

The national media has not pursued the obvious leads -- the common sense questions -- but Mr. Gonzales has. And the logical conclusion of this story, in the not-too-distant future, is a public health nightmare that will have the media self-righteously condeming Giuliani and Whitman in hindsight as bearing responsibility for perhaps thousands more deaths.

The story from 9/11 that the media immediately created was of the heroes and victims. We remember them, and try to forget the horror of the collapsing towers. But if we are a truely a courageous nation, we will look clearly and not turn away from the terrible reality that ground zero represents. That is what I think this book is really about -- there are facts and consequences of 9/11 that have not yet been dealt with. And closing our eyes and wishing them away simply won't work.

Finally someone has the guts to print the truth about the toxic air at Ground Zero. For those of us who were there and who are experiencing the medical consequences of having been exposed to these toxic chemicals, Gonzalez's book explains in understandable language why we are sick and what we are likely to experience in the future. Americans need to know the truth, especially the thousands of men and women from around the country who volunteered their time at Ground Zero and are likely to suffer the medical consequences of having done so, either now or in the future. Fallout is a must read for all Americans.

Americans are being deceived. In this stunning piece of investigative reporting which should be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, Juan Gonzalez reveals the horrible truths about the environmental impacts of the 9-11 disaster. Asbestos abounded. The many heroes who helped to clean and console may face excruciating deaths thanks to suppressed and inaccurate information.

Our sacred institutions are rotten. Every American citizen should read this brief but incendiary work which speaks truth to power unflinchingly. If we do not quickly institute major changes which make our leaders and representatives truly responsible for telling the truth to the American public, however unpleasant, we may be facing the end of American democracy as we have known it and believed in it.

Where are the Thomas Paines and Thomas Jeffersons of the twenty-first century? We desperately need your voices and leadership!