EPA Whistleblower Alleges More Fraud Across the Board: Another Cautionary Tale as Peak Oil Approaches

Jenna Orkin*

The following article is targetted to the community whose lives and health were directly affected by 9/11. The information on Peak Oil will not be news to readers of this blog. But if there is any saving grace to be found in the environmental disaster of 9/11, it is in its use as a cautionary tale for the larger looming disaster of Peak Oil. As more Ground Zero workers die, as the catastrophic health consequences to Lower Manhattan residents, students et al of the environmental disaster of 9/11 become more widely known and as the public recognizes the pervasiveness of the lies perpetrated on them by the government and their amanuenses, the mainstream media, perhaps people will finally wake up to the need to do their own research and take charge of their own destinies.

9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are eager accomplices) and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and for which all must prepare.
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May 6 Environmental scientist Dr. Cate Jenkins of the EPA issued a complaint today alleging fraud by the United States Geological Survey, OSHA, EPA and New York City, among others, in reporting corrosive Ph levels following the attacks of 9/11. Sent to Hillary Clinton, Chair of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health, and later to the FBI for investigation, the complaint also alleges that EPA has engaged in fraud regarding Ph levels dating back to 1980.

Continuing a career of whistleblowing that began when she exposed Monsanto's coverup of the toxic effects of Agent Orange, Jenkins points out that WTC dust was so alkaline (ie caustic), it would have caused irreversible tissue damage to the lungs in the form of chemical burns. "Corrosivity would have acted directly to cause respiratory chemical burns," the complaint says, "and also would have increased the toxic properties of other pollutants from the WTC by facilitating their entry into the body through the respiratory system." Alkalinity, therefore, may be a major cause of the severe and in some cases lethal respiratory effects manifesting themselves in thousands of Ground Zero workers and unknown numbers of residents, office workers and students exposed to the air downtown after the EPA declared it 'safe to breathe.'

The Jenkins complaint accuses USGS of falsifying its own Ph data; the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of using dangerously outdated medical references; and EPA of "actually changing the numbers" from one publication to the next. Several samples were given an alkalinity reading of 11 by EPA, under the bar for triggering a federal response whereas Jenkins alleges they were above it. The change is also significant because the difference between 11 and 12 represents not a difference of 9% but of one order of magnitude; a sample rated 12 is ten times as corrosive as one rated 11.

Jenkins also accuses EPA of falsifying the Ph level known to cause chemical burns in its superfund regulations back in 1980. In addition it accuses scientists at Rutgers University of performing tests in a way designed to minimize alkalinity, for instance by focussing on dust that had been dissolved. However, "some materials, like mostly insoluble WTC dust, have a high 'alkaline reserve capacity,' the ability to release caustic levels of hydroxyl ions over extended periods of time as they slowly dissolve."

The complaint underscores the subtle ways in which the government and those dependent on its grant money deceive and endanger the public. The devil is in the details, making it necessary for laymen who might wish to leave their fate in the hands of experts and authority figures to educate themselves instead.This need has long been known to victims of AIDS and other diseases which traditionally have stumped doctors. 9/11 spread that need to the population at large, even those who were not obviously affected. And, however misguided and often lunatic many of their efforts, that public is stumbling towards the truth first exposed by Mike Ruppert ofhttp://www.fromthewilderness.com/ that the Bush administration not only profited from the attacks which provided them with the justification for an assault on civil liberties as well as on Iraq and Afghanistan, it orchestrated them.

But as Fletcher Prouty, the character played by Donald Sutherland, says in JFK, the real question now is not "who?" or "how?" but "why?" The motive for 9/11 was Peak Oil. It is this looming disaster (which does not mean the end of oil resources but the decline from peak production which, in a world of rising demand, triggers skyrocketing prices) that will have a catastrophic effect worldwide.

The government and their lackeys, the press, would have the public believe that the problem is soluble with ethanol, hybrids and sundry other alternative energy sources (which are wonderful on a small scale) and technofixes. Thus the public believes that a vague but expert 'they' will come up with something as they always have, particularly when 'they' have the sort of financial incentive that necessity brings.

And a tree will grow to the moon if you just give it enough money.

But again, the devil is in the details. Ethanol takes almost as much energy to produce as it ultimately provides. And using corn for cars means having less for people. Hybrid cars use more energy to make than they end up saving. All the supposed 'solutions' to the energy crisis come with serious caveats.

There is no magic bullet that will allow business to continue as usual. What is needed is an overhaul of the way money works, a system which currently requires infinite growth in a world whose resources are painfully finite. A steady-state economy that does not depend on interest or globalization but on locally grown food is the only way out.

The general public now realizes that it was disastrously naive to trust the government and the mainstream press after 9/11. They realize it was naive to trust them in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Perhaps this history has been repeated often and tragically enough that it does not need to play out again in the peak oil disaster but instead will be redeemed.

* www.wtceo.org
www.fromthewilderness.com
plaintiff in Benzman vs. EPA

Other Resources
www.911review.com
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/