Anthony DePalma on 9/11 Settlement & His Book "City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance and 9/11"

Anthony DePalma, author of City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance and 9/11:

"Amy Goodman, the long-time host of Democracy Now, invited me on her show to discuss the 21 MC 100 litigation settlement. The segment ran for about 12 minutes and we were able to touch on many important issues that I’ve raised in “City of Dust.” She wanted to know more about the roles that Christie Whitman and Rudy Giuliani played in the early stages of the disaster, and she criticized the early coverage of the ground zero hazards by The New York Times. That was before I was covering the environmental beat, and she had a point. If The Times and other media outlets had forced Whitman to be more specific about her statement that the “air was safe to breathe,” asking her where exactly it was safe, for whom it was safe and when, if they had forced her to be as specific about the ground zero hazards as the EPA usually is about the air quality warnings it puts out on ozone alert days, if they had asked her about the immediate dangers of the high silica content of the dust, which made breathing it like taking in airborne Drano, the cleanup would have unfolded in a far different way."

Democracy Now, November 22, 2010.