Cate Jenkins is a chemist at the Environmental Protection Agency, best known for whistleblowing on possible health effects arising from the September 11 attacks.
Jenkins accused Monsanto of falsifying a study on Agent Orange's carcinogenity and was wrongly transferred out of her job in the 1990s. [1]
Monsanto has in fact submitted false information to EPA which directly resulted in weakened regulations under RCRA and FIFRA...
— Cate Jenkins, 1990 memorandum, The Ecologist
She raised the issue of Dioxin to the public. [3] She was commended by veterans organizations for her work, as her proof that dioxin was carcinogenic allowed those who had gotten injuries from the spraying of Agent Orange to get compensation. [4]
Jenkins was the first EPA official to warn of the danger of the dust at Ground Zero; [5] asbestos, lead, cement particles, and glass fibers were found in the dust. [6]
She claimed that the EPA deliberately downplayed the dangers of rubble like at 9/11 and had been doing so since the 1980s. [5] She said that the EPA "knowingly falsified the alkaline pH level that is considered safe for human exposure" in setting its corrosivity standard. [7] Caustic dust causes lung damage and cancer. [8]
Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA, claimed there was no health hazard from 9/11. On September 18, 2011, Whitman said, "...Their air is safe to breathe...The concentrations are such that they don't pose a health hazard...We're going to make sure everybody is safe." [9]
No protective gear, like respirators, was worn by responders. More than two-thirds have permanent lung damage. [5] [8]
Jenkins claimed she attempted to raise concerns with EPA officials, but was ignored, and retaliated against for doing so. [7]
In 2006, Jenkins sent a letter to Congress claiming that test reports from the EPA intentionally distorted the alkalinity and causticness of the dust at Ground Zero. [10] Later that same year, representatives attempted to see if charges could be brought against Whitman; they could not. [8]
In 2010, Jenkins was fired, purportedly for physically threatening her supervisor. [11] Jenkins is petite and a survivor of childhood polio; her supervisor was male and over six feet tall. [5]
The Merit Systems Protection Board found that Jenkins was denied her right to due process on May 4, 2012; [5] it ordered her reinstated to her position with back pay and interest. [12] Instead of reinstating her, the EPA kept Jenkins on paid administrative leave until refiling charges against her on August 27, 2013. [13]
The MSPB ruled that the EPA could not refile charges if Jenkins established they were retaliation. [13]
“These charges against Dr. Jenkins never made any sense but what makes even less sense is the EPA decision to re-bring them even before a decision has been made on her still-pending retaliation claims and in direct contradiction to the language of the MSB order,” said Paula Dinerstein, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Senior Counsel and one of Jenkins's lawyers. [13]
On September 6, 2013, Dinerstein demanded the EPA withdraw its charges or face a new legal action. On September 25, the EPA Deputy Counsel stated they were withdrawn "effective immediately".
In 2015, Department of Labor judge Linda Chapman ruled that the EPA illegally retaliated against Jenkins and sought to conceal exonerating evidence. She found that the EPA had "failed to produce literally thousands of documents" and "deliberately and illegally destroyed an unknown number of documents which should have been under a litigation hold." [14]
In September 2011, Jenkins and PEER filed a rulemaking petition to get the EPA's corrositivity standard changed; the EPA's regulation is 10 times less stringent than those set by the UN and EU. [15] [7]
An episode of 9/11 Whistleblowers focused on her aired August 7, 2019. [16]
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Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976 and internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.
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The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.
Solutia Inc. was an American manufacturer of materials and specialty chemicals including polyvinyl butyral (PVB), ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) interlayers for laminated glass, aftermarket window films, protective barrier and conductive films, and rubber processing chemicals. The company was formed on September 1, 1997, as a divestiture of the Monsanto Company chemical business. In July 2012, the company was acquired by Eastman Chemical Company.
A waste collector, also known as a garbageman, garbage collector, trashman, binman or dustman, is a person employed by a public or private enterprise to collect and dispose of municipal solid waste (refuse) and recyclables from residential, commercial, industrial or other collection sites for further processing and waste disposal. Specialised waste collection vehicles featuring an array of automated functions are often deployed to assist waste collectors in reducing collection and transport time and for protection from exposure. Waste and recycling pickup work is physically demanding and usually exposes workers to an occupational hazard.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency September 11 attacks pollution controversy was the result of a report released by the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in August 2003 which said the White House pressured the EPA to delete cautionary information about the air quality in New York City around Ground Zero following the September 11 attacks.
Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto is a Washington, D.C.-based international whistleblower rights law firm specializing in anti-corruption and whistleblower law, representing whistleblowers who seek rewards, or who are facing employer retaliation, for reporting violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, Sarbanes-Oxley Acts, Commodity and Security Exchange Acts and the IRS Whistleblower law.
Within seconds of the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks, building materials, electronic equipment, and furniture were pulverized and spread over the area of the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. In the five months following the attacks, dust from the pulverized buildings continued to fill the air of the World Trade Center site. Increasing numbers of New York residents are reporting symptoms of Ground Zero respiratory illnesses.
Household hazardous waste (HHW) was a term coined by Dave Galvin from Seattle, Washington in 1982 as part of the fulfillment of a US EPA grant. This new term was reflective of the recent passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 in the US. This act and subsequent regulations strengthened the environmental protection requirements for landfills, in Subpart D, and created a "cradle to grave" management system for hazardous wastes, in Subpart C. From RCRA 1976 the US EPA promulgated rules in 1980 which explicitly excluded any wastes from household origins from regulation as a hazardous waste at the federal level. Most US states adopted parallel regulations to RCRA 1976 but were allowed to be more stringent. California took advantage of this allowance and chose to not exempt household origin wastes from their state hazardous waste laws. HHW products exhibit many of the same dangerous characteristics as fully regulated hazardous waste which are their potential for reactivity, ignitability, corrosivity, toxicity, or persistence. Examples include drain cleaners, oil paint, motor oil, antifreeze, fuel, poisons, pesticides, herbicides and rodenticides, fluorescent lamps, lamp ballasts containing PCBs, some smoke detectors, and in some states, consumer electronics. Except for California, most states exclude HHW from their hazardous waste regulations and regulate the management of HHW largely under their solid waste regulatory schemes.
Under United States environmental policy, hazardous waste is a waste that has the potential to:
The World According to Monsanto is a 2008 film directed by Marie-Monique Robin. Originally released in French as Le monde selon Monsanto, the film is based on Robin's three-year-long investigation into the corporate practices around the world of the United States multinational corporation, Monsanto. The World According to Monsanto is also the title of a book written by Robin.
Solid waste policy in the United States is aimed at developing and implementing proper mechanisms to effectively manage solid waste. For solid waste policy to be effective, inputs should come from stakeholders, including citizens, businesses, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, universities, and other research organizations. These inputs form the basis of policy frameworks that influence solid waste management decisions. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates household, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial solid and hazardous wastes under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Effective solid waste management is a cooperative effort involving federal, state, regional, and local entities. Thus, the RCRA's Solid Waste program section D encourages the environmental departments of each state to develop comprehensive plans to manage nonhazardous industrial and municipal solid waste.
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William "Bill" Sanjour worked at the Environmental Protection Agency and was a whistleblower.