Written by Colleen Callan   

Finally, Dr. John Howard, Director of NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) issued a formal ruling adding about 50 types of Cancer to be covered under the Zadroga Act, a Federal Law covering First Responders and others who breathed in toxic air on 9/11 and for months after, while working on the pile.

This decision, made formal yesterday, is long overdue, but has the caveat that no more additional money has yet been added to the fund to help treat these additional illnesses over the long term.

$2.8 billion dollars was set aside in January 2011, when the Zadroga Bill finally passed. It is disgraceful that these fine people had to wait that long and even longer for this milestone. But it is the right decision to help these brave souls and their families who stepped up and gave their lives when America was under attack. Now Congress must stop the partisan garbage and step up and put more money in the fund, so that these families don't have to worry or wonder any longer whether the money to handle their medical and personal financial issues will be there. They have made the ultimate sacrifice, with their lives and their health...luckily for most of those in Congress, this should be a no-brainer.

Over 40,000 First Responders are being monitored by the World Trade Center Health Program, which has received over $1.5 billion dollars to continue tracking illnesses of those at Ground Zero. How many have already passed from these cancers, without compensation? How will they and their families be recompensed?

Today is a solemn day, but one of remembrance of the precious loved ones lost. It is also a time to remember that the EPA told the First Responders and residents of downtown Manhattan that the air was safe to breath. Christie Whitman, then head of the EPA, held a press conference and stood in front of a microphone, and told people it was alright to work and toil and breathe the air, when the EPA had to know that all of the pulverized metals and toxins were not safe to inhale. The firefighters at the Pentagon all had SCUBA gear, because they knew how toxic the metals and other materials burning were to inhale.

By some accounts of people interviewed by this reporter at the time- firemen and police on the pile- were told to take off their protective masks, so that when pictures were taken, people didn't think protective masks or SCUBA gear was needed. It was. Because of that "Grand Lie" thousands of people are now sick and dead that didn't have to be.

Soon the EPA will say that hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" is safe for the drinking water of an entire region. That in their search for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale Region of the North East that the underground explosions, won't cause earthquakes near Three Mile Island. They will claim that nearby underground wells won't be poisoned as has happened in every other state where fracking has been permitted. The EPA won't have a plan to dispose of Billions of gallons of the formerly fresh and clean water which becomes poisoned by volatile organic chemicals and gels in the fracking process and is then only partially removed from underground and placed in open pools until it is removed to ...Where? No one knows yet.

The sewage treatment plants were never designed to accept this kind of toxic soup, including radioactive water and chemicals that will never biodegrade. The EPA lied before and they will lie again...Don't believe them when they say fracking is safe...