NYC May Outlaw Environmental Monitoring By Citizens

The New York City Council is considering a bill that would make it illegal for a citizen to test - without police permission - the environment for toxic or pathogenic conditions.

The Big Apple, of course, is the tourist-pumped city where EPA's post-9/11 assertions that the air and water were safe proved so tragically and knowingly false. Only independent testing by journalists and medical personnel came up with evidence to explain why everybody was coughing.

The bill, pushed by the NYPD's counter-terror chief, would make possession of environmental detection equipment illegal without an NYPD-issued license. Such devices, available widely on the open market for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, are common on construction and engineering sites where they save many lives that might otherwise be lost to toxic occupational hazards.

• "N.Y.P.D. Looks To Regulate Environmental Detectors," Downtown Express, Jan. 11-17, 2008, by Julie Shapiro.
• Previous Story: WatchDog of May 2, 2007.