It was a victory last week for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chemist who was fired in 2010 for exposing the dangers to firefighters and other emergency personnel from the dust-filled air at ground zero during the days and weeks after the Twin Towers fell. Cate Jenkins, a long-time employee, got her job back and was reinstated with back pay.

According to an article in The Guardian, Jenkins was a 30-year employee at the EPA before she got sacked because she divulged the truth about what was in the air at Ground Zero and around Lower Manhattan. Jenkins also alleged a cover-up of the situation by the U.S. government, a move that had her branded as a whistleblower.

The post-Sept. 11 air was filled with a variety of toxins, including asbestos, lead, PCBs, mercury, and much more. Jenkins claimed that the government had covered up the dangers to first responders, dismissing the fact that thousands were sent to the site and worked for weeks at the scene without any sort of protective gear, including masks or respirators. Many workers now suffer from lung diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma and others have suffered chemical burns to their lungs because the pH level of the air was so high.

During the days after the attacks, EPA head Christine Todd Whitman announced that there were no air quality readings that indicated a health hazard. Jenkins disagreed, arguing that the EPA had been downplaying similar hazards since the 1980s. She repeated her beliefs to Congress and afterwards was harassed by her superiors, she says. Eventually, the tiny Jenkins was accused of physically threatening her six-foot-tall supervisor and was fired.

Jenkins’ attorney says her job reinstatement is a rare victory for whistleblowers, especially since this is the second time the chemist called out the EPA, so to speak. In the 1990s, Jenkins accused Monsanto Corporation of falsifying a study in regards to the connection between veterans‘ cancer and Agent Orange. She was transferred from her job at that time, but got it back when an administrative judge ruled her case was handled improperly.

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