WTC responders illness worse than expected

June 1, 2006

Doctors who treat World Trade Center responders say they are surprised almost five years later by the growing number seeking help for the first time -- 100 people a month in the biggest monitoring program -- and by the severity of illnesses among Sept. 11 workers already in treatment.

"There's no question there's continuing demand and many in the treatment program are quite ill," said Dr. Robin Herbert, codirector of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Herbert, whose program has examined about 15,000 responders since 2002, said doctors are finding "remarkable persistence" in breathing disorders such as chronic sinusitis and asthma, stomach ailments such as gastrointestinal reflux disease and psychological problems such as post traumatic stress disorder -- a suite of maladies one survivor called "my 9/11 plague."

Some patients also have come in with severe lung scarring, which can be fatal. And there have been cases of cancer, which worries experts, though they are unwilling to directly attribute them to exposure to Ground Zero toxins.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/am-liwtc0601,0,6979045.story?coll=ny-nycnews-headlines

ASBESTOS



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=928662&mesg_id=931070

their families, their friends, our country. :cry:

doesn't get any of the benies that the families who lost a 1st responder did. Those families got lots of money and that's why no one ever hears much from them.

got jack shit. One of my best friends will never be able to work again and she'll be in pain and suffering from her head injuries forever. Not one penny.

She got shuffled off to worker's compensation and they're constantly fighting to take away those minimal benefits.

If she had died her family would be rich, but because she survived condemned to survive in invisible misery.
:grr:

from inhaling asbestos.

http://www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/asbestos.html



Executives first learned of the link between asbestos and lung cancer in the 1930s

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile"--Condi Rice

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees"--George Bush

Mr Rumsfeld, who used to refer to Iraqi guerrillas as “a few dead-enders”, also admitted that he had been surprised by the insurgency. “It has clearly been at a level that has been more intense than had been anticipated.”

This country is suffering because of this administration's catastrophic lack of imagination.

It's like that Obi Wan trick in the first Star Wars: "These aren't the droids you're looking for. They can go."

I thini it was called "E" that claimed depleted uranium was being used in jumbo jets as a counterbalance in the tail section. The author posited a tremendous health crisis in the case of a crash in an urban setting, as the du would become spontaneously ignite, and disperse over a wide area. Just wondering.

apparently it's true! Here's a quote from one discussion board:

"Yes its true, there are uranium weights in a lot of aircraft and there have been 'issues' where these weights have been missing after crashes.

They are slightly radioactive, but not hugely so, you could not get a fatal dose from these weights unless they were aerosoled - the worst damage would come if you swallowed some (its a poison as well), or you got bashed over the head with some.

The weights are contained in sealed units, so its hard for them to pose a risk in normal usage, only in crashes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/593649.stm"

I mean, no one could possibly imagine a scenario where a jet would crash, right?

Back to the original post, about the asbestos poisoning of the first responders. When I first heard that there was asbestos in the wreckage of the WTC towers, I think this was Sept. 12 or 13, I knew right then that we were going to see a big spike in asbestos-related illness, and that many of the workers frantically clawing through the rubble were consigning themselves to an early, painful death.

And you know very well that the government is the best entity we have to ameliorate the suffering of these courageous people. You also know very well that the party in power thinks it's more important to protect Paris Hilton's inheritance than it is to take care of the rescue workers who were at Ground Zero in those terrible days after the towers fell.

Which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. A lot of substances (plastics, even cement) can be quite hazardous when pulverized into small particles and inhaled.

The epidemiology guy down the hall from me, who has studied asbestos-linked cancers, commented as he saw the rescuers surrounded by clouds of dust, "They've just killed another three thousand people."

especially as we kept breathing in that shit for days afterward. The air smelled like burnt plastic and sweet meat for over a week.

Bush's EPA said the air was safe.

"Gone Fishin. Oh, uh, everything looks great. I'll be in touch."
-Bush's EPA

Wait until they start seeing the people who returned to the WTC area because the Bush monarchy released a report lyring about the air quality. They ain't seen nothing yet!

:headbang:
rocknation

in South Mississippi and Louisiana in the years to come. They suspended the EPA rules regarding the removal of asbestos to assist in the clean up. So buildings that were full of asbestos are being cleaned out and there are no safeguards. One, the post office down the street from me, is a 4 story building that had water damage on the 1st floor and the roof gave way so water poured in to the other floors.

The crew gutting it and rebuilding it have spent weeks cleaning asbestos out of the old building. The white dust just flowing through the air as it is dumped from the upper stories to the huge dumpster marked with the warning "Asbestos". (The majority of the workers wearing cheap surgical masks appear to be immigrants.) Of course, this was a job put out for bids, the cheapest bid won. Gut and remodel as cheaply as possible.

Then of course, there is the removal of old homes with asbestos, they just poor water on the "dust" as the bull doze the remaining structures. That asbestos in now in the ground and waters.

Katrina cough is real, thanks to the mold and the debris. Katrina was an act of God, the clean up, at the hands of man, is causing another storm, the storm of illnesses that will affect us in the years to come.

The number of people coming forward (and even reports of deaths) this early on doesn't bode well. Either something is accelerating the cancer development, or we're looking at the beginning of a rather large peak.

to deal with, and potentially astronomical losses from either demolition and/or lawsuits as a result.

Which is why I and others contend the Towers were used as the "target". A MIHOP theory.

:thumbsup:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Spingola/deanna39.htm
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had been losing money on the towers for years because of low tenancy. The financial loss was the real issue. There was also another vital issue – asbestos! The towers had become an albatross sitting on the most valuable piece of real estate in the world. The Port Authority had three choices: sell or lease them, pay for expensive asbestos removal or demolish them. The Authority had tried for years but were unable to sell the buildings – after all, what fool would take on the liability of asbestos? They couldn’t demolish it. The health hazard of asbestos powder blanketing New York was legally unthinkable and totally out of the question. Expensive asbestos removal seemed to be the only option.

According to court records from New Jersey, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey attempted to have their insurers pay for the removal of the asbestos in several of their buildings including three of the buildings at the World Trade Center. The court case was initiated in 1991 after the Authority had scrapped extremely expensive asbestos removal in 1989. The case finally ended on 1 May 2001 with a judgment against the Port Authority. The Court decided that the insurance companies were not liable for the very costly removal of asbestos in the buildings in question.<11>

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

at the time? I seem to remember the authorities saying it was o.k. and not
a danger.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/02/health/main1276366.shtml

"A judge attacked former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman for reassuring Manhattan residents soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks that the environment was safe to return to homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts wrote, calling Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking.""


I remember seeing another report that the EPA had deployed vacuum trucks that were supposed to suck up dust for disposal. They didn't have the right filters on them, so very fine particles were actually blown into the air, making things even more hazardous.

You'd drive by on the expressway and see something resembling a mushroom cloud over the site. I knew instinctively that we were being lied to. For a period of time, you'd see weird, bluish dust in gutters and on the street, all over the city. That's what people were breathing. I don't even like to think about it.

Worse than expected by these guys? Of course, but we know better than to trust them, don't we?

EPA falsified the danger, and exempted the workers from OSHA protections.

in that cloud of dust and concrete powder and asbestos particles could have the slightest impact on a person's long-term respiratory function!