9/11 workers die after respiratory illnesses

[Guest guest]

9/11 workers die after respiratory illnesses

Links to 'Ground Zero' exposure unknown Tuesday, January 17,

2006; Posted: 2:58 p.m. EST (19:58 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World

Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Keller

said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on

September 11, 2001. Felix spent days at the site helping to search for

victims.

All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and

colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their

work at Ground Zero.

While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site have

reported ailments such as " trade center cough " since the terrorist attacks, some

say that only now are the consequences of working at the site becoming

heartbreakingly clear.

" I'm very fearful, " said Faeth, an emergency medical technician and

officer in a union with two of the ground zero workers who died last year. " I

think that there are several people who died that day and didn't realize that

they died that day. "

Some officials say it is too early to draw that conclusion. Doctors running

different health screening programs say it will take decades to get a clear

picture of the long-term health effects of working at ground zero.

The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is tracking the health

of 71,000 people exposed to September 11 dust and debris, said last week that it

is too soon to say whether any deaths or illnesses among its enrolled members

are linked to trade center exposure.

But Robin Herbert, who directs a medical-monitoring program at Mount Sinai

Medical Center for more than 14,000 ground zero workers, said " certainly it is

not inconceivable " that a person could die of respiratory disease related to

September 11.

Karin DeShore said she does not need scientists to tell her what caused the

death of her friend Keller, 41. DeShore was a Fire Department captain who took

Keller to the trade center on September 11, and barely escaped the south tower's

collapse.

" He came back coughing " two days later, she said. Faeth said that Keller told

him that he coughed up debris so violently he could barely breathe on September

11, and later developed emphysema.

Keller went home to Levittown on medical leave in March. He died on June 23 of

heart disease complicated by bronchitis and emphysema, the Nassau County medical

examiner's office said.

Felix , 31, worked on rescue and recovery work at ground zero

following the attacks, said his former supervisor, Lt. Regina Pellegrino. In

2002, " it started with a cold he couldn't shake ... and it kept getting worse

and worse and worse, " she said.

was diagnosed with various respiratory diseases and was told by

doctors at one point that he may have cystic fibrosis, Pellegrino said. He left

the job in 2004 when he became too weak to climb stairs, and died October 23 of

respiratory ailments in Florida, said colleagues who spoke with his family.

Both Keller and , each with a decade on the job, were nonsmokers and

had no previous health problems before September 11, Faeth said.

Zadroga, a 34-year-old New York detective, logged 470 hours at the site in

2001, including September 11, and died January 5. Family members and co-workers

said he had contracted black lung disease and had high levels of mercury in his

brain. Autopsy results have not been released. (Full story)

Worby, an attorney representing more than 5,000 plaintiffs suing those

who supervised the cleanup over their illnesses, said 21 of his clients have

died of September 11-related diseases since mid-2004. He said he was not

authorized to release their names, but represented people who toiled at ground

zero, at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island where trade center debris was

moved, and at the city morgue.

" This is just the tip of the iceberg, " Worby said. " Many, many more people are

going to die from the aftermath of the toxicity. "

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose congressional district includes the trade center

site, blames some of the illnesses on the failure to provide some workers with

proper masks or respiratory protection. A Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention study found in 2004 that one in five workers wore respirators while

they worked at the site to block out dust laced with asbestos, glass fibers,

pulverized cement and other substances.

" All the people exposed should be monitored for life so that we know what

happened, " Nadler said.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may

not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Guest guest]

The thing that they don't mention is that this (toxic firestorms) is

what happens when even small nuclear devices are used in cities.

So all the old figures about nuclear war survivability have to be

revised to take into account the fact that the metal and plastic in

tall, steel buildings will burn, adding lots of fuel to already hot

fires. The possibility of survival in a fire of this intensity is

virtually zero, as is the possibility of survival in shelters beneath

such fires, because the huge firestorm vortex above sucks all oxygen

into it. Then, the heavy-metal-laden plume stretches away from the

fire for many tens of miles.. only gradually diminishing in its

intensity.

What this means is that the damge we would see in nuclear war or

terrorism would be so massive that these areas - as well as all areas

that were downwind of the plumes for a substantial amount of time,

might have to be declared toxic waste dump sites for a long time into

the future, and they could even end up being so toxic as to be

virtually unsalvageable..

What this means is that almost all of the heavily populated areas of

this nation might be rendered uninhabitable in even a small nuclear

war, as well as being unsafe to use for agriculture.. Really, kind of

like Margaret Atwell's book 'The Handmaid's Tale' describes..

IMO, the government deliberately downplays this risk, so that people

would support their policies unaware of the very real and

substantially underrecognized dangers they accept as 'winnable' and

'acceptable'.

If 50 to 100 million deaths to begin and another 50 million or more

deaths in the years to come from the toxic aftermath is an 'acceptable

risk' (1 in 3 Americans?)

I hate to see what it would take to make such a war 'unacceptable' and

wonder if even that absolutely terrifying risk would make our

leadership sane enough to return to our previously (before the Bush

administration) stated policy of 'no first use' of nuclear weapons..

and a goal of eventually eliminating nuclear weapons from the Earth,

the goal which gave a moral foundation to our asking non-nuclear

nations to not make nuclear weapons of their own.. reducing the risk

of nuclear proliferation..

No, we make no such promises.. even if, in the past, they were only

symbolic ones..