Study: 9/11 escapees have health problems

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=ad2b53095fbb1f7a&cat=a1e025da3c02ca7c

Study: 9/11 escapees have health problems

By AMY WESTFELDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


People run from the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in New York in this Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, file photo. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)
NEW YORK -- A majority of survivors of the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center suffered from respiratory ailments and depression, anxiety and other psychological problems up to three years later, federal health officials said Friday.

The people who escaped from collapsed or damaged buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, were several times as likely to suffer from breathing problems or psychological trauma if they were caught in the cloud of trade center dust and debris that covered lower Manhattan, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

"The trauma of being caught in the cloud itself, the whole experience had an impact on their ... psychological health later on," said Dr. Robert M. Brackbill, a CDC doctor working with the World Trade Center Health Registry, which has been tracking the health of more than 71,000 people who worked at ground zero or were in the area on Sept. 11.

Friday's study drew from preliminary interviews with 8,418 adults in the registry who escaped from the twin towers, the collapsed Seven World Trade Center and more than 30 buildings that suffered extensive damage on Sept. 11. More than 70 percent escaped from the twin towers.

The interviews took place more than two years after the attacks, between Sept. 5, 2003, and Nov. 20, 2004, and did not involve medical examinations. Follow-up surveys are planned this month.

"We are just beginning to learn about the health effects of the worst day in New York City's history," said Daniel Slippen, a survivor of the attacks and a member of the registry's community advisory board. "It is critical to know whether these physical and mental effects will continue, diminish or grow worse over time."
more...
This could be one fascinating study...

[niyad]

1. does this come as a surprise to ANYBODY with two brain cells that arc?

[lovuian]

2. 56% of the survivors said they had new or worsening respiratory ailments,

of the survivors said they had new or worsening respiratory ailments, including sinus problems, shortness of breath and a persistent cough. More than 43 percent sustained a physical injury on Sept. 11; the most common were eye injuries.

[kestrel91316]

4. Shortness of breath and a persistent cough are signs of

potentially VERY SERIOUS LUNG DISEASE.

Asbestosis and silicosis and god-knows-what-else await these poor people.

[kestrel91316]

3. By the time the second tower collapsed on 9-11-01, I was wondering

to myself, and out loud, about the OBVIOUS asbestos and concrete dust hazard. I didn't for one minute believe all the reassurances from the gov't that there was no reason to worry about it.

DUH!

[Auntie Bush]

24. I remember when Christie Todd Whitman announced that the air

was safe to breath...and I knew that she was lying. I believe it's one of the reasons she quit...to spend more time with her family. I wonder if she's being sued?

[lovuian]

5. Its been 5 years and wonder what was in that air...

[Bush_MUST_Go]

6. bush should have come right away. Why did he wait for the air to clear?

[juliana24]

12. Nothing good, thats for sure. Too bad Junior didnt inhale deeply of it.

[CAG]

7. Rushie Limbaugh needs to tell them that health care is not a right, but a

privilege. Don't these people know their complaining is hurting our commandeerer in chief in a time of war??

:sarcasm:

[saddemocrat]

30. hehehe

:evilgrin:

[Southsideirish]

8. There's a terrific book out, "102 Minutes" about WTC and what happened

there in the first 1.5 hours +. I just finished it and recommend it highly. Don't read it before you go to sleep, however, as it will give you nightmares, for sure. The authors are Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer, NYT reporters.

[musette_sf]

18. "102 Minutes" does a pretty good job

of describing the conditions inside the WTC and what these people went through.

But "102 Minutes", and another WTC book from Times (as in NYT) Books, "City In The Sky", although well-written from a historical perspective, go to great length providing "logical" and "scientific" explanations of why it was inevitable that the buildings collapsed as a result of the factors in the "official" story.

Excellent stories and history, but lots of whitewash too.

[dailykoff]

9. "The interviews ... did not involve medical examinations"?

So they can be sure not to find any asbestos and/or radiation poisoning, no doubt.

Another federal agency pimps for Junior.

[BattyDem]

10. I went to Ground Zero in December 2001

Don't worry ... I wasn't one of those assholes posing with the kids in front of the WTC site, waving at the camera while someone took a picture - as if it was a freakin' vacation photo postcard! (Those people REALLY pissed me off!) I simply went down there to quietly reflect and to pay my respects. I took no pictures or video.

Anyway, like I said, it was December 2001 ... and the entire area was COVERED in gray dust! (It wasn't deep - it was a thin layer - but it was enough to mess up my sneakers.) Blocks away from the site, there was gray dust everywhere. This was THREE MONTHS later! Three months of cleanup ... three months worth of wind ... three months worth of rain ... and it was all covered in dust. Rescue workers and residents had to be breathing that shit in every single day. On the day of the attacks, people must have gotten tons of that stuff in their lungs. No wonder they're all sick! :-(

[juliana24]

11. Its a good thing we dont have a national healthcare plan !!

We dont want our tax dollars used to help those people, of course, do we?.

They should all just buck up and pull themselves up by thier bootstraps, the pampered whiners. x(

[Divernan]

15. I was there in Dec. too; you could still smell this terrible odd smell

in the air - a combination of all kinds of materials which had been burnt. A friend in NYC who was famliar w/ construction of the Towers (and fortunately home sick on the upper Westside on 9/11), told me she immediately thought of all the asbestos used in construction there. On 9/12 she had opened the large windows in her 8th floor apt. (99th & Riverside) and the smell of burnt flesh came in and her two cats completely freaked out, as did she.

[musette_sf]

19. I was there in September 2002

and I noticed immediately upon emerging from the Rector Street R station, an acrid tinge that irritated my lungs ever so slightly. Photo from, I want to say, the M train which must have been running over the Manhattan Bridge at the time, since I'm pretty sure I was going to my sister's place on the M line in Brooklyn.



Bruce Springsteen said it pretty well, "Empty Sky".

[BattyDem]

26. "Empty Sky"

Exactly. It's so depressing. I don't even look at the skyline anymore. Thankfully, I didn't lose anyone in the towers, and I certainly don't mean to show any disrespect for the loss of life by mourning two buildings ... but I miss them. :-(

I remember a LTTE in the NY Daily News about the altered skyline. The person said that it looked like NYC had lost its two front teeth. It made me laugh because, if you think about it, it's a very accurate description. :-)

[BattyDem]

25. Oh, that smell!

I remember that smell. It was in the air for MONTHS after 9/11. :puke: :-(

[HockeyMom]

31. 3 days, and 30 miles away on Long Island

We got the stench. People were calling 911 and police stations about that horrible smell. It burned your eyes and made you choke. I closed all my windows and doors. The schools districts did the same and kept the kids indoors for recess.

I can only imagine how the workers at the site and the people living and working in the area could stand it.

That they are getting sick years later doesn't surprise me at all.

[Dover]

13. I'd be curious to know if there were any pending studies on asbestos

that had been done on the World Trade Towers prior to 9/11. If it had already been determined that it was not only present but was going to become a huge and expensive problem for the building owners, insurers, or whoever...then it might just support MIHOP.

[canetoad]

14. Yes

I believe Silverstein moved heaven and earth just a few months before 911 to buy the lease on 30 yr old buildings, known to have health and safetly issues. Known to have a refurbishment bill of more than their actual value. Known to be wired with 'old technology'.

In fact it was cheaper to knock them down and start again. Funny that.

[Dover]

20. Sorry.......who is Silverstein?

And if you have any links specifically to his pre-9/11 'real estate' activities, I'd like to read about it. Thanks.

BTW - Did you see Mark Lewis's hilarious film about the Cane Toads?

[theobscure]

17. yes, it is well-established and documented that it was clearly known

that the WTC towers presented a serious asbestos problem. I just do not understand why so few people are outraged about the deliberate, criminal misinformation given out on the air quality and other troubling aftermath issues. The silence is deafening. Where is the heroic Elliot Spitzer on this one? Unwilling, I suppose, to ruffle the feathers of anyone who might stand in the way of his political ambition.

The fact is that people are so universally silent on the ground zero air quality misinformation, the ground zero evidence removal and destruction, the lack of investigation into the put options, the refusal to release so much evidence and information, the fact that the "White Paper" promised by Sec. Powell proving OSB complicity has never come, the initial reluctance and stonewalling of an investigation and the subsequent lack of cooperation, the lack of accountability for the attacks, the promotion of so many of the central figures, the evidence that so many of the men supposed to have been among the hijackers have turned up alive and the phony OSB confession.

Why is the asking of these questions, which do not presuppose any doubt about the essential truth of the official version of 9/11, treated with the same "tinfoil hat" derision? I wish I knew. What I do know, is that we will all spend the next many years wringing our hands as those we call heroes die, one after another in ever quickening succession, of black lung, mercury on the brain, and other anomalous ailments, deluding ourselves into believing that there was nothing to be done and no one to hold accountable.

If we call them heroes, why don't we treat them as such?

[Lisa]

27. we're already seeing fatalities from rare cancers ....

... which have been linked with asbestos, in the 9/11 first responders.

An epidemiology expert who works down the hall from me said that generally that cancer doesn't kill until 2 decades after exposure (one Canadian Member of Parliament, Chuck Strahl, is currently fighting it ... he got it from working with asbestos in the 1980s). Seeing deaths this early is rather ominous -- we may be seeing the leading edge of a rather large peak which will become apparent in the next decade.

http://www.mesotheliomamedical.com/news/article30.html


I'm currently working on a study which does an overview of the psychological effects of exposure to the cloud (the stress has definite long-term physiological impacts, as has been seen in other mass pollutant release events such as Chernobyl, Bhopal, and Three Mile Island). I'm sure that there are other people researching this (our group has a miniscule budget so I am only using secondhand data sources).

[theobscure]

28. Congratulations on your research....

I wish government complicity and universal public silence did not necessitate such work be done with so limited funds. I suppose we are content to let 1st responders and other people exposed to ground zero suffer and die, much as we are with our veterans and their families as a result of depleted uranium. Better them than us, I guess is how we think. These are shameful times.

[walkon]

16. Air remains toxic

People will be dying from respiratory and heavy metal effects for years to come.

[lovuian]

21. I agree there were more casualties on 9/11 than those who died

the ones who survived will be scarred for life...

Its a very sad day in History and Bush and Guliani had a part in it...:(

We will be seeing the lung damage reports coming out soon...

[happydreams]

22. Halliburton subsidiary WR Grace

installed asbestos products in WTC. Bushboy sugar coated EPA reports on air quality to keep the heat off of WR Grace.


Google: WR Grace+WTC

http://www.nycosh.org/UPDATE/view_updates.php?updateid=107

[Jazz2006]

23. Indeed

It could be quite fascinating, indeed.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that samples of the dust and such were analyzed, and it was a pretty grisly mix of all kinds of toxic elements. Thousands of people are surely going to continue to suffer long term ill effects from inhaling that crap.

x(

[saddemocrat]

29. Weren't there

discussions about air quality back when it happened because firefighters etc weren't being provided with masks etc for clean-up? Weren't we assured that air quality was good by our government :eyes: This is really just...terrible.