Now death comes to the men who cleaned up Ground Zero (The Observer U.K.)

[Omaha Steve]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1868914,00.html


Now death comes to the men who cleaned up Ground Zero

Joanna Walters in New York
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer

Josephine Damato is not yet a '9/11 widow' but she expects to be all too soon. 'The doctors say he is one step from cancer,' she says, her slim hand beginning to shake as she reaches out and strokes her husband Mike's wrist.

In their spacious surburban home in Long Island, a commute from New York, the couple's three daughters giggle as they play a game of pretend shopping. The oldest, Megan, nine, is in charge, while cheeky Alexandra, three, hands cake to one-year-old Daniella. There is a basketball hoop in the garden, toys dotted around and a Snoopy pennant above the front door saying 'Welcome'.

Mike Damato was fit and earning $140,000 a year as a builder until he began working at Ground Zero just hours after hijackers had flown two planes into the World Trade Centre. He is 33, but now has the lungs of an asthmatic in his sixties - the corrosive dust and toxic air he breathed for months at the disaster site are eating away at his throat and oesophagus.

More than 40,000 people, mostly men, toiled to clear the terrible pile of building, aircraft and human debris from the smouldering rubble. Now those men are beginning to die prematurely from cancers and lung diseases and a report published last week warned that 70 per cent of rescuers, contractors and volunteers at Ground Zero suffered lung damage. Many have died or are dying and others have been told they will be sick for life. 'There is going to be a new generation of 9/11 widows - more than those created by the original attacks,' said Marc Bern, a New York lawyer.

FULL story at link above.

[civildisoBDence]

1. What a shame. No good deed goes unpunished...

These heroes should have been issued respirators, and the respirators should have been required like they were at the Pentagon. No one is really to blame for that, but now that so many are ill (and the majority also suffer from PTSD), no expense should be spared to take care of them.

Newsprism

[tularetom]

2. Actually somebody IS to blame for it

Giuliani and Christy Whitman both pronounced the area safe to work in, very shortly after 9/11. Both of them should be prosecuted for criminal negligence if not mansaughter. I believe one of the Dem congressmen from NY has recently spoken out on this matter.

[aquart]

4. I want a first responders law.

ALL medical issues need to be assumed to have come from their heroic efforts.

That goes for the New Orleans "cough" people as well.

That goes for all our soldiers.

We OWE them. They should NEVER have to beg for care from this nation.

[acmavm]

5. No one is to blame. The Gulliani admin and the EPA KNEW how

damn dangerous that site was and they lied and told these people AND THE WORKERS in the area to go on, go back. There's not problem. It's safe. Don't worry, you'll be fine.

Gulliani was getting heat from building owners in the area and he lied and condemned how many thousands to a life of illness and a premature death? Just to get things 'back to normal'.

You sure are a forgiving soul. But then I suppose it's easy not being affected by the toxic debris and astestos. It's always easy when it's someone else.

[enid602]

3. lung cancer

I heard on Air America today that there are typically about 175,000 lung cancer deaths in the US each year; this year there were 173,000 in January and February combined. The program was talking about US servicemen's exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq, though, which takes about three years at least to show up as cancer. These numbers could rise quickly, and I would think that the WTC clean-up people's exposure will add to the swelling numbers.

[BootinUp]

6. Criminal Incompetence even after the attack was over. n/t

[Lisa]

7. the day after the attacks, the epidemiology guy down the hall from me ...

... looked at the footage of the rescue efforts on my computer -- workers, often without respirators, surrounded by clouds of dust -- and said quietly, "They've just killed all those people." He has been studying asbestos exposure for a couple of decades, and when I started to see news reports of healthy young guys who'd been there, dying from lung cancer 2 or 3 years ago, I thought about what he had said.

I also think about a couple of friends of mine, living just downwind from the dust cloud, who'd just brought home a new baby. I'm sure that the health of people who lived or worked near the site may also be affected.

[FloridaPat]

8. Thanks to the dust and depleted uranium., the * people will be

killing people for decades.

[JVS]

9. This is not a surprise

Huge clouds of dust and smoke don't suddenly become safe because it's an emergency.