Bill Would Protect Ground Zero Workers

[Florida_Geek]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Health-Care.html

March 29, 2004
Bill Would Protect Ground Zero Workers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:09 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal officials introduced legislation Monday to provide long-term health care for emergency workers who toiled at ground zero after the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center.

The Remember 9/11 Health Act, co-sponsored by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, and Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, would provide federal health insurance to workers who were injured or suffered ill health related to the Sept.11 attack and cleanup.

A study by Mount Sinai Medical Center found that about half of the 9,229 recovery workers tested so far had long-term respiratory illnesses or other injuries related to their work at the site. More than 300 firefighters have filed for early retirement because of illnesses related to the attack

.. more at AP

[juajen]

1. I believe, that this travesty committed by the * Cabal ranks

right up there with Iraqis and Americans killed over their desire to rule the world and control its oil supplies.

Why, oh why, aren't people more outraged that they faked that damned EPA report on the toxicity of the air after 9/11, insisting that the air quality was fine when they knew it was toxic, adding to the horrible death toll already experienced?

Perhaps the brave firemen and policemen and emergency workers who walked straight into a soon-to-be collapsed building were the lucky ones after all. A slow death with the added pain and suffering to the victim, as well as his/her family, is certainly not preferable to an instantaneous annihilation, though I'm sure some would disagree.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. From NYT article, 9/7/03

Uncertainty Lingers Over Air Pollution in Days After 9/11

By KIRK JOHNSON


....A report by the federal Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general lambasted the agency's former administrator, Christie Whitman, for her reassuring statements about the air quality after 9/11. Those comments, investigators said, could not possibly have been based on scientific fact. Mrs. Whitman has strongly defended herself, saying she spoke only what was known at the time....

***

''There were uncertainties, and in those situations, you should say, one, you don't know, and two, you'll find out,'' said Dr. Stephen M. Levin, the medical director of the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. ''And then you make statements based on real data.''

Dr. Levin, whose center has examined about 6,000 people exposed to trade center debris, said he thought some companies used Mrs. Whitman's comments to justify ordering their employers back to work downtown even as the dust and smoke swirled, and some of those workers, he said, became his patients. He says some ground zero workers who developed lung problems also may have given themselves ''permission'' not to use respirators because of her words, even though the final responsibility was their own....

***

Some of the facts about the disaster's impact will never be known. Few health investigators hovered around the laborers who cleaned dust-choked buildings near the disaster site, for example, so scientists do not know and never will know what those workers breathed....


(entire article available, NYT archives)