9/11's Lingering Cloud
Medical Evidence, Political Pressure Keep Mounting, But Sick Ground Zero Workers Face Grim Future
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NYPD Det. Robert Williamson working at ground zero in an undated family photo. Williamson, 46, died last month of pancreatic cancer. (Courtesy Maureen Williamson)
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James and Tylerann Zadroga in an undated family photo. Zadroga died last year of a respiratory disease he contracted during rescue and recovery work at ground zero. (AP)
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NYPD Det. James Zadroga holds an oxygen tank and his daughter, Tylerann, in an undated photo. Zadroga's death last year was the first to be directly linked to exposure to the toxic air at ground zero. (Zadroga Family)
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Emergency medical technician Bonnie Giebfried, left, helps Marvin Bethea, a paramedic, hold up a poster detailing medications he has to take since working at ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001, during a news conference in front of ground zero on Jan. 26, 2006. (AP Photo)
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Last month, the city medical examiner added New York attorney Felicia Dunn-Jones to the official list of 9/11 victims — the first such casualty added to the city's tally. (WCBS)
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Play CBS Video Video Dust Death Added To 9/11 List A woman who died of lung disease five months after 9/11 was added to the New York City medical examiner's list of attack victims. WCBS-TV's Lou Young reports.
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Video First Responder's Health Woes Former EMT Bonnie Giebfried, a first responder during the 9/11 attacks in New York, expresses frustration with the lack of help she's received from her insurer, union and the local government.
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Video EMT Remembers 9/11 Bonnie Giebfried was working as an EMT during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. She describes her experience as one of the first responders.
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Photo Essay Ground Zero Health Crisis Aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers and victims of the toxic cloud it spawned.
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Timeline In Terror's Wake A look at the major developments following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
It has been a cruel year for 5-year-old Tylerann Zadroga, and last week proved especially difficult. At her suburban New Jersey day care center, Tylerann could only watch as the other children made Father's Day cards.
"She's been upset the last few days," said her grandfather, Joseph Zadroga. "She's really been missing him."
Tylerann's dad, James Zadroga died last year at the age of 34. A decorated NYPD detective, the 9/11 rescue worker's death was the first to be directly linked to exposure to the toxic air at ground zero. (Zadroga's wife died of a heart ailment in 2005, leaving the job of raising Tylerann to her grandparents.)
Seventeen months after James Zadroga died of a respiratory disease triggered by World Trade Center toxins, doctors and politicians have gradually awakened to the ballooning health crisis stemming from the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. The debilitating - and increasingly deadly - illnesses plaguing recovery workers are now well documented.
Of the 70,000 people taking part in Mount Sinai Medical Center's World Trade Center health study, 85 percent are suffering some kind of respiratory problem. Medical experts now say the toxic cloud sparked at ground zero has not only caused severe breathing problems in the short term but also will likely spawn diseases like cancer in the years to come. The mounting medical evidence has put pressure on lawmakers to fund monitoring and treatment for sick responders.
Still, resentment and desperation lingers among the ailing workers and the families of 9/11's delayed health casualties. They say not enough is being done to treat, support and honor the terrorist attack's forgotten victims.
"If Bush can send $15 billion to Africa over five years for AIDS treatment, I'm sure he could find $1 billion a year to help these people," Joseph Zadroga said.
For the workers besieged by ground zero-related illnesses, the pain has been increasingly unbearable. Bonnie Giebfried was buried alive in the debris of the Trade Center's south tower. The former EMT suffers from numerous ailments, including asthma, nerve damage and sciatica. But Giebfried says the emotional fallout has been equally as draining for sick responders. Surviving 9/11 responders are falling into dark clouds of depression, drugs and even suicide, she says, and with disabled parents unable to work, family dynamics are crumbling.
The struggles are also financial. Because Giebfried was employed by a private hospital on Sept. 11, 2001, she was not considered a "uniformed" city worker and thus did not qualify for three-quarter salary benefits afforded to sick responders who worked for the city. She lost her chance at getting a disability pension at work because she fell six months shy of qualifying. Her union cancelled her medical and prescription drug benefits. Red tape and unbalanced assistance programs aren't just hurting Giebfried: In February, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office released a report showing that 40 percent of sick ground zero workers have no insurance or inadequate coverage.View a photo essay of 9/11's toxic aftermath.
Former EMT Bonnie Giebfried details her health woes.
Read the story of NYPD Detective James Zadroga.
"People don't know how we're existing every day, trying to pay bills, keep family structure and keep our heads above water," said Giebfried, who has lost all her savings to medical bills. "The government left us buried at ground zero."
Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg appointed a new World Trade Center health czar for New York. Jeffrey Hon, a former spokesman for the Red Cross Sept. 11 Recovery Program, has the task of ironing out inconsistencies in the city's health benefits as well as working with programs tracking ground zero workers' health. That effort may be hampered by a statistic released just last week: Only half of roughly 70,000 members in the registry tracking post-9/11 illnesses have responded to follow-up surveys. The dwindling numbers are making the city's already-complex task of gauging the long-term health effects more difficult.
By Stephen Smith
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 74 CommentsIts the same strategy that was used with the Vietnam vets affected by Agent Orange--ignore, deny, blame the vets ("It's all in your head, take a happy pill, or its no care at all") lie and then a grudging partial admission.
If the citizens of the United States are too vile, too contemtible, too much the belly-crawling serfs of the Washington Regime to stand up for men and women who put their lives on the line for you--then why should they put themselves on the line for your sorry hides?
A vote for the mainstream, neo-Con supporting low lifes of the Republican and Democratic Party is the ultimate stab in the back to both the First Responders and our servicemen and vets.
They called heroes on national TV for weeks. Aint that enough.
Vote Guiliani 2008!!!
Israeli and American criminals working hand in hand gave us 9-11, just as they gave us the attack on USS LIBERTY and the attacks on US targets in Egypt in the Lavon Affair.
9-11 provided the psychological driver to rally American support for the planned attack on Afghanistan with pre-positioned supplies and resources. It is little wonder that Mad Dog Albright refused the Sudanese offer to hand OBL over to the US; why he received treatment for his kidney disease at the US hospital in Dubai and why he got treatment just prior to 9-11, according to CBS News, at a Pakistani hospital.
Without the CIA's 'terrorist' asset placed in AFghanistan, the Washington Regime could not disguise the naked aggression against Afghanistan to restore opium production and obtain the desired pipeline route for the desired price. If they ever got Osama, then the raison d'etre for the invasion would be gone.
Soldiers! Come Home! It is not the mission of the United States military to protect the drug trade! Its time to restore the Constitutional Republic in the United States.
Your acceptance of the Rules of Engagement is required for you to post
ANYMORE Ignorant comments??
Eminem/ Mos Def/ Immortal Technique
"Bin Laden"
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
BUSH KNOCKED DON THE TOWERS.
Ministry "Lies Lies Lies"
Do you REALLY believe jet fuel brought down the Towers (laughter).
LIES LIES LIES.
Posted by fascistusa at 06:13 PM : Jun 20, 2007
+ report abuse
Apparently you don't know what you're talking about, Leave me out of it...
Eminem/ Mos Def/ Immortal Technique
"Bin Laden"
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
BUSH KNOCKED DON THE TOWERS.
Ministry "Lies Lies Lies"
Do you REALLY believe jet fuel brought down the Towers (laughter).
LIES LIES LIES.
have any known talents, other than BS'ing
Eminem/ Mos Def/ Immortal Technique
"Bin Laden"
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
Ministry "Lies Lies Lies"
Do you REALLY believe jet fuel brought down the Towers (laughter).
LIES LIES LIES.
When the second plane hit, he continued to sit on his fanny. The Secret Service did nothing to remove him to safety.
Later, in a speech, the Chimp-in-Charge quipped that 'he thought, gee, that guy must have been a really bad pilot'...This from a man who flew jets, after a manner, and had to know about the kind of state of the art avionics and systems that made such an 'accident' a virtual impossibility on a clear day.
Rice, the Secretary of State, warned Mayor Willie Brown not to fly on 9-11. What was that, a lucky guess? While warning Brown, she announces that the US had no idea that the enemy would use jetts as guided missiles. This despite the fact that 9-11 and other exercises painted scenarios of this; that it was suggested in Operation Northwood; the security forces defended against such an attack at the economic conference in Italy earlier and that the Bohica plot uncovered in the Philippines called for this method of attack.
"Bin Laden"
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
BUSH KNOCKED DON THE TOWERS.
Ministry "Lies Lies Lies"
Do you REALLY believe jet fuel brought down the Towers (laughter).
LIES LIES LIES.
that these terrorists went to in Florida.
They told the instructors all they wanted to know
was HOW to fly the plane, couldn't care less how to take off, or land the plane, that should of sent flags everywhere. Red,blue, whatever,
Thats who to blame for 9/11.
Anybody go to school just to learn one thing?
I want to learn it all, but the terrorists didn't,
Soooooo..........?
"Bin Laden"
BUSH KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS.
BUSH KNOCKED DON THE TOWERS.
Ministry "Lies Lies Lies"
Do you REALLY believe jet fuel brought down the Towers (laughter).
LIES LIES LIES.
Despite all his rhetoric in praise of their efforts, Bush actually contributed to the country's negligent security posture on 911-- even ignoring his counter-terrorism advisor and not bothering to schedule even one cabinet-level discussion of terrorism in his first eight months in office.
How much in character, then, that Bush has made only token efforts to address the many health crises experienced by the first responders at 911. Apparently, public relations is cheaper than action.
Why were the steel beams whisked off to China to be melted before they could be analysed?
Why was there no attempt to partially reconstruct (like you see in plane crashes) to determine cause of structural failure?
does anyone think it's just a coincidence that there was a complete power down for the entire weekend in the Twin Towers on the weekend before 9/11?
does anyone think it's just a coincidence that the head of security at the WTC resigned on 9/10/01 from the company once headed by Bush's younger brother Marvin?
why were none of these questions asked by the 9/11 commission?
--- Hell man, even Bush called his own republicans Un-American for opposing him on immigration.
Posted by j-whitman at 04:39 PM : Jun 20, 2007
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Hey dude,
Anybody that uses "every", and can't spell speech, is automatically an IDIOT.
Try again.
WTC 7 was not hit by a plane. There seems to be no other reasonable explanation for its collapse, at free-fall speeds, into its own footprint, than a controlled demolition. The owner of the towers, Larry Silverstien, a man who made billions of dollars from this tragedy, even said on national TeeVee, that the decision was made to 'pull' the building.
At the very least, don't you think that these events are worthy of an independent investigation?
Now guyfrompa, I'm sorry that you consider the ideas of a government conspiracy to be traitorous to our nation, but it is our right to think what we want. We are a nation of ideas, the more the better. I don't believe any of the conspiracies, but I sure as he11 don't believe that our government is being completely honest to us, do you?
--- Hell man, even Bush called his own republicans Un-American for opposing him on immigration.
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