9/11's Lingering Cloud

Medical Evidence, Political Pressure Keep Mounting, But Sick Ground Zero Workers Face Grim Future

(CBS)  Despite the monitoring challenges, the evidence already collected is indisputable. According to a major Mount Sinai study released last September, 70 percent of the roughly 10,000 ground zero workers tested said they experienced new or substantially deteriorated respiratory problems. More than one in four nonsmokers reported breathing problems - double the rate of nonsmokers in the general population. Also, the head of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program said last month that several workers had developed rare blood cell cancers.

The sick are slowly dying. Though the toll is undoubtedly higher, the deaths of at least four police officers (including Zadroga), a communications worker, an attorney and a nun have been directly linked to ground zero exposure. A class-action lawsuit claims dozens more have died from inhaling toxic debris from the Trade Center. Giebfried says she personally knows more than 20 colleagues who have lost their lives since becoming ill.

Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police and the former chief medical examiner of New York City, has reviewed several ground zero-related autopsies, including Zadroga's. He says the growing list of victims should make cities rethink their disaster-management plans in the future. "Three thousand people may have died, but 100,000 others may have been exposed," he said.

Baden cautions that it could take two decades to gauge the long-term effects of the ground zero cocktail of asbestos, mercury, lead and other contaminants. Identifying and analyzing the plethora of potentially carcinogenic chemicals that wafted over the World Trade Center is a painstaking process, so festering diseases such as lung cancer can only be conclusively linked to the 9/11 down the road.

But medical experts are already sounding alarms. Last month, the co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program warned that cancer would likely become the "third wave" of illnesses plaguing ground zero workers. Dr. Robin Herbert said the first wave refers to coughing and respiratory problems developed immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, and the second wave includes severe chronic lung diseases. One such disease, sarcoidosis, claimed the life of New York attorney Felicia Dunn-Jones in 2002. Last month, the city medical examiner added her death to the official list of 9/11 victims - the first such casualty added to the city's tally.

That acknowledgment has prodded the government to provide more assistance. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, co-chair of the Congressional 9/11 Health Caucus, said there are many more victims that the city has not documented. Earlier this month, she and other New York delegates helped get $50 million for 9/11 health care and medical monitoring included in a new appropriations bill. Though Maloney is encouraged by the political progress on Capitol Hill, she expressed frustration with the administration's sluggish response to calls for a comprehensive long-term plan to monitor and treat sick workers.

"Everyone who breathed deadly toxic fumes deserves to be monitored and examined and everyone who is sick deserves to be treated," Maloney said. "We've been promised a plan for well over a year, but we have yet to see it."

Maloney and Rep. Vito Fossella recently re-introduced the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. The bill would extend and improve the federal government's long-term medical monitoring, treatment and compensation for those afflicted by ground zero toxins. So far, however, the measure has languished in Congress.

Maloney has also urged New York's medical examiner to reconsider James Zadroga's death as a homicide. (New York still has not recognized his death as 9/11-related, despite a New Jersey medical examiner's ruling that it was.) Only an acknowledgment by the city would include Zadroga in the "official" tally of 9/11 victims. Only then would his name be added to the Sept. 11 memorial.

"That's an honor he deserves," Joseph Zadroga said.

Nearly six years after 9/11, the death toll from the terrorist attack continues to grow. NYPD Det. Robert Williamson died last month of pancreatic cancer his family says was caused by his recovery work at ground zero. The 20-year police veteran toiled for more than 100 hours on the World Trade Center's pile of toxic debris before retiring in 2002 and ultimately falling ill.

Williamson, 46, left behind a wife, Maureen, and three children. He was finally awarded a disability pension last September - just days before the fifth anniversary of Sept, 11, 2001. Maureen Williamson says her husband was never angry about his condition even though he predicted the impending crisis while he was working among the ground zero toxins.

"He said within weeks, 'A lot of people are gonna be very, very sick.' It was that obvious, he just knew it," she recalls.

Maureen Williamson says doctors and lawmakers are finally confronting the magnitude of the problem. She credits the New Jersey medical examiner who conclusively linked Zadroga's death last year to ground zero exposure as a "monumental" turning point. Still, she says, the wake-up call may be too late for some.

"We're coming around to admitting it and fessing up to it. It's taken this long to say people are dying from exposure down there," she said. "They're getting sick and they're so young. They've lived half their life, and they're getting robbed of the other half."

[prinzowhales]

This horror in New York is just a microcosm of what is happening to our sevicemen and veterans who were affected by experimental vaccinations, depleted uranium and the nerve and chemical agents that the US and its flunkies in Europe sold to Saddam Hussein--Hillary by the way was on the board of Loral Corporation, one of Saddam's suppliers.

Its 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.

[dialecticks]

No free medicine for anyone!!!
They called heroes on national TV for weeks. Aint that enough.
Vote Guiliani 2008!!!

[prinzowhales]

Now that Hamas--the winners of the Palestinian elections--has captured the intelligence center of Fatah, we are getting a glimpse of the ties of US and Israeli intel to their fellow criminals in Fatah. Hopefully, these documents will be put up on the internet and translated ASAP.

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.

[pastdue1]

"There%u2019s legal language nearby. Here's the plain English: no libel, slander, no lying, no fabricating, no swearing at all, no words that teenagers use a lot that some people think aren't swearing but we do, no insulting groups or individuals, no ethnic slurs and/or epithets, no religious bigotry, no threats of any kind, no bathroom humor, no comparing anyone to Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. We expect heated, robust debate, but comments should be polite and civil. We consider this to be public space so behave and write accordingly."
Your acceptance of the Rules of Engagement is required for you to post

[slim1h2o]

Page 1 of 8 | First | 1 2 3 4 5 | Last
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...

[fascistusa]

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.

[slim1h2o]

Bush doesn't know how to fly a jet, nor does he
have any known talents, other than BS'ing

[fascistusa]

I'm ACCUSING LORD BUSH OF KILLING 3000 AMERICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

[prinzowhales]

No one is accusing the "nation" of murdering 3,000 Americans--they are accusing elements within the Washington regime and accomplices without the regime. Bush, the commander-in-chief sat on his dead fanny in a Florida elementary classroom with his intellectual peers reading 'My Pet Goat' while America was 'under attack'--and he knew before he left his hotel that the first plane had hit the WTC--and his Secret Service detachment which had a direct link to the FAA knew about the hijackings.

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.

[fascistusa]

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.

[slim1h2o]

BTW, The instuctors admitted that, on my last post

[slim1h2o]

I think everybody is forgetting the Flight School
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..........?

[fascistusa]

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.

[alphaa10-2009]

Sharply-focused and timely report on America's forgotten heroes of 911. These people deserve all the medical help they need, and then some.

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.

[king77shaw]

it's got nothing to do with liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat etc... it has everything to do with truth and transparancy about the greatest crime ever committed. We received neither.

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?

[dlpracer]

dlpracer,,,, That's quite a spin dude... Your own GOP in every speach has been accusing Americans of being Un-Patriot & Un-American for over 6 long years --
--- 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
-------------

Hey dude,

Anybody that uses "every", and can't spell speech, is automatically an IDIOT.

Try again.

[feelfree1]

guyfrompa45,

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?

[space_poet]

That's not true dlpracer, you will find sensible people here, you just have to know who to talk to. You're not going to get reasonable responses from fanatics. There are some on both sides, and they tend to be very vocal. I tend to spot them anytime they resort to name calling, it's quick proof of a 3 year olds argument, i automatically skip over any post with name calling.

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?

[j-whitman]

dlpracer,,,, That's quite a spin dude... Your own GOP in every speach has been accusing Americans of being Un-Patriot & Un-American for over 6 long years --
--- Hell man, even Bush called his own republicans Un-American for opposing him on immigration.

[j-whitman]

guyfrompa45,,,, Unfortunatly we are indeed resopnsible for creating the problems, & we seriously need to look at it... Back in 1947, Jews had just as much diversity & where more militant... They where responsible for attacks even against the British ----- Our blind support of Isreal & deliberate ignorance of their neigbors is the cause of 9/11