Helping Those Who Helped After 9/11

For most of her life, Belinda Shaw was the picture of health, reports CBS Evening News Sunday anchor Russ Mitchell.

"Everybody knows Belinda. They know how I am and they know — very strong robust girl full of muscles and always on the go," says Shaw.

A New York City police detective, she loved swimming and running. These days, she struggles to walk a block. Like so many others, Shaw's life changed forever on Sept. 11th, 2001.

"There was just piles and piles and piles of debris," says Shaw. "Another truck would come in and bring more — we would just keep going in."

Shaw was one of 40,000 people who helped with the cleanup and investigation of the attack. For three months, the 51-year-old sorted through the rubble from the World Trade Center at a landfill on nearby Staten Island.

"We would have to sift through it for any kind of identification of any kind of human remains," she says. "For the purpose of doing DNA — no matter how small it is."

Even though she was not actually at ground zero, her work exposed her to the same toxic stew: building dust mixed with jet fuel and human remains.

Now she suffers from a long list of ailments: asthma, reflux, lesions in her vocal chords, muscle inflammation, and the most severe: pulmonary fibrosis.

"It's a scarring they said of the lungs. They said I have 50 percent capacity," she says.

Daniel Arrigo was at ground zero. A construction worker who's also 51, he's lost 44 percent of his lung capacity.

"Hopefully, there'll be something for me when I get to the point that I can't work," he says.

Arrigo and others hold federal officials responsible for their illnesses, because they assured the public that the air at ground zero was not dangerous.

"We have not seen any reason — any readings that have indicated any health hazard," said then Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman at a press conference soon after 9/11.

"They threw us all a curve ball," says Arrigo. "And I think as a result of them not being up front with everybody that was down there, they damn well should step up to the plate."

The ground zero workers want help meeting soaring medical bills and more disability coverage. That could be costly.

Doctors who've been monitoring 16,000 of the 40,000 who responded in the days after 9/11 fear a major health crisis is looming.

"We're looking potentially at an iceberg and we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now unfortunately," says Dr. Robin Herbert of Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The illnesses vary widely. Some, like Arrigo's, showed up early and have resisted treatment. Others, like Belinda Shaw's, took longer to appear, but are more acute. Doctors have no idea how many more of the responders may fill ill.

New York City's World Trade Center Health Registry is tracking the conditions of some 71,000 people who were in lower Manhattan on 9/11 or who were involved in the cleanup.

"We know that people were exposed to pulverized glass and pulverized cement and asbestos and benzene," says Herbert.

Now reports of a number of deaths from exposure to ground zero debris are further troubling survivors.

"Would I do it again? In hindsight? I don't know," says Arrigo.

Belinda Shaw says she was just doing her job, but wonders in the future if others will be willing to make the same sacrifice.

"Another major catastrophe happens — how would you want people to respond to help if you can't help those that are sick now?
Russ Mitchell