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Thread: A Fallen Hero - Video Inside

  1. #331
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    “There were two separate pollution events, and the first was an initial dust cloud,” Cahill explains. “What must not be forgotten is that the later effects from the smoldering pile were far, far worse.”

    Unlike the publicly lambasted EPA tests and findings, Cahill’s studies, which were published in peer-reviewed forums, were widely praised for their accuracy. Though the University of California at Davis has offered the conclusions to the EPA, the Senate, and New York City health officials, Cahill says he isn’t aware of a single state or federal agency that has acted on his findings. Through sample analysis, Cahill first discovered that 21 percent of the initial dust cloud contained finely powdered, highly caustic cement—thought to be responsible for the “9/11 cough.” Cahill noticed that the heat generated by the piles was converting gases into highly toxic, very fine aerosols. His study “Analysis of Aerosols From World Trade Center Attack” indicated that the contaminated air sometimes descended to ground level over a mile from Ground Zero, far outside the safety zones established by the EPA. Within a few hours’ time, a person exposed to the fumes could ingest toxins that would otherwise take a year to accumulate in a typical environment.

    “The fuming World Trade Center debris pile was a chemical factory that exhaled toxins in a particularly dangerous form that could penetrate deep into the lungs of rescue workers and local residents,” Cahill and his fellow researchers concluded.

    It’s painful just listening to Susan talk on the phone. Her gasps and wheezes and long pauses in conversation give you the impression that she may not make it through an entire conversation, and I caught her on a good day. A bad day means that she won’t even be able to make the trek from Queens to her office downtown.

    “The public isn’t aware of just how bad the effects have been,” Susan says.

    “Susan,” an anonymous source, was one of 386,000 people who worked in Lower Manhattan before the attacks. A week after the attacks, she returned to her job downtown.

    “Within 24 hours of returning to work, I had a problem,” she warbles. “I could not breathe at the office.”

    Even though she had heard the assurances of officials on television, today she bears the signs of serious toxic exposure: internal chemical burns, chronic respiratory infections, and severe asthma attacks.

    For average citizens like Susan, New York City offers only one publicly funded treatment option: the WTC Environmental Health Center (WTC-EHC) at Bellevue Hospital, a new program launched in January 2007 that will expand to treat about 6,000 New Yorkers with 9/11-related health problems. The World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program based at Mount Sinai and the Fire Department of New York’s Bureau of Health Services programs offer services to first responders. Politicians have proposed $1.9 billion in funding over the course of six years.

    “We get about 100 to 200 calls a week,” says Dr. Joan Reibman, director of Bellevue’s WTC-EHC. “We have a couple of hundred people waiting, so to get an appointment takes six weeks.”

    The Bellevue clinic currently serves about 1,300 patients in all. Although the three WTC treatment programs have been praised by Mayor Bloomberg’s office, Reibman explained to me that the WTC treatment programs were initiated by private organizations.

    “Neither the city or the federal government asked anyone to start any of the programs,” she says. Eventually the programs drew the support of city officials and gained funding.

    Critics of the WTC health programs contend that there is no central entity that integrates the gathered information, which could provide a greater understanding of disease incidence as well as a certain level of continuity of treatment.

    “We [the WTC health programs] all work together on the development of guidelines,” Reibman says. “We all share our information with each other. We have different populations, so our questionnaires are different.”

    Although it still makes her ill, Susan continues to plod downtown to work. She says sometimes the air in her workspace makes her eyes burn, but she doesn’t have a choice—disability payments won’t cover the rent or put food on the table.

    “You can’t dwell on it every single minute,” she says. “If people dwelled on what happened, nobody would live downtown because they would be too frightened.”

    Curious about whether the workers and residents of Lower Manhattan are still haunted by health problems like Susan’s, Nina’s, and Teroy’s, I took a walk through the streets surrounding the 9/11 reconstruction site. Although six years have passed since the attacks, the number of people I encountered seemingly with residual health problems surprised me.

    “They told us it would be OK to come back here,” recalls Nicholas Rowe, a silver-haired bartender at a nearby Blarney Stone restaurant and bar. In an Irish lilt, Rowe chose colorful words to denounce the EPA’s assurances, none of them printable.

    “Three months after the attacks, we would open the bar doors each day,” Rowe recalls. “And every time I would wipe off the bar counter, there was black dust. Now I have nose and throat and sinus infections that keep coming back, and I never had those before. My regulars come in with problems too.”

    Just a couple of blocks from the Blarney Stone, I stopped and chatted with Jim Moock, a director of business development at CQG, a market-data provider located in a Broadway high-rise.

    “Some people had painter’s masks on their faces, apparently the cops were giving them out,” Moock said, recalling the day of the attacks. “I didn’t get one. It was chaotic, and the only clear thought I had was, ‘Why didn’t I get one [of the masks]?’”

    Moock developed a dry, hacking cough about two weeks after the attacks. Finally, after two months of aggravation, Moock scheduled a visit with a pulmonologist. That visit has resulted in the first of many subsequent checkups throughout the years.

    “He gives me a test every year or two, and it has shown diminished [lung] capacity,” explained Moock. “He has me on two forms of inhaled medications that I take daily every morning. One is steroid based, and I’ve been on them since 2001.”

    Moock believes he was exposed to the toxic dust in a number of different ways. “When it got to be windy, you would see it blow off the window ledges, and I would be outside and see it land on the sidewalk, and it would just sit there like a clump, not like ashes that would just blow away,” Moock said. “This went on for months. I remember watching it rain on this stuff, and it took a lot of rain to get rid of the dust because it was so dense.”

    Moock claims he hasn’t seen the familiar pockets of dust for a long time, but does it mean the city is now clean and safe?

    In March 2004, in an attempt to “get greater input” regarding the health concerns of New Yorkers, the EPA convened the World Trade Center Expert Technical Review Panel, made up of 18 professionals from academia and public-health organizations. The panel’s goal was to assess any remaining exposures and risks, ascertain any public-health needs that were unmet, and then to offer a recommended course of action. In order to arrive at educated suggestions, the panel needed solid data.

    “The whole process [of gathering data] has been extraordinarily poor in terms of understanding the extent to which people were exposed and possibly remain exposed, and if there are pockets of pollution left,” says Jeanne Stellman, a professor of public health at Columbia University, who served on the panel.

    Various panel members criticized the EPA’s testing methods, suggesting that the data obtained weren’t sound enough to draw the conclusions the EPA had acted on. “There is only a limited amount of data available on what the nature of the exposure was, which varied day to day and hour to hour,” Stellman explains. “There was remarkably little sampling and analysis.”

    End Part III
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  2. #332
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    With so little data available, the panel wasn’t able to determine if the city still required cleanup or not. Too many questions remained unanswered. “At any rate, the issue of cleanup was never resolved,” Stellman says. “And we never got up to the public-health aspects that we were charged with doing.”

    The EPA disbanded the WTC Expert Technical Review Panel in December 2005 without explanation. Few recommendations made it into the public record as a result. Instead of continuing the panel, the EPA decided to implement a second program launched in December 2006. The plan intended to address the cleaning and abatement needs of residents of Lower Manhattan, in the exact same locations it had addressed in its first criticized attempt.

    In its June 2007 congressional testimony, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed the WTC panel’s recommendations and corroborated its assessments. The GAO review stated that the EPA’s decision to incorporate only some, rather than all, of the panel’s recommendations undermined the validity of the second program.

    “The majority of panel members do not support EPA’s second program,” the GAO report concluded. “[The second program] was not responsive to the concerns of residents and workers . . . it was scientifically and technically flawed.”

    Robert Gulack, an attorney with the federal government, thought he had escaped the toxic environment caused by 9/11. When his department relocated into the Woolworth Building following the destruction of 7 World Trade Center, it took him only a few days to notice the effect on his breathing.

    “Three days later I woke up with a severe asthma attack,” Gulack says. “More than half of my coworkers raised their hands during a meeting and said they had illness since coming into the building.”

    To the alarm of his coworkers, Gulack began wearing a double-canister respirator to work every day. The precautions couldn’t deter the onset of problems from the contamination he had already suffered, though.

    “I was certified as a scuba diver, and I had great lung capacity,” he says. “Now a scan shows damage to my lungs and hyperreactivity to irritants.” Once Gulack was rushed to the hospital for pneumonia following a number of bronchial infections. Now his illness carries a diagnosis of reactive airway disorder.

    Gulack explained that even though his agency had received assurances about the building’s air quality from both the landlord and the EPA, later testing (by a private company) proved the area was dangerously contaminated.

    “I know that I was exposed to things that no human being should be exposed to,” Gulack says. “Not only have I been exposed to asbestos but probably a number of other life-threatening contaminants. I’m 53, I have a wife and kids, and I don’t want to be taken away from them. There was no reason to subject me to those dangers—no justification for this at all.”

    As a union steward, Gulack has advocated for employee health concerns and has closely monitored the EPA’s actions since 9/11. He believes that instead of learning from all its mistakes, the EPA remains unprepared for another crisis.

    “New victims are being claimed every day as a result of this contamination,” Gulack says. “The EPA has officially taken their bad choices and made it their model. Now all crises will be handled politically, through the White House.”

    The EPA’s calamitous handling of the 9/11 cleanup brings White House involvement into question. The damning OIG report showed that important public-health information was held back by Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, and evidence also suggests that critical press releases were altered, making them contradict scientific fact. As the report noted, “the White House Council on Environmental Quality . . . influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.”

    Gulack’s concerns are substantiated by another indictment of the EPA—this time in their handling of the hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. A June 2007 report from the GAO contains an eerily reminiscent passage: “EPA’s assurance that the public health is being protected from the risks associated with the inhalation of asbestos fibers is limited because the agency has not deployed air monitors in and around New Orleans neighborhoods where demolition and renovation activities are concentrated.”

    Within sight of Ground Zero quietly stands the Statue of Liberty, seemingly ignored in our post-9/11 world. But like an oracle from a distant time, she offers prophetic words of concern. In the shadow of the attacks, the inscription at her base no longer seems to address immigrants but rather speaks directly to New Yorkers who now find themselves disenfranchised and suffocating with disease: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

    Yet some leaders are speaking up for sickened New Yorkers. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Vito Fossella of New York introduced the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which would expand the current health programs for first responders, area residents, office workers, and students. New York representative Jerrold Nadler tirelessly champions decisive action on behalf of New Yorkers who are still susceptible to toxins.

    “We have to clean this up; it was never done properly,” says Nadler, who also says cleanup efforts could run several billion dollars, but there is no exact figure because nobody knows how extensive the contamination is and if it extends to Brooklyn as well.

    Because adequate testing has yet to be conducted, nobody knows for certain just how toxic Lower Manhattan remains, but there are plenty of indicators that the 9/11 attacks are still dismantling the downtown infrastructure. Two former Deutsche Bank buildings downtown will soon be demolished as a direct result of 9/11 contamination, and more demolitions are expected.

    “To clean it up, it costs between $10,000 and $20,000 per apartment,” Nadler says about the current price of adequate cleaning. “Are you going to ask a resident to pay that?”

    On June 25, 2007, former EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman testified before a congressional hearing and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or culpability in the EPA’s handling of the disaster. Nadler, who represents nearly all of Lower Manhattan, presided over the hearings.

    “Let’s be clear: There are people to blame,” Whitman said. “They are the terrorists who attacked the United States.”

    Nadler offered me a distinction.

    “I divide the population of affected people in different ways,” he says. “First are the ones that were killed, and you can blame the terrorists for those. Then there was the plume—we think about 30,000 people were caught in it. And those people were also sickened by the terrorists. But the others are first responders on the pile, and most of those are sick due to exposure—there you can blame public officials who permitted them to work on the pile.” Nadler also includes area residents and workers among the victims of public officials.

    During the hearings, Whitman acknowledged that some first responders were sickened by the contamination because they did not wear respirators.

    “After the first three days, it is not a rescue operation,” Nadler says. “It is simply a cleanup, and there is no excuse for not doing it properly. At the Pentagon site, nobody got sick there because they enforced the safety laws.” Workers who did not comply with safety regulations were not permitted on-site at the Pentagon-run cleanup.

    “Every action taken by the EPA during the response to this horrific event was designed to provide the most comprehensive protection and the most accurate information to the residents of Manhattan,” Whitman stated in a press release. Her remarks, however, only served to enrage already traumatized New Yorkers.

    Through a spokesperson, Whitman declined to answer any questions for this article, instead offering a prepared statement citing her congressional testimony.

    “It is clear there are laws and regulations that were in place, which, had they been followed, would have prevented all this,” Nadler says. “They weren’t followed.”

    While the courts try to determine who is responsible for the environmental debacle following 9/11, countless New Yorkers continue to live and work near Lower Manhattan with the assumption that it is safe. The dust is now out of sight, out of mind, and possibly in their lungs, hearts, and bloodstreams.

    End
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  3. #333
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    Just an FYI… the NYTimes came out with what appears to be a “hit piece” today with regard to the Toxic Dust. The “Debunkers” have jumped on it of course. Soooo… there aren’t policemen and firemen walking around with mobile respirators? There aren’t over 100 people that died that just happened to be down at Ground Zero? Coincidence? Is this all a figment of my imagination? The “Debunkers” have stooped to a new low. Even though they say that they “hope and pray that working on the pile did not lead to longterm problems for a large number of the people involved, but that’s just hoping for the best for them, not the best for us” in their “debunking”, the “debunking” itself, at least to me, is like attacking the heroes of 9/11. They would step on the sick and dying responders just because of one article, completely ignoring the years of other articles that substantiate what we’re saying, just to try and make us look bad. Way to go guys. You should be proud.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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    Rally for 9/11 bill to treat ailing first responders, residents

    http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wi...,5950142.story

    3:13 PM EDT, September 8, 2007

    NEW YORK (AP) _ Politicians and labor leaders gathered Saturday at ground zero to support federal legislation aimed at providing medical coverage to first responders and others afflicted by toxic dust and debris after the World Trade Center attack.

    The rally was timed to coincide with the upcoming sixth anniversary of the attacks, when three members of New York's congressional delegation will introduce the bipartisan 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. Democrats Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, along with Republican Vito Fossella, will bring the bill to Congress on Tuesday.

    "The heroes of 9/11 responded immediately when our country was attacked, but when these same heroes needed help, our government dragged its heels," Maloney said. "Thousands are sick and that's a fact."

    The bill would cover first responders and rescue workers, construction workers and volunteers from the nine-month cleanup of the rubble from the twin towers. It would also provide health monitoring and treatment for local residents, students and others who were in lower Manhattan after the attacks.

    Joining the politicians were representatives from the New York City Central Labor Council, the New York Building & Construction Trades Council and the New York State AFL-CIO.

    "We will not forget," said U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. "We're going to rescue the rescuers."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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    6 Years Later, 9/11 Health Questions Linger

    http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/hea...out608085.html

    09.11.07, 12:00 AM ET

    TUESDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) -- No one doubts the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center disaster on rescue and cleanup workers' hearts, lungs and minds.

    First, workers inhaled a toxic cocktail of soot, metals and other particles deep into their lungs during 12-hour shifts that lasted for weeks. There was also the psychological toll the cleanup effort took -- especially on those least prepared to deal with it.

    "There were quite powerful stories of workers who would receive a load of debris and be dumping and find, for example, a human hand in it. And then not to be able to adequately process what it was that they were experiencing," said Alison Geyh, an environmental health scientist at Johns Hopkins University who spent weeks at the site -- an experience she said often left her shaken.

    When it comes to the long-term health impact on workers, however, nothing remains certain, despite numerous highly publicized reports from government and private agencies.

    "It's a real commentary that here we can have the largest manmade catastrophe of this sort for which we have so little environmental data," said Jeanne Stellman, now a professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, in New York City.

    "That's really a sad commentary on how we handled it," said Stellman, who took part in a landmark Mount Sinai Medical Center study as the deputy director of Mount Sinai's Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine in New York City.

    The study released by the center just before the five-year anniversary of 9/11 found that 69 percent of 9,442 responders examined reported "new or worsened respiratory symptoms."

    Almost half -- 46.5 percent -- of responders suffered more serious lower respiratory symptoms, including phlegm-laden "World Trade Center cough," the study found. Just under 63 percent said they have suffered from milder symptoms since cleanup wrapped up in April 2006, such as itchy eyes or runny noses.

    And at least two people have died from illnesses experts have linked to 9/11 exposures. Felicia Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old lawyer, succumbed to a disease resembling sarcoidosis five months after the attacks, and James Zadroga, a 34-year-old New York City police detective, died of pulmonary disease early in 2006.

    Other studies have also suggested at least short-term respiratory effects, including a New York City Department of Health study released last month that found first responders to the attack now have a risk for asthma that is 12 times that of the general population.

    But the available data may never be adequate to reveal the whole picture, experts said.

    "First of all, we know nothing about the types of contaminants that were present in the days following the event, because there was no monitoring in place," Geyh said.

    Her team's study, published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine, found relatively high levels of fine particles under 2.5 micrometers in diameter in air samples taken at Ground Zero in late September and October, 2001. These tiny particles can lodge deep in the lungs, potentially causing health problems for years to come.

    Geyh said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wasn't able to install air monitoring equipment at the Trade Center site until near the end of September 2001. And she stressed that no one sample can ever give an adequate picture of the overall air quality. "It varied day to day," she aid. "We hypothesize that that had to do with how aggressive the fires were burning, or how aggressive the debris-removal activity was occurring."

    Stellman, who has testified before the U.S. Senate on Ground Zero air quality and the clean-up effort, said getting a fix on the exact level of contaminants any one worker might have been exposed to will be nearly impossible. "The air changed from moment to moment, place to place, day to day," she noted. "We only have a small number of measures as to what was there."

    Worker's level of protection varied too -- something Geyh said she witnessed firsthand. A variety of masks -- everything from the plain white ones commonly sold, to more sophisticated half-face, canister-equipped versions -- were often available, she said. But workers got little direction on how to use them or which mask might be best for their particular level of exposure. "It was very clear to us that that information was not easily found by the people who were supposed to be wearing the mask," Geyh said.

    Another expert pointed to the discord that exists between EPA air samples and those garnered by private testing firms. Those firms were hired by banks and other corporations to test whether it was safe for workers to return to their lower Manhattan offices in the weeks after 9/11.

    Those private environmental testing services "found a list that was longer in terms of contaminants, and in higher concentrations, for weeks afterwards and possibly even for longer," compared to EPA readings, said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "There's a conflict of the information that we got at the time and what private companies were getting."

    Stellman refuted that argument, however, saying that Horovitz was comparing "apples and oranges." She said that while the EPA was taking samples of outdoor air quality, most of the sampling done by the private firms was done inside buildings.

    "It's very hard to make these comparisons because the EPA, I don't believe, had a lot of indoor air quality data," Stellman said.

    But criticism of the Mount Sinai research program continues. In a Sept. 7, 2007, article in The New York Times, a number of critics charged that the findings from the Selikoff center -- founded in the 1980s with political backing from labor unions -- are biased in favor of boosting the number of workers thought to be affected by contaminants.

    The center's supporters -- including Stellman -- shot back that the Mount Sinai team's efforts were stymied early on by a lack of federal funding and the government's emphasis that worker health screening, not research, be the focus of their efforts at the site.

    So, questions on the long-term health effects of those weeks of grueling work at Ground Zero remain unresolved and may never be resolved due to a paucity of data, the experts said.

    "What we don't know certainly weighs much more heavily than what we do know," according to Horovitz.

    One thing scientists do understand, he said, is that particles under 2.5 micrometers can lodge in the lungs' tiniest channels for years, potentially causing lung disease, atherosclerosis ("hardening of the arteries"), and even cancers.

    Many of these illnesses may not show up for decades. "It is definitely far too early to know what's coming down the road for cancer, for example," Stellman said.

    She believes it may never be certain whether Ground Zero exposure was carcinogenic. "Because, tragic and horrifying as [9/11] was, the population exposed may never be big enough [statistically] to actually give us a definite answer," Stellman explained.

    The psychological consequences for workers are becoming increasingly clear, however. In another New York City health department report, released in August, researchers found that one in every eight responders and workers has come down with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    Risks for the troubling condition appear to correlate with the length of time workers spent at the Trade Center site, how soon they arrived after the disaster, and their level of training in dealing with traumatic events, the study found.

    All of the data, on both mental and physical health, does point to one conclusion, the experts said -- that workers will need to be monitored and tended to for decades to come.

    "They are the people who put themselves at risk to help this country heal," Geyh said. "We should be vigilant to make sure that we understand what's going on with them."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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    Doctor details 9/11 workers' illnesses

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070912/...attacks_health

    By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
    1 hour, 46 minutes ago

    WASHINGTON - Doctors treating sickened ground zero workers offered Congress a detailed diagnosis Wednesday of the ailments still affecting thousands after the Sept. 11 attacks, but warned that there's no way to determine how many more may become afflicted with life-threatening illnesses.

    Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine described three months of recent medical treatment to a House panel examining how many of those who toiled on the toxic debris pile are still sick — or may get sick.

    Thousands of people "are still suffering," Landrigan said a day after the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Their ailments range from runny noses to laryngitis to lung disease, he said.

    "Respiratory illness, psychological distress and financial devastation have become a new way of life for many," he told the House Education and Labor Committee. He advocated leaving Sept. 11-related medical programs in place to try to determine how many workers might develop long-term diseases.

    Patricia Clark, a regional official with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said workers who were exposed to ground zero toxins in the first 48 hours after the attacks were hit with an "incredible assault" on their health. Still, she defended her agency's air sampling, which found little evidence of dangerously high levels of asbestos and other contaminants.

    The figures offered Wednesday further define the medical problems found by a 2006 Mount Sinai study, which said 70 percent of ground zero workers suffered new or worsened respiratory problems after their exposure to the debris of the World Trade Center.

    Landrigan offered new specifics of the most prevalent symptoms among the police officers, firefighters, construction workers and volunteers examined.

    Between April and June of this year, doctors in the 9/11 workers health program overseen by Mount Sinai saw 2,323 patients.

    They found:

    _Lower respiratory problems in 40 percent of patients. Asthma and asthma-like reactive airways disease were found in 30 percent. Smaller portions of patients had chronic cough — 7 percent — or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — 5 percent.

    _Upper respiratory conditions in 59 percent. The most common condition was runny nose, in 51 percent of the workers, and chronic sinusitis, in about a fifth of them.

    _Mental health problems, the most common being post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, in 36 percent of patients.

    Landrigan said it is still unclear how many of those patients will continue to experience such symptoms, or how many may develop new diseases like cancer many years after their exposure.

    Lingering 9/11-related illnesses — and deaths of some first responders years after the attacks — have led to calls in Congress for a federal program to fund long-term health programs for those workers.

    So far, the government has paid for piecemeal screening and treatment of emergency personnel, construction workers and volunteers, but advocates want such programs expanded to include lower Manhattan residents, students and tourists.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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    9/11 Health Problems Demand Less Talk, More Action

    http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...alth-prob.html

    (Gold9472: Way to go Brandon.)

    By Brandon Keim
    September 14, 2007

    911 "Respiratory illness, psychological distress and financial devastation have become a new way of life for many" 9/11 cleanup workers and first responders, Mount Sinai School of Medicine doctor Philip Landrigan told a Congressional committee yesterday. As reported in the Associated Press, 70 percent of the workers "suffered new or worsened respiratory problems after their exposure to the debris of the World Trade Center. The majority suffered from so-called lower respiratory problems -- wheezing, shortened breath, chronic coughs -- that are seen as indicators of serious health problems.

    The New York Times recently discussed the work of Landrigan and his colleagues, who work at Mount Sinai's Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine. After 9/11, the clinic's doctors "stepped into the fray in the absence of any meaningful effort by the city, state or federal government to survey, interview or offer treatment to potentially sickened recovery and cleanup workers." But the clinic has historically strong ties to organized labor, and critics say that it has favored advocacy over strong science, and that the epidemiological data it's provided is patchy and haphazard.

    There's probably an element of truth to that, particularly the latter charge: with a tiny budget, no time to plan and just six full-time doctors, the clinic embarked on an "unprecedented epidemiological challenge." Its data isn't as rigorously parsed as it ought to be. In the future, more studies will be needed in the wake of natural and man-made disasters to document their public health effect. But as far as the health of people who breathed the foul post-9/11 air is concerned, the critics are missing the forest for the trees. Data doesn't have to be perfect to be useful, and as patchy as it may be, there's enough to show that a great many people inhaled high levels of burning toxic compounds, and it appears to have harmed them. As the AP notes,

    Lingering 9/11-related illnesses and deaths of some first responders years after the attacks have led to calls in Congress for a federal program to fund long-term health programs for those workers.

    So far, the government has paid for piecemeal screening and treatment of emergency personnel, construction workers and volunteers, but advocates want such programs expanded to include lower Manhattan residents, students and tourists.

    That this should even be debatable is disgusting.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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    http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...58&newsLang=en

    September 16, 2007 07:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time

    Retired NY Giants Great George Martin Begins ''a Journey for 9/11''

    3,200+ Mile Cross-Country Trek from George Washington Bridge to Golden Gate Bridge Will Benefit Thousands of Sick WTC Rescue and Recovery Workers

    NFL Alum, AXA Equitable Executive Embarks on Four-Month Journey; Seeks to Raise $10+ Million for Ground Zero Workers Now In Severe Medical Distress

    NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Retired New York Giants co-captain and Super Bowl champion George Martin will embark today on a physical challenge far more demanding than an NFL training camp when he begins a 3,200+ mile fundraising walk across the United States to benefit sick Ground Zero rescue and recovery workers. The walk, called a Journey for 9/11,” (www.ajourneyfor911.info) is expected to take approximately four months, and will start at the George Washington Bridge in New York City and end at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Mr. Martin seeks to raise awareness about these health issues and more than $10 million for 9/11 workers who are suffering serious medical conditions related to their efforts at Ground Zero after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

    “Thousands of people – first responders, volunteers, construction workers and so many others – unselfishly put themselves in harm's way for months after September 11, and they deserve the best medical attention available,” said Mr. Martin, now vice president of sports marketing for AXA Equitable, which has given him a leave of absence for his Journey. “We need to do as much as we possibly can for any of these workers who are now suffering medically because of their efforts. This Journey is one way I can make a difference, and I invite others to support our mission.”

    George Martin was a star defensive end and co-captain of the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants (1986). In Super Bowl XXI, he famously tackled Broncos quarterback John Elway for a safety in the end zone. During his 14 NFL seasons (1975-1988), Mr. Martin scored seven touchdowns (three on interception returns), which set a record for defensive linemen. He is a former president of the NFL Players Association.

    Inspired by a Neighborhood Loss

    Mr. Martin feels a personal connection to the events of September 11. A New Jersey resident, two of Mr. Martin’s young neighbors perished in the terrorist attacks. In honor of them and the thousands of firefighters; police officers; EMTs; clergy; construction and other workers; and volunteers who helped dig through the rubble, he hopes to attract the attention of and financial contributions from Americans and businesses coast-to-coast as he treks through towns and cities across the United States for the next four months.

    The Medical Problems of Working at Ground Zero

    Medical studies now substantiate what many had suspected and claimed for several years – that working at Ground Zero led to serious, long-term medical problems for thousands of people. Studies indicate that 3.6 percent of WTC rescue and recovery workers reported developing asthma after exposure to dust and debris from working at the site, 12 times the rate of the normal adult population. And according to the NYC Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, one in eight of nearly 30,000 WTC rescue and recovery workers developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition found to be highest among WTC volunteers http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2007/pr076-07.shtml.

    The Start of the Route

    “a Journey for 9/11,” a not for profit charitable organization, commences on Sunday, September 16, 2007, at the New York side of the George Washington Bridge. After a brief ceremony there, Mr. Martin, volunteers, philanthropic donors, corporate sponsors and other supporters will join him as he treks across the famed bridge into New Jersey. He will then walk four plus miles to a ceremony at the Hackensack University Medical Center, which along with the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health Systems and the Mt. Sinai Medical Center will match the total funds Mr. Martin’s Journey raises. From there Mr. Martin will walk to Giants Stadium, where he will be honored at halftime ceremonies during the Giants home opener vs. the Green Bay Packers. Legendary Giants alumni will help collect Journey donations from fans outside the Stadium, Mr. Martin will address the crowd and the team will show a career highlights reel to game attendees to give the former defensive end a formal send-off.

    The Route and Journey Team

    States on Mr. Martin’s Journey include New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. On Friday, September 21, he will pass through Washington, DC, for a special event with the NFL Players Association.

    The retired NFL great plans to walk approximately 50 miles each day: 12 ½ miles before breakfast, 12 ½ before lunch, 12 ½ in the afternoon, followed by a short rest, and then a final 12 ½ before dinner and bed. Mr. Martin, 54, has been training for more than three months for this endeavor.

    Throughout his Journey, Mr. Martin will be accompanied by one security officer and a support team that includes an advance person; a technology specialist who will document the Journey; a medical technician; and a driver, who will drive the team’s accompanying motor home.

    Support from Business, Medical, Education, Sports and Charitable Community

    Sponsors of the Journey include Hackensack University Medical Center; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health Systems; Mt. Sinai Medical Center; Fairleigh Dickinson University; United Parcel Service; Bear Stearns; Nike; TanaSeybert; Keyspan Energy; Hunter Douglas; the New York Giants; the National Football League; the National Football League Players Association; General Motors; Sprint and World Wrestling Entertainment. Philanthropists Joseph H. and Dr. Carol F. Reich led the way with a donation today of $911,000.

    “I'll walk every mile of the route, and will enjoy meeting this challenge; no walking a few miles and then riding in a car,” said Mr. Martin. “Outside of family, this is the most important thing I have ever done in my life.”

    Donations

    To make a tax deductible financial donation to “a Journey for 9/11,” visit http://www.active.com/donate/aJourneyfor911; or write to “a Journey for 9/11,” Rockefeller Center, P.O. Box 4862, New York, NY 10185-4862; or call 888-702-5080.

    For general information about a Journey for 9/11, visit www.ajourneyfor911.info.

  9. #339
    simuvac Guest
    http://www.active.com/donate/aJourneyfor911

    If this website is correct, this guy has already generated over $1 million in donations.

    Some of the top contributors:

    The Jim Fassel Foundation $25,000.00 WWE . $10,000.00 Bill Parcells $10,000.00 Lee Reeves In Loving Memory - Minnie L. Reeves $5,000.00 Inc. Man Etc. $2,500.00 Pamela Duffy $500.00

  10. #340
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
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    America
    Posts
    30,749
    Giants Star Martin Begins 9/11 March

    http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...EEdfkkmaHjnt_w

    1 hour ago

    NEW YORK (AP) — Saying he knows what real heroism is, former New York Giants star George Martin began a cross-country walk to raise money for ailing ground zero workers.

    A captain of the 1987 Super Bowl champions, Martin was cheered on by a few dozen volunteers Sunday as he stepped onto the pedestrian walkway of the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan and New Jersey.

    "I've been termed a hero for playing a kids' game at a pro level, and that does not rise to the level of heroic," Martin said Saturday as he got ready for his journey. "I think of 9/11, when I saw people respond and put their health, their careers, their lives in jeopardy."

    Walking briskly, he hopes to cover at least 30 miles a day in a march that, if all goes well, will end at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in about four months.

    Martin said he was moved by the stories of World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers who began getting ill years after the terror attacks. There is evidence that some illnesses may be linked to the toxic dust of the twin towers.

    He hopes the walk will raise $10 million.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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