wtc
A young police detective who spent nearly 500 hours sifting through rubble at Ground Zero has died of a lung disease connected to his cleanup efforts, police union officials said yesterday.

James Zadroga, 34, who died Thursday at his parents' New Jersey home, retired from the NYPD in July 2004 because of his deteriorating health. He is the first emergency worker to die from constant exposure to the Sept. 11 wreckage at the World Trade Center, said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association. ......................................................................................................................................................

Health studies indicate that many if not most of the thousands laboring at Ground Zero received neither proper respiratory masks nor warnings about airborne hazards. A survey of exposed iron workers by New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center revealed that in the first week, 74 percent had only disposable dust masks or no protection at all. A survey by New York City Fire Department of 319 firefighters showed that on the day of the disaster, nearly 80 percent had similarly inadequate protection.

While more firefighters obtained proper respiratory gear over the next two weeks, about half said they wore it only rarely. According to environmental scientist Paul Lioy’s report on the government’s emergency response, Ground Zero workers -- lacking proper training and accurate official safety information --had little incentive to wear the "uncomfortable and unmanageable" respiratory gear.

- bill 1-10-2006 7:05 pm

But Christine Todd Whitman told me it was safe!
- jim 1-11-2006 6:04 pm [add a comment]


One of my crazy impulses to help was to drive across country, buying out all the HEPA resperators at Home Depots along the way, and showing up at ground zero to hand 'em out. Might have helped, but sounds like safe breathing wasn't a priority.

I also thought about driving to New Orleans with a boat when it became clear Katrina was going to hit the city, but seems like that wouldn't have done any good either, given the blockade of civilian boaters.

Is our voters learning?

- mark 1-12-2006 2:24 am [add a comment]


On November 22, Clinton and Nadler wrote to Stephen Johnson, the EPA commissioner, renewing the call for compromise. One week later, the EPA released its final plan.

"For the life of me," Clinton has said, "I don't understand why the EPA will not do the right and smart thing in helping us reach that kind of resolution."

Oppelt says he and his EPA colleagues "were ready to meet with Senator Clinton and talk," but then the proposed signature unraveled. He has agreed to push for more work on developing the slag wool marker, which he calls "a very critical piece." If the agency has a "defensible" signature, he suggests, it might be able to expand its current plan. But for now, he says, "we're moving forward."

So are critics. Last week, Clinton and Nadler asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to examine the EPA's "failure to establish an effective, science-based testing and cleanup plan." At the very least, they hope a GAO investigation keeps the issue from being swept under the rug.

"Nobody is walking away from this issue," says Kimberly Flynn, of 9/11 Environmental Action. "Only the EPA is walking away."


- bill 1-12-2006 5:16 am [add a comment]


In the panic that enveloped the city after September 11, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved swiftly to reopen lower Manhattan’s financial district. But when a strange affliction began to sweep through the community, people questioned whether Washington’s eagerness to revive downtown Manhattan came at the expense of public safety.

- bill 1-12-2006 5:19 am [add a comment]



"The site was hot for months. The metals burned into fine particles. They rose in a plume and moved over people's heads on most days. There were at least eight days when the plume was pushed down into the city. Then people tasted it, smelled it and saw it. But people who worked in the pile were getting it every day. The workers are the ones that I worry about most," Cahill told The Chronicle.

Cahill's data found that the pollution included very fine metals, which interfere with lung chemistry; sulfuric acid, which attacks lung cells; carcinogenic organic matter; and very fine insoluble particles such as glass, which travel through the lungs and into the bloodstream and heart.

- bill 1-12-2006 5:29 am [add a comment]





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