Honouring heroes

[morgan_dhu]

On September 11, 2001, and on the long days following it, thousands of fire-fighters, police officers, and volunteers worked in the ruins of the World Trade Center, breathing in a toxic mixture of chemicals, concrete dust, asbestos, fibreglass, petroleum combustion byproducts, and some things that had never existed before because no one had ever burned all those substances together in one place before. Many had inadequate breathing gear, or none at all.

In the days following September 11, 2001, many New Yorkers remained in the city, or returned within just days or weeks, breathing in the dust, cleaning up the hazardous waste that filled their homes and offices, often with nothing more than a wet rag and a dust mop. Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the EPA assured them that the air was safe to breathe.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of New Yorkers, many of them firefighters, police officers and others who worked at Ground Zero, are now disabled due to conditions that can be medically linked to their exposures to toxins on September 11 and the days following. Some have died. Many more are still working, but struggling with asthma, gastric complaints, headaches, diminished lung capacity, dozens of other medical problems. Some are beginning to develop environmentally-induced cancers. Medical experts in human response to toxic exposures predict that as time passes, more and more of those exposed will get sick, those who are already sick will, for the most part, get sicker, and more will die.

Most of them have faced disbelief, resistance and denial every step of the way from their insurers and their governments in their search for workers' compensation, medical pensions, appropriate health care.

Many of these people were honoured by their government as heroes five years ago. What a difference five years can make.

Comments

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

There is a great podcast up at cuny.edu about this.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

The CBC has produced a documentary (http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/toxiclegacy/) about this - it aired last night here in Canada, which is part of why I was thinking about this today and decided to post about it.

I'll check out the cuny podcast - thanks.

As a person with disabling environmental illness, I feel a certain kinship with these people.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

What I liked about the podcast (it's someone from the faculty at Queens College giving a lecture) was the way it broke down all of the different studies that have been done. I found it exceedingly informative.

I hope they show the CBC production down here, sometime.