HEALTH ISSUES: 9/11 dust and debris exposure victims. Those not immediately killed. A guest post, from someone I have met by email, having something important to say.

9/11 - the dust cloud and rescue work - from Google Images

Between the dotted lines is a report from Barbara O'Brien, of the Mesothelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center, where she publishes online. O'Brien has published at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on health and health related issues, and served as a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC.

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Will the 9/11 First Responders Law Do the Job?

In the final days of the 111^th Congress, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Act, also called the "9/11 First Responders bill," finally passed. The Act will provide medical monitoring and care for those who worked on the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, as well as for many who lived and worked nearby.

However, at the insistence of some senators, the final bill was considerably watered down from what it had been originally. More than $3 billion in funding was cut from s previous version of the bill, for example. Will the revised bill still do the job?

When the Senate passed the bill, initial news reports said that the monitoring and health care program would end after five years. However, the actual language of the bill provides for funding limitations for monitoring and health care after fiscal year 2016, which suggests the program might continue if Congress authorizes funding for it.

The monitoring issue is particularly critical. The collapse of the mammoth World Trade Center towers released thousands of tons of toxic particles into the air. For many weeks after the attacks, people who lived and worked in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn suffered burning eyes and hacking coughs from the foul air. Yet at the time, the federal government and the city of New York assured people the stinging fumes were not dangerous, just unpleasant.

Several days after the terrorist attacks, some independent researchers slipped past the police barricades to take samples. They found the air contained more than twice the number of asbestos fibers considered “safe,” as well as deadly levels of benzene, dioxin, and other toxins.

Why should people exposed to the toxins continue to be monitored? Asbestos in particular is a very slow killer. It has been well documented that the first symptoms of the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma may not show up for 20 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. But early detection should prolong lives and make mesothelioma treatment and other medical care more effective.

The final bill does close the Victims Compensation Fund in five years, which is separate from the health monitoring and care part of the bill. It also provides for more stringent monitoring of benefits, which might make it harder for people to get into the program.

Today — more than nine years after the attacks — many rescue and recovery workers are suffering deteriorating health. A study published in April 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that New York City firefighters and emergency workers continue to suffer from severe and persistent lung problems because of their exposure to the World Trade Center debris. Some of these 9/11 heroes already have died.

Firefighters, police officers, and other responders who had been begging Congress for help for nine years called the passage of the bill a “Christmas miracle.” Let us hope the final version of the bill will do the job.
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For a Minnesota perspective, I am familiar with Mesothelioma as the disease that prematurely took Bruce Vento from Minnesota representation in Congress and service to the state, nation, and his district; and also the disease appearing in disproportionately high levels among Iron Range taconite mine workers throughout the mining region, (despite NRRI and other published claims that a line can be drawn between parts of the mining region where ore contains asbestos and where ore is asbestos free).

Another website I looked at to learn a bit more about the worker compensation issues is that of the Hansen Law Firm, where, being a legal services provider, the perspective is upon ins and outs of who qualifies for administrative compensation review, deadlines and deadline impacts upon claimants, impact of existing but unsettled litigation on qualifying under the Act, etc. I give that "know who you are dealing with" caveat, and admit my unfamiliarity with O'Brien's organization.

Do some following of the links O'Brien gives in the above guest text. (I have cut from a Word document she provided into the post, in a way I believe preserves her links entirely.)

If curious about who James Zadroga was, there as always is Wikipedia:

James Zadroga (1971 – January 5, 2006) was a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who died of a respiratory disease that has been attributed to his participation in rescue and recovery operations in the rubble of the World Trade Center following the September 11 attacks. Zadroga was the first NYPD officer whose death was attributed to exposure to his contact with toxic chemicals at the attack site.

[...] The causes of Zadroga's death are under dispute. Gerard Breton, a pathologist of the Ocean County, New Jersey medical examiner's office, conducted an autopsy in April 2006, and he reported, "It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident." This attribution made Zadroga, 34-years-old at the time of his death, the first 9/11 responder whose death was directly linked with toxic Ground Zero substances. Breton's autopsy found what he described as "unidentified foreign materials" in Zadroga's lungs, which were identified by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. as talc, cellulose, calcium phosphate, and methacrylate plastic;[4] However, the examination did not compare the particles found in his lungs with actual dust from the World Trade Center site.

The New York City Medical Examiners Office asserted in October 2007 that Zadroga's death was not related to his time at Ground Zero, with Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch and another medical examiner signing a statement that "It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son’s lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere". Hirsch concluded that Zadroga died from self-injection of ground drugs, with Hirsch finding severe scarring in his lungs that he determined was caused by cellulose and talc granulomas and stating (through a spokesperson) that "The lung disease he had was a consequence of injecting prescription drugs". Officials from the Chief Medical Examiner's office met with the Zadroga family to present his findings.

[...] A third opinion obtained by Zadroga's family later that month from Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist of the New York State Police (and former New York City Medical Examiner), backed the original claim of WTC dust responsibility, citing the presence of glass fibers in Zadroga's lungs that could not be related to injecting drugs.

[...] Then-Governor of New York George Pataki signed legislation on August 14, 2006, to expand death benefits to Ground Zero workers who die from cancer or respiratory diseases, under the presumption that the cause was due to exposure during recovery efforts. Pataki mentioned Zadroga at the bill-signing ceremony, held at the World Trade Center site.

Federal legislation intended to provide health monitoring and financial aid to sick 9/11 workers is known as the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. Its sponsors include Senator Bob Menendez and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. The original bill did not pass. The U.S. House passed a new version of the act[13] in September 2010. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked the Senate to do the same.[14] In a Senate vote held on December 9, 2010, Democrats were unable to break a Republican filibuster against the bill; the vote was 57 in favor and 42 against, but 60 votes were needed for the bill to proceed to an up-or-down vote. Republicans said that they would block such bills as long as there was still an issue about extending tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000.[16] Once the tax cuts were passed, Republicans outlined concerns around paying for the $7.4 billion bill in an appropriate way. Additionally, they also raised concerns about creating an expansive new healthcare entitlement program and re-opening the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.

[Footnotes and links omitted, read far more at the Wikipedia post. Check out the www.maacenter.org/ website. Do your own Googling.]

_______________UPDATE______________
Because O'Brien's item is neutrally written, I tried to give it a neutral headline. Given effort noted in the press and on the web of surviving spouses and families of those who died in the building collapses, along with uncertain long-term lung disease consequences for which many are at risk, an alternate more-judgmental headline would have been, "Are 9/11 heroes being short-changed?" It is the obvious question history will have to answer. Given the situation with New York City's handling of the Zadroga cause of death, a headline might be, "Are 9/11 heroes and surviving families being flim-flammed outrageously, as well as short-changed?" Any reader identifying helpful links to whether the administration of the compensation funds is tainted with widespread dissembling and equivocation over cause of death qualification for benefits, please post a comment. Any dissembling, even if less than widespread, would be a national shame.

An unrelated thing: While Barbara O'Brien works with the maacenter.org, readers should regard her remarks here, away from the official site, as hers personally, and not those of maacenter.org or its leadership.