Dust exposure after 9/11 linked to high asthma rates

[eppur_se_muova]

Source: CNN

By Karen Pallarito


About 1 in 7, or 13.5 percent of adults who encountered intense dust clouds after the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11 were later found to have asthma, compared with just 8.4 percent who had no dust cloud exposure, researchers in Atlanta and New York City reported on Tuesday.

Likewise, among various groups of people connected to the Twin Tower collapse, rescue and recovery workers were more likely to have a diagnosis of asthma (12.2 percent) than passers-by (8.4 percent).

The results are from a survey, conducted from November 2006 through December 2007, to assess the health status of more than 46,000 adults five to six years after the disaster. Health.com: Bad air day? Here's how to survive

That such a horrific event left lasting physical and emotional scars is, perhaps, no great surprise. Among adults with no prior diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 23.8 percent have reported symptoms after September 11, and the prevalence of symptoms has increased over time, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/05/dust.exposure.asthma/index.html

[Politicalboi]

1. Well Yeah

If anyone ingested that much asbestos they would need help too. Larry Siverton should have to pay for their illness. He was supposed to clean up the buildings, which would have cost him millions. But instead he did it the easy way and ended up with Billions.
"Just Pull it" he says.

[KT2000]

8. More info please

I followed the occ-med list during and after 9/11. There I learned that Irving Selikoff MD had discovered how asbestos caused cancer. He saw how the worksite, when the towers were under construction, was a mess with asbestos. It was all over the general area. He was able to stop them during the construction of the second tower. They then replaced the asbestos with another less toxic product. Laws limiting asbestos exposure came out of that.
Selikoff was a doctor who really cared about health and safety and his patients.

So who is Larry Siverton?

[defendandprotect]

2. Treachery by Whitman and White House still kills --

[aquart]

5. The financial trades people who so defiantly went right back to work...

I can well imagine they're having problems. And the sanitation workers who beat back the dust every damn day and nobody thanked them for the amazing job they did of scrubbing downtown, I'm guessing they're still in difficulty.

[defendandprotect]

6. I'm in NJ and I tried very hard to be out as little as possible within two weeks

of 9/11 -- but the reports on the long list of harmful stuff unloaded on NYC is unbelievable ....

Understand a lot of people had at least nasal infections afterwards --

And we're not that long down the road yet where I imagine things could still be turning up.

They really treated the rescue workers and people incidentally involved who stayed in the area

to help very brutally. And, national health care would really help in all of this.



:)

[aquart]

7. Brooklyn got the dust.

The wind blew it to them. The ash came up to about Canal judging by photos from some friends who walked right up to it. That was just before the Mayor declared a Frozen Zone starting at 14th Street.

The Village and Chelsea didn't get the ash, but there was something thick in the air because the smell was...I'm told it was burning but it smelled too dank and musty for that to me. I kept saying it smelled like a mummy's tomb. And one night something so rank blew in through the air conditioner I had to turn it off and seal everything, in the heat.

And, of course, we knew we were breathing the dust of the dead.

[HamdenRice]

9. I got suckered into going back right away

I worked in the West Village and went back as soon as the area was reopened. My office sounded like a tuberculosis ward -- everyone was coughing all the time. You could hear co-workers coughing through your walls.

To me, the dominant smell was burning plastic. That was the constant smell downtown.

There was this big campaign saying patronize business downtown so they don't go out of business.

Just days after the attacks, the neo-punk and powerpop musicians of the East Village, led by Maya Price of Goddess Mama, threw a "defiant" showcase at some club near Chinatown.

I organized a birthday dinner for my sister in November 2001 at Odeon -- just a few blocks north of the WTC.

We were real suckers.

[defendandprotect]

11. Btw . . .

how is the West Village these days?
Are they knocking down older brick housing and building skyscrapers yet?
Are you anywhere near 12th Street and Hudson -- further west or east?

It's sad that so many New Yorkers were so willing to try to help in so many ways
and then found themselves betrayed by people who only understand exploiting others!

As some say . . . "No good deed goes unpunished" --

:)

[aquart]

13. It's really expensive to build skyscrapers in this area. No bedrock.

My geology professor was quite firm about that. Bedrock is what anchors the rest of Manhattan. Also, there's protective zoning in the West Village. They once tore down a building on West 9th and made it into a parking garage for a bunch of new apartments. That caused a mighty uproar and changed the rules. Didn't save the West 9th building, though. I remember it because my Dad lived in that building and he wound up on FDR Drive.

[defendandprotect]

16. No bedrock, eh?

Didn't know that but glad to hear they fought to protect W Village.

Grew up in a five story walk up on 12th between Greenwich Av and Hudson Street ...

Must be 100 years old by now. But beautiful brownstones on that block. Just down

from the Greenwich movie theater -- presume that's still there.

The brownstones had beautiful backyards we used to play in -- put on plays, etc.

And saw a movie not so long ago -- "The Wedding Date" -- which showed a lot of the

West Village - Jane Street I think. Friends lived there. Still cobble stone streets!

It was a great city to get around in, then, at least.

[aquart]

22. According to my professor.

It wasn't until rents got astronomical that it paid to put in the pilings and supports and whatnot required to build on that part of the island. But yes, my daddy's building began the outrage that saved the rest of the Village, but not before they built that godawful piece of architectural incompetence that lines Greenwich Ave. between 9th and 10th or whatever that street is called.

[defendandprotect]

10. I'm originally from the West Village - 12th Street --

I also saw some very strange satellite pictures recently of how so much of the dust
was moving around, not exactly settling down on the streets and how it was moving up
into the air almost in a funnel.

While it's hard to tell with NJ, anyway . . . our air seemed particularly burned and
weird for a long time --

And neither Whitman nor Bush were ever held accountable for subjecting so many people
to such toxins. What a Soprano-World we're living in!!





:)

[aquart]

12. I didn't consider myself part of it till I saw the picture of the cloud engulfing us.

And realized I was one of the people inside that cloud over the bottom half of Manhattan. Mostly, I was just trying to believe it and not believe it.

[defendandprotect]

17. There should be a website for people to discuss what happened . . .

to them personally - I mean those truly close to it.

I worked for a very long time at the Battery - One Broadway.

And quite remember the beginning of the planning to build WTC towers.

Someone I worked with was heading up parts of the planning.

Seemed insane to me then, still does.

Were you disturbed by the fly-over of the President's plane and jets --

Late April I think it was. They said there was a lot of panic. That didn't

make much sense either. Are you supporting NYC effort to reinvestigate 9/11?

[wickerwoman]

23. Yeah, I lived in Jersey around that time...

I developed an "upper respiratory infection" that knocked me flat on my ass for more than six months and I still have a major allergic reaction to dust which I never had before.

Of course with Jersey, it's hard to say, but I'd lived there seven years at that point and never had problems before 9/11.

[Stephanie]

3. I had a few asthma attacks afterward

I was 1.5 miles north when the towers fell, but the wind on Thursday brought the dust directly to us. And I spent a lot of time down there on weekends after that, just wanting to be there. I had a few instances later where I couldn't catch my breath. Went wheezing out of a diner one day and had to walk up and down the street to get wind in my pipes again. Hasn't happened for a few years, but I think it was connected.

[aquart]

4. Yeah, but it subsided.

I live 32 blocks from Ground Zero. I went from using my inhaler three or four times a year before 9/11 to three or four times a week for five years after 9/11. But it's gone down to normal again.

[closeupready]

15. I look back on 9/11 and it scares me, actually.

I recall in the few weeks subsequent to 9/11, I was hacking and coughing in fits, like most everyone else. I'd go into the shower in the morning, put the water on hot, and force myself to cough up all this phlegm, I mean, I hacked up a LOT of phlegm. It was that dust. The dust didn't drift over my area so directly, so I'm probably okay, more or less, but I worry about people in the downtown areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

[defendandprotect]

18. Is there a website for New Yorkers to discuss all of this?

Were you bothered by the fly-over/photo op of the extra Air Force One and a few jets?

Are you joining those seeking a reinvestigation of 9/11?

[closeupready]

19. I wasn't even aware it'd happened until the evening news, lol.

What bothered me more, if mildly, was the US Air landing on the Hudson, which was actually visible from where I was at the time. While I have no plans to join others in seeking such a task, I welcome it, because I think it's obvious to everyone that the initial 9/11 investigation was a fraud.

On a side note, if anything makes me jumpy, it's the various pops and jolts on the subway, always thinking it's something more than just an old rattly subway, and it never is.

[defendandprotect]

21. 17 Battery . . .

We used to have office space in the Penthouse there --

it was even better than One Broadway. Used to watch the lacy ice coming down

the Hudson in spring.

Did you actually see the plane landing/the rescue?

People are making a lot of progress on exposing 9/11, but while many Americans are

waking up to the complicity of corporate press in propaganda, I don't think they've

fully grasped the idea yet of their long term involvement in stolen elections, way

earlier than 2000 and 2004 --- nor do I think they're ready to understand yet their

complicity in 9/11.

I used to make it from W 12th to One Broadway in grand total 10 minutes by subway.

No one will believe either that the subways were cool on a hot summer's day.

Times long ago!

:)

[Xithras]

14. The argument that it was safe flies in the face of current medical knowledge.

Anyone who works with concrete, dirt, or any other pulverized stone material knows what silicosis is, knows that it's permanent, and knows that it can be fatal over long periods. There is no cure or treatment for silicosis, and mild cases often appear identical to athsma. Shortness of breath exacerbated by exertion, dry cough, occasional chest pain, and fatigue.

The primary ingredient in all of that "dust" was pulverized concrete. Concrete dust inhalation is the #1 cause of silicosis in America today.

[Subdivisions]

20. But, but, but....

Whitman said the air was safe to breathe...