Toxic After Affects
Archiving September 11
By Mark Berkey-Gerard
When Martin Scorsese wanted to recreate the city's 19th century tenements, bordellos, and saloons for his upcoming movie "The Gangs of New York," he sent his film producers to visit the archives of a neighborhood called Five Points. The collection contained over 850,000 items from the infamous slum -- dishes, thimbles, combs, medicine bottles, and children's toys -- that documented the history of working-class life in lower Manhattan.
A little over a year after the visit, the entire collection, except for 18 items that were on loan, was destroyed when debris smashed into the World Trade Center 6 building.
A few weeks after September 11, archaeologists sent a team of people into the partially collapsed building to try to recover the archives, but there was nothing to retrieve. Like nearly everything in the World Trade Center buildings, the historic items were buried in rubble and lost forever.
"There were hundreds of offices in the World Trade Center that lost all of their records and documents," said Kathleen Roe of the New York State Archives in Albany. "Some of those were originals items that had no duplicate and can not be replaced."
Photographer Jacques Lowe, who intimately documented the life of President John F. Kennedy and his family, lost the negatives to 40,000 photographs that he had stored in a bank vault in the Trade Center. Helen Keller Worldwide, a nonprofit agency dedicated to eradicating preventable blindness, lost letters gathered during Keller's travels between 1930-1950 as well as several first editions of her works. And thirty years of photographs and musical scores from Broadway and Off-Broadway plays -- items like photos of the original cast of "A Chorus Line" and "Miss Saigon" -- were destroyed.
In the weeks after September 11, a coalition of New York historians and archivists met to assess the damage to the dozens of archival collections in lower Manhattan. To their surprise they found that although nearly everything in the World Trade Center was lost, many collections in the surrounding area -- like the American Express records, Trinity Church, the Federal Reserve, and the Stock Exchange -- were not damaged.
Air Masks at Issue in Claims of 9/11 
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: June 5, 2006
With mounting evidence that exposure to the toxic smoke and ash at ground zero during the nine-month cleanup has made many people sick, attention is now focusing on the role of air-filtering masks, or respirators, that cost less than $50 and could have shielded workers from some of the toxins.
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Archiving September 11
By Mark Berkey-Gerard
When Martin Scorsese wanted to recreate the city's 19th century tenements, bordellos, and saloons for his upcoming movie "The Gangs of New York," he sent his film producers to visit the archives of a neighborhood called Five Points. The collection contained over 850,000 items from the infamous slum -- dishes, thimbles, combs, medicine bottles, and children's toys -- that documented the history of working-class life in lower Manhattan.
A little over a year after the visit, the entire collection, except for 18 items that were on loan, was destroyed when debris smashed into the World Trade Center 6 building.
A few weeks after September 11, archaeologists sent a team of people into the partially collapsed building to try to recover the archives, but there was nothing to retrieve. Like nearly everything in the World Trade Center buildings, the historic items were buried in rubble and lost forever.
"There were hundreds of offices in the World Trade Center that lost all of their records and documents," said Kathleen Roe of the New York State Archives in Albany. "Some of those were originals items that had no duplicate and can not be replaced."
Photographer Jacques Lowe, who intimately documented the life of President John F. Kennedy and his family, lost the negatives to 40,000 photographs that he had stored in a bank vault in the Trade Center. Helen Keller Worldwide, a nonprofit agency dedicated to eradicating preventable blindness, lost letters gathered during Keller's travels between 1930-1950 as well as several first editions of her works. And thirty years of photographs and musical scores from Broadway and Off-Broadway plays -- items like photos of the original cast of "A Chorus Line" and "Miss Saigon" -- were destroyed.
In the weeks after September 11, a coalition of New York historians and archivists met to assess the damage to the dozens of archival collections in lower Manhattan. To their surprise they found that although nearly everything in the World Trade Center was lost, many collections in the surrounding area -- like the American Express records, Trinity Church, the Federal Reserve, and the Stock Exchange -- were not damaged.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Release # 021-06
Friday, April 7, 2006
CONTACT: (212) 788-5290
SUBSTANTIAL PHYSICAL AND MENTAL
HEALTH EFFECTS REPORTED BY WTC BUILDING SURVIVORS
Findings Based on World Trade Center Building Survivors, a Subset of Participants in WTC Health Registry; Survivors Caught in Dust Cloud Two to Five Times More Likely to Report Physical or Mental Health Problems After September 11 Than Those Who were Not; New Survey of WTC Registry Participants to Begin Within a Month
NEW YORK CITY - April 7, 2006 - According to survey findings released today and based on World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR) data, survivors of buildings that collapsed or were damaged as a result of the World Trade Center attack reported having substantial physical and mental health problems when interviewed in 2003 and 2004. Findings were from the 12% of adults in the Registry who were present between the time of the first airplane impact and noon on September 11, 2001, and who were survivors from one of 38 primarily nonresidential buildings or structures that were damaged or collapsed.
Results are outlined by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), along with the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and others, in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Surveillance Summary article. The report is available online at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/ss/ss5502.pdf. Later this month, the WTCHR will launch the first follow-up survey of all Registry enrollees to reassess their physical and mental health status. Registry staff are preparing reports on key findings among other Registry groups, including residents, children, rescue and recovery workers and volunteers.
"The Registry will help us determine the long-term health consequences and how best to diagnose and treat them," said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. "We will also conduct in-depth studies that include medical examinations and matches to other registries. This effort is extensive, and we thank every Registry participant for their cooperation."
"We are just beginning to learn about the health effects of the worst day in New York City's history," said Daniel Slippen, a former Port Authority employee, a survivor of the WTC attacks and a member of the World Trade Center Registry's Community Advisory Board. "It is critical to know whether these physical and mental effects will continue, diminish or grow worse over time. This is why maintaining the World Trade Center Health Registry for as long as possible is so important. These findings will help us all learn as much as we can from this terrible tragedy."
More than 70,000 people are enrolled in the Registry, making it the largest-ever effort in the U.S. to systematically monitor the health of people exposed to a large-scale disaster. More than half (57%) of the 8,500 building survivors in the survey reported experiencing new or worsening respiratory symptoms, and almost all evacuees of damaged or collapsed buildings said they witnessed at least one event with potential for psychological trauma, such as observing people who were injured or killed (59%) or people falling or jumping from the WTC towers (61%). Most building survivors - nearly two in three (64%) - witnessed three or more potentially psychological traumatizing events on September 11, and 11% screened positive for probable serious psychological distress at the time of the interview.
Presence in the dust or debris cloud caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center was the strongest factor associated with physical and mental health effects, according to the analysis. More than 62% of building survivors reported being caught in the cloud, with sinus problems, nose irritation or postnatal irritation the most commonly reported new or worsening respiratory symptom (46% compared to 25% in those not in the dust cloud). Survivors caught in the dust cloud were twice as likely to report newly diagnosed asthma after September 11, 2001 than those who reported not being in the cloud.
Presence in the dust cloud also had the strongest association with self-reported new depression, anxiety or emotional problems. The reported level of probable serious psychological distress among survivors at the time of the interview was nearly twice that of all adult New Yorkers during that same time period. Nonrespiratory problems after September 11 were less prevalent than respiratory problems, with heartburn, indigestion or reflux (24%) and severe headaches (21%) the most commonly reported conditions. Injuries were commonly reported by building survivors (44%), but few reported injuries that may have required extensive treatment, such as burns or head injuries.
Analysis did not include rescue, recovery and clean-up workers because these groups had other types of exposures (e.g. extended periods of work at the WTC site removing debris) that need to be considered in a separate analysis. The Registry was designed to follow up with enrollees for 20 years to more fully understand the long-term impact of physical and mental health problems; findings will be made available to enrollees, other September 11-related health projects and the public.
About the World Trade Center Health Registry
The WTCHR was launched on September 5, 2003, to track the health of residents, school children, workers and others who were directly exposed to the collapse of the World Trade Center, or of those who worked at the WTC site, at the recovery operations on Staten Island or on barges that transported debris.
Findings drawn from the World Trade Center Health Registry will enable researchers to observe patterns that may otherwise be invisible to individual physicians. All information given will be kept strictly private and confidential, and no medical examinations or tests were required for initial enrollment.
The World Trade Center Health Registry is a collaborative effort between DOHMH and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), with funding provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Visit http://www.wtcregistry.org for more information on the Registry.
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Mayor must face WTC health crisis
City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden won't complete his WTC health registry until 2007 — six years after the terror attack.
Former city Health Commissioner Neal Cohen inexcusably failed to issue Trade Center medical guidelines.
They rallied for New York and America in the terrible hours after the World Trade Center collapsed - and ever since, thousands have paid with their health. Some have given their lives.
Forty-thousand-strong, they labored at Ground Zero under miserable conditions in a time of crisis, working 10 and 12 hours a day to search for the lost, extinguish underground fires and haul off 2 million tons of rubble. As a direct result, well over 12,000 are sick today, having suffered lasting damage to their respiratory systems.
In increasing numbers, they are the forgotten victims of 9/11. The toll has risen steadily over the past five years, yet no one in power - not Gov. Pataki, not Mayor Bloomberg, not the state and city health commissioners, not the U.S. government - has acknowledged the epidemic's scope, much less confronted it for the public health disaster that it is.
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