Health woes are plaguing
9/11 rescuers

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

When people saw the destruction caused by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, they wanted to help.
Tens of thousands of men and women from an array of professions flocked to Ground Zero to lend a hand. There were firefighters, police officers, doctors, paramedics, building tradesmen and women, truck drivers, counselors and folks with countless other areas of expertise, including military personnel.
Many sifted through the mountains of smoldering rubble, looking for survivors and the dead. In the months that followed, others collected the debris and took it away so that New York City and the world’s largest financial center could get back to business. Yet others provided support, delivering the supplies and services needed by the work crews.
More than five years later, many are now dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath of their patriotic endeavors.
Of an estimated 50,000 people who took part in rescue, recovery, cleanup and restoration at the World Trade Center site and vicinity, only about 12,000 have signed up for a federally funded medical-monitoring program designed to diagnose and treat their resulting illnesses.
According to Dr. Stephen Levin, a physician with the Mt. Sinai Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine in New York City, evidence has shown that those responders are getting sick at alarmingly high rates.
Levin presented those findings during a panel discussion hosted by the Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Safety and Health at the Ironworkers Local 401 Hall last Thursday afternoon.
Nobody has a count on how many Philadelphia-area residents took part in the post-9/11 efforts, but there were plenty.
"A lot of guys just got in a car and went," said Leo Rahill, 49, a Philadelphia Police Department crime-scene investigator who arrived at Ground Zero in an official capacity two days after the attacks.
He was one of five members of his unit to make the trip after the police department asked for volunteers. Many other locals went up on their own time, outside the parameters of any official request.
"If you were a Philly firefighter and you weren’t in Rescue 1, you took a week off, got in a car and went up there," Rahill said.
The Rescue 1 unit was among the Philadelphia Fire Department’s official contingent at Ground Zero.
Jim Wiser, 47, an ironworker who lives in Perkiomenville, was working on a job site in Jersey City when the planes hit.
"(Our boss) asked us if we wanted to go over and help, and we did," Wiser said.
Personal health was the least of their concerns. Now, Levin explained, many of them are paying a price.
"I’ve been hearing that people are getting sick," said Terrance Lewis, 36, a crime-scene unit officer and Northwood resident who spent more than a week at Ground Zero.
All three responders attended last week’s panel discussion.
"I just want information and to get the information out to people who need it," Lewis said.
According to Levin, the atmosphere around "the pile" and throughout Lower Manhattan was filled with harmful materials. From the moment of the first tower collapse, a cloud of minute particles enveloped the area. And it lingered.
Days after the disaster, shifting winds continued to blow debris through the air. Workers often couldn’t help but inhale the stuff. Environmental officials didn’t test the cloud for days, according to Levin.
Later, they determined that it contained gypsum (from crushed drywall), concrete, glass, asbestos, soot, acid mist (from burning PVC) and heavy metals like lead and mercury.
"The people caught in that cloud of dust had the worst experiences," said Levin, citing data collected from about 9,500 patients treated through the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program.
A week after the attacks, Christine Todd Whitman, then secretary of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, declared the air safe. But as people returned to their homes and workplaces in the area, they found layers of the grayish-white dust covering everything, inside and out.
Some were wary enough to invest small fortunes cleaning up their properties. Others didn’t spend that kind of money, or couldn’t afford to, and simply did the job themselves without proper protection.
"Unfortunately, the guidance given by the public health agencies … they never really gave good advice," Levin said.
In the months and years following the disaster, the doctor has seen thousands of patients with 9/11-related symptoms. Many of the same symptoms keep showing up.
Commonly, patients complain of chronic breathing problems, acid reflux and headaches. The medical-monitoring program’s systematic and thorough screening procedure also revealed that many patients suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
The scenes were that disturbing.
The 9,500 patients included in the study worked an average of 171 days at the World Trade Center site, and more than 40 percent of them arrived on the day of the collapse.
But eligibility for the ongoing medical program includes a much broader population. Meanwhile, the medical community still has a lot to learn about how different levels of exposure may be affecting those who worked on-site.
Some patients have died, while others have developed cancer symptoms, including tumors. It is uncertain if many of these health issues are related to Ground Zero exposure.
After all, Levin said, tumors "don’t have signatures that tell you, ‘This is where they came from.’"
With so much uncertainty, many 9/11 responders and their advocates have faced a long battle to secure needed financial support, whether it be in the form of workers compensation or coverage for medical care. Notably, Levin and his colleagues are seeking federal funding to broaden health programs for responders and to ensure their availability for the long term.
"We don’t have science and medicine (as evidence) right now," Levin said. "What we have is a need of a population that I call heroic."
Levin stressed the need to identify as many of those people as possible for the monitoring program, especially because the symptoms of cancer and other diseases may not surface for years down the road.
"The worst that can happen," Levin said, "is that we treat somebody’s cancer that didn’t come from the World Trade Center." ••
For more information about health effects on World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers, and to register for the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, call 1-888-702-0630 or visit www.WTCexams.org
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com