9/11 in the air
By Dan Rather - Syndicated Columnist
NEW YORK CITY — Drive across one of this city’s many bridges, wait in traffic to enter a tunnel or walk past any number of security-sensitive spots, and you are more likely than not to encounter a quiet but visible-by-design police presence. The sight of a parked squad car, lights flashing silently and constantly, has become a part of the New York scenery, especially in Manhattan. It’s one of the many post-9/11 changes — some subtle, some less so — that the slow lapse of time has transformed into the commonplace...........
And so it continues with the struggle to come to terms with the health aftershocks of Sept. 11, 2001. Thousands who were caught up in the dust cloud that accompanied the collapse of the twin towers, who worked on “the pile” in the weeks and months that followed, and who continued to live and go to jobs downtown — amid air-quality assurances that turned out to be bogus — claim to be victims of 9/11’s lingering health effects.
Their problems range from chronic to life-threatening and permanently debilitating. A pile of studies shows that those with early and prolonged exposure to ground zero’s toxic brew of dust and fumes suffer disproportionately from respiratory disease. No one seems to doubt or deny that people were hurt and even killed long after the towers fell.
A recent ruling by a federal judge means that many of those who claim to have been injured in the aftermath of 9/11 will get their day in court. But as The New York Times reported on Tuesday, the general recognition that people were genuinely harmed by the air at and around ground zero does not necessarily translate into a winning courtroom case for any given individual. If an emergency worker who put in long shifts on the fallen towers’ burning pile cannot prove with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that his or her specific illness is a direct result of ground zero’s dust and smoke, he or she is likely to have a hard time winning compensation from any negligent party or parties.
A lot of this has to do with the different levels of medical proof required by science, the law and politics. But regardless of the technicalities, the thought that some, perhaps many, who gave so much in that massive rescue-turned-recovery effort might be denied their full share of justice is not one that sits comfortably, nor should it be.
Sept. 11 gets invoked so often that, in some places, it might be in danger of becoming an abstraction. New York, though, has never been one of those places. Nor will it ever be, so long as so many are still hurting.
http://www.mexiadailynews.com/opinion/local_story_306102613.html?keyword=secondarystory
NEW YORK CITY — Drive across one of this city’s many bridges, wait in traffic to enter a tunnel or walk past any number of security-sensitive spots, and you are more likely than not to encounter a quiet but visible-by-design police presence. The sight of a parked squad car, lights flashing silently and constantly, has become a part of the New York scenery, especially in Manhattan. It’s one of the many post-9/11 changes — some subtle, some less so — that the slow lapse of time has transformed into the commonplace...........
And so it continues with the struggle to come to terms with the health aftershocks of Sept. 11, 2001. Thousands who were caught up in the dust cloud that accompanied the collapse of the twin towers, who worked on “the pile” in the weeks and months that followed, and who continued to live and go to jobs downtown — amid air-quality assurances that turned out to be bogus — claim to be victims of 9/11’s lingering health effects.
Their problems range from chronic to life-threatening and permanently debilitating. A pile of studies shows that those with early and prolonged exposure to ground zero’s toxic brew of dust and fumes suffer disproportionately from respiratory disease. No one seems to doubt or deny that people were hurt and even killed long after the towers fell.
A recent ruling by a federal judge means that many of those who claim to have been injured in the aftermath of 9/11 will get their day in court. But as The New York Times reported on Tuesday, the general recognition that people were genuinely harmed by the air at and around ground zero does not necessarily translate into a winning courtroom case for any given individual. If an emergency worker who put in long shifts on the fallen towers’ burning pile cannot prove with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that his or her specific illness is a direct result of ground zero’s dust and smoke, he or she is likely to have a hard time winning compensation from any negligent party or parties.
A lot of this has to do with the different levels of medical proof required by science, the law and politics. But regardless of the technicalities, the thought that some, perhaps many, who gave so much in that massive rescue-turned-recovery effort might be denied their full share of justice is not one that sits comfortably, nor should it be.
Sept. 11 gets invoked so often that, in some places, it might be in danger of becoming an abstraction. New York, though, has never been one of those places. Nor will it ever be, so long as so many are still hurting.
http://www.mexiadailynews.com/opinion/local_story_306102613.html?keyword=secondarystory
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