NYC deputy mayor claims 9/11 illness

May. 17, 2006 at 11:24AM

A New York deputy mayor who was caught in the plume of debris in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks claims he contracted a lingering respiratory illness.

Rudy Washington, 52, filed a state worker's compensation claim late last year to cover his doctors' costs, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is appealing it, the New York Post reported.

Washington, who became a consultant after the end of the Rudy Giuliani's administration, arrived on the scene at Ground Zero soon after the attack and was caught in the plume after the first tower fell.

Sources said Washington became sick almost immediately after the attack and was hospitalized with a mysterious illness. He was later diagnosed with asthma, which he never suffered prior to the attack, and is now on several medications.

Worker's compensation claims are not publicly available and officials are barred by law from talking about them, the newspaper said.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20060517-111137-4454r.htm

Children’s asthma study suggests possible 9/11 effects

By Elizabeth O’Brien

Children in Chinatown visited the doctor more for asthma in the year after Sept. 11, 2001 than they did before the attack on the World Trade Center, researchers have found.
Researchers retroactively reviewed the charts of 205 child asthma patients at a Chinatown clinic. Unlike many attempts to gauge the health effects of the World Trade Center collapse, this study had a baseline to compare post-9/11 changes with, since the patients had been treated at the clinic before the terror attack.

“There’s a reason to be concerned about these kids,” said Dr. Anthony M. Szema, assistant professor of medicine and surgery at SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine, who helped analyze the data. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health also contributed to the study, along with health care providers at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown.

The study found that in the year after Sept. 11, 2001, asthma patients living within five miles of the World Trade Center site had significantly more clinic visits per year than in the previous year—or 3.95 visits per child before 9/11, compared with 5.10 after 9/11. Researchers hypothesized a connection between the nearness of patients’ apartments to the trade center site and the degree that their asthma worsened.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_44/childrensasthma.html