Artists4Hope IloveNY Campaign's Chronology of 9/11 Illness.

Still here, Still sick, Still Waiting for help

2007-12-19T17:18:00.000-05:00

Throat cancer kills WTC worker

2007-08-07T09:03:00.000-04:00

BY MICHAEL WHITE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU
Tuesday, August 7th 2007, 4:00 AM

A 47-year-old Brooklyn firefighter who worked at the World Trade Center wreckage for a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks has died of throat cancer.

Ray Hauber's relatives and colleagues believe conditions at Ground Zero might have caused the esophageal cancer that killed him Saturday morning.

Hauber, who worked for 17 years at Engine Co. 284 in Dyker Heights, had retired from the FDNY on a disability pension last year, after he was diagnosed with the cancer, friends and family said.

"He was down there with me ... and I don't know if [the cancer] was definitely caused by the Trade Center, but it didn't help," said FDNY colleague Joseph Lapolla, 38, of Staten Island.

"I think in the future, in the next 20 years, we're going to see a lot [of]these cases. He was a young guy, and a nonsmoker. He was strong as an ox, and then he was very fragile when he died."

Hauber is the second Ground Zero worker to die from esophageal cancer this year. Frederick Stuck, also of Staten Island, was a retired city deputy sheriff and Sept. 11 first responder and cleanup worker.

He was 49 when he died Jan. 9, and his family also believes conditions at Ground Zero caused his illnesses.

Reached at his New Jersey home last night, Paul Hauber, 45, described his firefighter brother as a "big kid."

"Always loved to play around. Even when he first got sick he always had a good sense of humor," he said.

The family has planned a wake for Ray Hauber today and tomorrow at Casey McCallum Rice Funeral Home, also known as the South Shore Funeral Home, at 30 Nelson Ave. on Staten Island. A funeral will be held at 10a.m. Thursday at Eltingville Lutheran Church at 300 Genesee Ave., S.I.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/07/2007-08-07_throat_cancer_kills_wtc_worker.html

Sept. 11 rescue dog with cancer dies

2007-07-26T17:22:00.000-04:00

By VERENA DOBNIK,
Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 26, 9:59 AM ET

apNEW YORK - A black Labrador that burrowed through smoking debris after Sept. 11 and flooded rubble after Hurricane Katrina in search of survivors has died after developing cancer.

Owner Mary Flood had 12-year-old Jake put to sleep Wednesday after a last stroll through the fields and a dip in the creek near their home in Oakley, Utah. Flood said Jake had been in pain, shaking with a 105-degree fever as he lay on the lawn.

No one can say whether the dog would have gotten sick if he hadn't been exposed to the toxic air at the World Trade Center, but cancer in dogs Jake's age is common.

Some owners of rescue dogs who worked at ground zero claim their animals have died because of their work there. But scientists who have spent years studying the health of Sept. 11 search-and-rescue dogs have found no sign of major illness in the animals.

Many human ground zero workers have complained of health problems they attribute to their time at the site: the largest study conducted of about 20,000 ground zero workers reported last year that 70 percent of patients suffer respiratory disease years after the cleanup.

The city earlier this year added to its Sept. 11 death toll a woman who died in 2002 of lung disease, five months after she was caught in the dust cloud of the collapsing twin towers.

The results of an autopsy on Jake's body will be part of a medical study on the Sept. 11 dogs that was started by the University of Pennsylvania more than 5 years ago.

Flood adopted Jake as a 10-month-old puppy. He had been abandoned on a street with a broken leg and a dislocated hip.

"But against all odds he became a world-class rescue dog," said Flood, a member of Utah Task Force 1, a federal search-and-rescue team that looked for human remains at ground zero.

On the evening of the team's arrival in New York, Jake walked into a fancy Manhattan restaurant wearing his search-and-rescue vest and was treated to a free steak dinner under a table.

Flood eventually trained Jake to become one of fewer than 200 U.S. government-certified rescue dogs — an animal on 24-hour call to tackle disasters such as building collapses, earthquakes, hurricanes and avalanches.

After Katrina, Flood and Jake drove from Utah to Mississippi, where they searched for survivors in flooded homes.

In recent years, Jake helped train younger dogs across the country. He showed them how to track scents, even in the snow, and how to look up if the scent was in a tree.

He also did therapy work with children at a Utah camp for burn victims and at senior homes and hospitals.

"He was a great morale booster wherever he went," Flood said. "He was always ready to work, eager to play — and a master at helping himself to any unattended food items."

She said Jake's ashes would be scattered "in places that were important to him," such as his Utah training grounds and the rivers and hills near his home where he swam and roamed.

also

“They didn’t have any airway protection, they didn’t have any skin protection. They were sort of in the worst of it,” said Cynthia Otto, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, where researchers launched a study of 97 dogs five years ago.

Although many ground zero dogs have died — some of rare cancers — researchers say many have lived beyond the average life span for dogs and are not getting any sicker than average.

Owners of the dogs dispute the findings, saying there is a definite link between the toxic air and their pets’ health.

Otto has tracked dogs that spent an average of 10 days after the 2001 terrorist attacks at either the trade center site, the landfill in New York where most of the debris was taken, or the heavily damaged Pentagon.

As of last month, she said, 30 percent of the dogs deployed after Sept. 11 had died, compared with 22 percent of those in a comparison group of dogs who were not pressed into service. The difference was not considered statistically significant, Otto said.

But she added: “We have to keep looking.”

A separate study, to be published soon by a doctor at New York’s Animal Medical Center, focused on about two dozen New York police dogs, and comes to similar conclusions.

The results have baffled doctors. A study released last month found that 70 percent of the people who worked at ground zero suffer severe respiratory problems; scientists thought that the dogs might have similar health problems.

Longer noses may serve as filters
The dogs’ owners and scientists have many theories why dogs aren’t showing the same level of illness as people. Their noses are longer, possibly serving as a filter to protect their lungs from toxic dust and other debris, they say. The dogs were at the site an average of several days, while many people who report lung disease and cancer spent months cleaning up after the attacks.

RIP Jake

Firefighters still paying price for 9/11

2007-07-15T19:38:00.000-04:00

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

A lung specialist from Israel who went to examine firefighters who had been at the World Trade Center on 9/11 found that as many as eight in 10 had some respiratory disorder. Dr. Izbicki Gabriel, a senior physician at the pulmonary institute of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center, was with a team that examined firefighters and found widespread "sarcoid-like" granulomatous pulmonary disease. Their study, which appeared in the prestigious journal Chest, revealed a high incidence - five times more among the same population, compared to the 15 years before the terror attack - of the lung disease sarcoidosis.

"Maybe the most important message is that most of the lung damage could have been avoided if the firefighters had worn masks. This is of course also important for Israeli firefighters, policemen, soldiers and others."

Previous reports, they wrote, suggest that sarcoidosis - an inflammation that produces tiny lumps called granulomas because they look like grains of sand or sugar - occurs with abnormally high frequency in firefighters. "We sought to determine whether exposure to World Trade Center 'dust' during the collapse and rescue/recovery effort increased the incidence of sarcoidosis or sarcoid-like granulomatous pulmonary disease."

On the basis of their study (comparing results of medical exams before the disaster with those afterward), the researchers identified 26 men who had developed lung disease as a result of their exposure to the "dust" from the collapse. Many of these also had symptoms of asthma. It was the first study of its kind describing lung disease in World Trade Center rescuers.
"These results add new insights into the etiology of sarcoid-like granulomatous pulmonary disease and sarcoidosis, and provide increased attention to disease prevention and surveillance following environmental/occupational exposures," they concluded.

So far, five of the firefighters have already qualified for permanent pulmonary disability benefits.

'I believe my cancer is related to exposure to WTC dust and smoke.'

2007-07-15T19:36:00.000-04:00

By Etta Sanders

The following opinion piece was written by Etta Sanders shortly before her death and was provided to the Trib by her husband, Andrew Weinstein.

I believe I am the victim of the lies of my government. I live a short distance from the World Trade Center site. Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, my husband, our twin boys who had turned 3-years-old on Sept. 8, and I moved back into our home.

For months, like so many of our neighbors, we worried about the air, kept our windows closed, ran air filters day and night, took the children out of the neighborhood to play outdoors and tried to believe what we were told—that the air was safe.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with stage IV, metastatic lung cancer. Inoperable. Incurable. Since then I have responded well to a series of treatments, chemotherapy and recently approved pills. I have been able to maintain a normal life—working, traveling, caring for my family. My condition has now worsened and the possible treatment options are running out.
I strongly believe my cancer is related to exposure to World Trade Center dust and smoke. If the government had said we’re not sure about the safety of the air and it would be prudent for residents to stay away, I don’t think I would have this cancer.

Now I will not see my beautiful boys grow up. No high school or college graduations, school trips, summer vacations, no weddings, no grandchildren. Mom won’t be there to cheer at piano recitals or ballgames. Mom won’t be there to comfort them after a hard day or a bad dream. I won’t grow old with my beloved husband, who has cared for all of us with remarkable strength. We have had almost 30 fabulous years together. I was hoping for 50 or 60.

I have kept quiet about my illness until now for a couple of reasons. One is that I am a mostly private person. I shied away from the idea of being talked about. The main reason was that we wanted to control what our children knew and how they were told. We were concerned that the more people who knew, the greater the chance someone would inadvertently say something frightening or inaccurate to them.

But I also know as a nearly 30-year resident of small town lower Manhattan, and after five years at P.S. 234, that our family is part of a warm, caring and supportive community. Andrew and I take great comfort and solace in that knowledge.
I am very grateful to Carl and April who have allowed me to contribute to what is simply the best community newspaper. I am constantly impressed by the high quality of the Trib. It is a treat to read it every month. They provide a true service to the community. I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

The truth is that I have had a wonderful and very lucky life, except for this bit here at the end.
I dearly hope that I am in a small minority of people who were so gravely harmed by the aftermath of the WTC attacks, but I fear otherwise. Whether the numbers are large or small, the U.S. government is culpable for that harm and there must be compensation for all victims and their families.

Frankly, I don’t know how Christine Todd Whitman lives with herself.
At a recent community board committee meeting, there was a presentation by someone from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. At the end, a board member asked if there would be room on the wall of victims’ names for those who died after the attacks from toxic exposures (a few days later the first such victim was added). It was a chilling thought. There will be more names.

But I think we need a separate wall for those whose deaths were not caused by a direct act of terrorism, but by the actions of a cavalier government.

http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/newsjuly07/etta2.htm

FDNY THYROID CANCER SHOCK

2007-07-09T17:25:00.000-04:00

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS and SUSAN EDELMAN

July 8, 2007 -- An alarming number of FDNY firefighters are battling a rare cancer that typically targets women, The Post has learned. At least eight firefighters have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer over the past five years. Another five have undergone partial or full thyroidectomies after their doctors discovered abnormal cell growth that could lead to cancer around the glands.

The cluster has sprung up among those who responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11 or helped in recovery and cleanup afterward, firefighters said.

The relatively rare illness is known to affect women at three times the rate it hits males. The FDNY cases involve only men.

The National Cancer Institute put the incidence rate at 4.3 per 100,000 men - much lower than the eight cases among approximately 11,000 firefighters on the FDNY force on 9/11.

Attorney David Worby, who represents nearly 10,000 WTC responders in a class-action suit, said he has tracked "a large cluster" of thyroid cancers among his clients, which include thousands of firefighters and cops.

Overall, at least 125 active and retired firefighters - all Ground Zero responders - have contracted some type of cancer since 2001, according to figures gathered by the Uniformed Firefighters Association.

FDNY officials declined to comment .

gotis@nypost.com

9/11 responder's medical bills mount

2007-07-03T12:48:00.000-04:00

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 06/30/07

BY MATT PAIS STAFF WRITER

BARNEGAT — Charles Giles arrived at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, just as the second jet made impact.

Soon the citywide EMS supervisor was at the base of the towers, helping the people who were evacuated. Able to outrun the collapse of the first tower, Giles' luck ran out when the second came crashing down. Only a timely rescue by a Port Authority police officer saved him.

Giles spent less than 24 hours at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx before heading back to lower Manhattan. He stayed at ground zero for nearly two months, never giving a second thought to any long-term implications.

Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Giles' health has steadily declined, a pattern doctors say is linked to the "black junk" that he inhaled at the site of the fallen towers. Like many responders, he now finds himself saddled with medical bills and a government unwilling or unable to help.
As treatments and costs continue to mount for Giles, the realization that the federal government provides little becomes clear.

"I'm a Republican, and I love George Bush, but they've got to do something," he said.

Giles said he watched Christie Whitman, former New Jersey governor and administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, testify before Congress this week. He was stunned when she continued to assert the government's response was correct.

"If you mix concrete, plastic, jet fuel, human remains, paper, burned steel, cleaning agents and everything else that was there, add 3,000 degrees, it's a recipe for disaster. And we all inhaled that disaster," Giles said.

His illness began with chronic bronchial asthma, then morphed into avascular necrosis. A hip replacement followed, as did osteoporosis. Doctors say his other hip and one lung are likely to fail soon.

"For a 39-year-old, it's kind of rough," Giles said. "I'm a young guy. I have to stay alive for my family."

A husband and father of two who only three years ago took joy in spending 80 hours a week working and volunteering now finds himself out of work and nearly out of money. The 16-year EMS veteran was forced to leave his job with Quality Medical Transport. He has medical insurance but co-pays for a dozen medications total more than $200 each month.

"I get $241.57 a week from disability, and that's it. How do I survive on that?" he said.

By all accounts, Giles should be financially secure. There's the New York Crime Victim Board fund, New York state worker's compensation, even Red Cross money available, and Giles applied for them all. To date, he has yet to receive any governmental assistance.

The only help he did receive came courtesy of the Pinewood Estates Fire Company. His fellow members raised $3,800 during a recent coin drop and, though helpful, his bills continue to pile up.

"I don't want one penny more than I'm entitled to," he said. "There's money out there. They need to stop sitting on it and give it to the guys who are giving their lives."

Giles' problem is not unique, said John Feal, president of the Feal Good Foundation, a Nesconset, N.Y.-based organization that raises awareness about Sept. 11 health effects.
"The government is sitting idle, and the lack of compassion is killing responders," Feal said.
Too often the government provided money for monitoring health of ground zero veterans and rarely provided assistance for treatment or preventive care, Feal said. For the estimated 30,000 responders suffering from Sept. 11-related physical and mental illnesses, that often means bearing a tremendous financial burden alone.

"We need help now," said Feal, a responder himself. "These are people who risked their lives and are heroes, and we've been kicked to the curb like garbage."

One of the groups working to reverse that is the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, or NYCOSH, a nongovernmental group among the first to identify hazardous conditions at ground zero.

The group helped extend the statute of limitations on filing claims and played a role in pushing legislation making volunteers eligible for worker's compensation. Funds are available, but thousands eligible for assistance are unable to navigate through a bureaucratic maze, said Jonathan Bennett, NYCOSH's public affairs director.

"The response on the part of the government and charities has been uncoordinated. It's a big public health problem," he said.

The reluctance of government to become the lead agency in providing and coordinating relief has caused widespread misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment for many suffering responders, Bennett said.

"There needs to be a recognition that this is a specialized kind of medicine that you just can't turn over to your family doctor," he said. "There's a government responsibility to deal with this."

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070630/NEWS/706300404

Why didn't they warn us, asks 9/11 hero

2007-06-27T16:22:00.000-04:00

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Tuesday, June 26th 2007, 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON - For Lt. William Gleason, Christie Whitman has only brought pain.

Yesterday, the disabled Fire Department paramedic came to Washington to hear Whitman explain why she didn't warn him and thousands of other 9/11 responders that Ground Zero was more dangerous than they thought.

He was not satisfied.

"The sad part is, she tried to blame everyone else," said Gleason, who retired from the FDNY in 2004 as nodules started growing on his scarred lungs and his breathing deteriorated. "She was not open and honest."

Gleason, who worked out of Elmhurst Hospital Center, drove to Ground Zero on a "Gator" - a six-wheeled golf cart used to move bodies - because that was the only way to get there on Sept. 11, 2001.

He spent much of the next three days there, searching for survivors and treating some of the wounded. But there were relatively few of those, and he and fellow Emergency Medical Service officers ended up on a grim detail of combing through the dust and debris to recover and catalogue the body parts.

"It was find it, put it in the red bag and put in the container, write it up," he said. He carried a clean American flag on his cart every day in case he found one of the 141 friends he had lost.

"I'm not gonna put them under a dirty flag," he said.

That sense of loyalty and patriotism is what drove him in those days. He doesn't think Whitman gave it back.

"We just went in there to do our jobs, and we didn't ask too many questions," Gleason said. "You rely on the people above to watch your back, and they didn't."

Still, if he could, he'd rush to Ground Zero again, knowing the risks. "I would," he said. "But I'd protect myself."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/26/2007-06-26_why_didnt_they_warn_us_asks_911_hero.html

9/11 workers from Moore film fear political attack

2007-06-27T16:01:00.000-04:00

By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer

June 22, 2007, 4:36 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- Three ground zero workers who accompanied filmmaker Michael Moore on a trip to Cuba for medical treatment featured in his new movie "Sicko" charged Friday they were targeted by the U.S. government because of their participation.

"It's ridiculous after what we did for the city and the country on that day, that they won't allow us to go 90 miles offshore to get treated," said Reggie Cervantes, a 46-year-old EMT who worked with only a thin dust mask after the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Brooklyn-based worker, among the first responders performing triage on the street below the burning towers, now suffers from severe pulmonary diseases, as well as kidney and liver problems.

Moore and the ailing 9/11 workers went to Cuba for treatment in March despite a U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to the Communist country. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sent Moore a letter in May notifying the filmmaker that he was under investigation for travel violations.

Although the three workers have not received similar letters, all said they were expecting them. Cervantes was joined by another EMT, John Graham, 45, and a 9/11 volunteer, William Maher, 54, along with their lawyer, noted First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus.

Garbus said any investigation of the three was politically motivated, a charge made 11 days ago by Moore's attorney, David Boies. In a letter to the Treasury Department, Boies noted that Moore is well known as a harsh critic of the Bush administration _ particularly in his Sept. 11 movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Moore had asked the Treasury Department last fall to approve his Cuba trip under rules permitting travel there by journalists. Moore made the trip after receiving no response.

All three workers said they were denied treatment for various conditions by U.S. insurance companies that refused to pay for coverage. Each received treatment in Cuba.

Graham, of Paramus, N.J., suffers from esophageal burns, an enlarged heart and post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he has repeatedly been denied medical coverage and is still battling for Social Security disability benefits.

Cervantes, who now lives in Oklahoma, said workers' compensation and Social Security don't cover the medical tests she needs, and she now owes $17,000 for treatment and emergency room visits in the United States. She has no regrets about her Cuban excursion, where she said she saw nine specialists.

"I would have gone to the moon," she said. "We need treatment."

The three were not paid for their appearances in Moore's film.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--sicko-workers0622jun22,0,3020596.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

Scores of FDNY firefighters file for treatment of WTC injuries, illness

2007-06-18T22:57:00.000-04:00

06/18/2007
By Angela Montefinise & Susan EdelmanThe New York Post Copyright 2007 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.All Rights Reserved

NEW YORK — About 5,000 active and retired FDNY employees are receiving medical treatment for injuries and illnesses connected to the World Trade Center attacks, according to a Fire Department document.

"That is an absolutely staggering number, and it's a number that speaks volumes," said Andrew Carboy, a lawyer who represents more than 200 firefighters in a negligence suit against the city. "That's half of what the force was on 9/11."

The FDNY had about 11,000 members on Sept. 11, 2001. About 3,000 firefighters and EMS workers are receiving counseling for emotional problems. Another 1,500 are suffering respiratory ailments.

There are also between 600 and 1,000 FDNY members — most of whom retired after 9/11 — currently receiving prescription medication for a variety of illnesses, from asthma and gastrointestinal disease to depression and anxiety.

The shocking numbers were revealed in a June 8 FDNY "request for proposals," launched in search of a vendor to manage the department's prescription-drug program for five years.
The department announced in February that it will use millions of dollars in federal funds to help subsidize medication for workers suffering from 9/11-related injuries, allowing them to obtain free prescription drugs.

Although all 5,000 workers suffering from ailments — who were all screened by the FDNY — are eligible for the program, many are using workers' compensation or other forms of insurance to obtain medication.

There are 207 drugs approved in the program, including antidepressants Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil; anti-anxiety medication Xanax; narcotic painkiller OxyContin; and antipsychotics Haldol and Zyprexa, which are used to combat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"When 5,000 members of the FDNY qualify for these kinds of medications, it's clear this problem isn't going to go away anytime soon," said Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.

"People tend to forget, or maybe it's just human nature, to put that event behind you," he said. "But firefighters, many of whom lost many, many friends that day, besides the physical injuries, still suffer severe emotional pain."

http://www.firerescue1.com/health/articles/289374/

Another Firefighter Passes From 9/11 Causes.

2007-05-18T10:06:00.001-04:00

Newsday - Obituaries:

PRINCIOTTA Jr. - Salvatore , of NYC, suddenly on May 14, 2007, as a result of post 9/11 lung complications. Beloved son of Salvatore and the late Joan. Dear brother of Charles (Lisa) and Joseph (Christine). Proud uncle of Charles II, Christopher, Salvatore, Alexandra, Joseph Jr. and Nicholas. Loving nephew of Rosalie and the late Raymond Downey. He also leaves behind many cousins, friends , and the Oak Street Family. He proudly served the FDNY for 15 years and was one who responded to 9/11. He was a recipient of the Thomas R. Elsasser Memorial Medal. He also enjoyed being part of the FDNY football team as well as being an avid photographer. Family and friends may visit the Claude R. Boyd-Caratozzolo Funeral Home, 1785 Deer Park Ave., Deer Park, NY on Saturday and Sunday from 2:00-4:30PM and 7:00-9:30PM. Mass of Christian Burial on Monday at 10:15AM at Ss Cyril and Methodius RC Church. Interment to follow at St. Charles Cemetery. In lieu of flowers donations may be made in his name to: Engine 33 Ladder 9 Relief Fund, 42 Great Jones St., New York, NY (in care of Steve Nuzzi).

This marks the 3rd 9/11 first responder to pass in the last 2 weeks. The first two appeared in the Daily News on pages 42 and 20, the passing of this firefighter was noted only in the Obituary section of Newsday.

http://www.legacy.com/Newsday/DeathNotices.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=88145064

Ground Zero hero loses cancer fight

2007-05-14T12:16:00.000-04:00

Detective sued city to change pensions after 9/11

BY ALISON GENDAR, ERNIE NASPRETTO and JORDAN LITEDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Monday, May 14th 2007, 4:00 AM

A retired NYPD street detective who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer after toiling at Ground Zero died of the disease yesterday, his wife and the detectives' union president said.
Robert Williamson, 46, died at his Nanuet, Rockland County, home four years after his March 2003 diagnosis, said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association.
Beginning the day of the 9/11 attacks and for three months after, Williamson spent 16-hour days performing rescue and recovery operations at the World Trade Center site, his sergeant, Michael Kelley, said yesterday.

"He was down on The Pile every single day" for the first two months after the twin towers' collapse, and then five days a week in the third month, Kelley said.

"Some guys took breaks; he was down there digging," Kelley said. "It didn't faze him a bit."
Williamson was among more than 1,700 cops and firefighters who sued the city to change the pension system after the disaster, Palladino said, adding that the married father of three worked "well beyond the required 40 hours at Ground Zero to qualify for a disability pension."
"He is one of the first officers who was deemed disabled as a result of his assignment on 9/11, and now that disability has claimed his life," Palladino said.

Sounding sad but stoic, Williamson's widow said the Emergency Service Unit cops never forgot her husband, even though he retired in 2002. The couple's children are 10, 12 and 15. "They provided transportation to and from the hospital and brought oxygen tanks and a hospice to the house," Maureen Williamson said.

NYPD Supervising Chief Surgeon Eli Kleinman would not comment specifically on Williamson's death. "As far as we know, there are no particular cancers in the medical literature related to 9/11," Kleinman said. "We're following it very closely."

Williamson's attorney Michael Barasch said Williamson and other Ground Zero workers were "as much victims of the disaster as the 343 firefighters and 2,700-odd people who died" on 9/11.

But before he died, Williamson said he would have worked at the site again. "Did I know the air was not safe? Yes. Would I go down there again today knowing that? Yes. A lot of people made sacrifices," Williamson told the Daily News in 2004. "I might be a casualty of 9/11, but at least I had a few more years with my family."

A funeral is planned for Wednesday.
jlite@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/05/14/2007-05-14_ground_zero_hero_loses_cancer_fight-2.html

CANCER CLAIMS 9/11 COP

2007-05-14T12:05:00.000-04:00

By PERRY CHIARAMONTE and MURRAY WEISS

May 8, 2007 -- A detective on Mayor Bloomberg's security detail died yesterday of cancer - an illness his family and union officials believe can be traced to his work in the toxic debris at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Detective Kevin Hawkins, 42, died at 2 a.m. at the hospice unit of Calvary Hospital in The Bronx, said Vic Cipulla, vice president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
He'd been diagnosed with kidney cancer in September.

Cipulla said Hawkins and his family had filed a claim that would seek verification that his illness was in the line of duty, making him eligible for a disability pension.

"Members have come down with various forms of cancer and there are many still to come," he said. The claim was prompted by a law - passed in 2005 and named after Detective James Zadroga, who died of lung disease after his work at Ground Zero - that ensures public workers can get a disability pension if their illness is traced to the recovery effort.
Hawkins worked at Ground Zero for two months.

"Kevin brought a quiet reserve and a sense of duty to everything he did," a statement from Bloomberg said. "He fought this disease with the same integrity and strength that he displayed serving our country and our city."

Hawkins, who joined the department in 1987, also served two tours of duty in the Gulf War in 1990.

"He was a member of the United States Marine Corps who served his nation in war, as he did the Police Department, with pride and dedication," Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Hawkins is survived by his wife Marie, and three children.

perry.chiaramonte@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05082007/news/regionalnews/cancer_claims_9_11_cop_regionalnews_perry_chiaramonte_and_murray_weiss.htm

9/11 Survivor Dies After Long Depression

2007-05-14T12:01:00.000-04:00

nbc4.com

POSTED: 12:12 pm EDT May 12, 2007
UPDATED: 12:17 pm EDT May 12, 2007
SEVERNA PARK, Md. -- Marcie Bents survived the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. But family members said she never recovered from the trauma of that day.
Bents was found dead in her Severna Park home Tuesday morning. The cause of death is not yet known, but relatives say the 48-year-old woman had lost the will to live.
They said Bents holed up in her house, watching CNN and fretting about bombs and planes.
Her sister, Kathy Gonce, said Bents "was afraid 24-7."
Bents, an information technology specialist, was in her second-floor office of the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building. About 15 of her co-workers died.
She returned to work but was granted medical leave in 2004, and people who know her said she gradually got worse.

Report: Sharp Rise In WTC First Responders With Lung Disease

2007-04-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

There is reportedly been a sharp rise in the number of September 11th recovery workers suffering from an inflammatory lung disease.

The New York Post says a new study conducted by two fire department doctors, shows 26 firefighters who worked at the World Trade Center site have been diagnosed with the sarcoidosis.

The study says half of those cases were diagnosed in the year after the attacks; six times above the average for firefighters in the 15 years before September 11th.

But the Post says the study has upset the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which says the NYPD has yet to acknowledge a link between the disease and the terror attacks.

The PBA also says that the department rejected some officers' medical bills for the illness. The NYPD denies the charges, saying the department's medical division is still looking at cases.

http://www2.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=27375296&postID=5700507168454868178

THE EPA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER COLLAPSE

2007-04-10T12:17:00.000-04:00

In any other scenario, the conduct of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the New York State Department of Environment Protection and the New York City Department of Health in the days and weeks after 9/11 would have spurred numerous congressional investigations.

Given the unprecedented chaos that reigned for weeks and months in the wake of the attack, very few people outside the local environmental community, some reporters, and residents and employees of downtown Manhattan are aware of exactly what happened.

In August 2003, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General released an exhaustive report that evaluated the EPA’s actions in regards to 9/11 and it’s aftermath. The report found that the EPA “did not have sufficient data’’ to make the “blanket’’ statement on Sept. 18 that the air was “safe.’’

“A definitive answer to whether the air was safe to breathe may not be settled for years to come.’’

The report further found that the White House Council on Environmental Quality “influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that the EPA communicated to the public through it’s early press releases when it convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.’’

And there appears to have been even more influence from Washington than we yet know – ABC News has obtained a copy of an Executive Order, dated May 6, 2002, in which President Bush authorizes EPA Administrator Whitman to “classify information as ‘secret’’’ under the provision of Classfied National Security Information.

Below is a summary, compiled from dozens of books, documents, interviews, news stories and transcripts.

The bulk of the information, though, comes from discovery material, independent testing and research compiled by Joel Kupferman’s non-profit New York Environmental Law & Justice Project - which is leading a class action lawsuit against Whitman and the EPA for making materially misleading statements about the air quality in and around Ground Zero after the building collapse.

Everything he has claimed to me so far has been borne out in government documents, test results and public records.

I’m presenting this in a timeline, so that it’s clear exactly who said and did what, and when. Everything below is backed by documents, interviews, and public records.

Sept 11 – By 9:03 a.m., both tower’s had been hit, and both would fall.
Fifteen million square feet of office space was demolished when the twin towers fell. 200,000 tons of steel, 600,000 square feet of window glass, 5,000 tons of asbestos, 12,000 miles of electric cables and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete crashed down into lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.

The combustion produced a caustic cauldron of highly alkaline concrete dust, glass fibers and cancer-causing asbestos, as well as particles of lead, chlorine, antimony, aluminum, magnesium, iron, zinc and calcium. 24,000 gallons of jet fuel and burning plastics released carcinogens including dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyis and polychlorinated furans, according to a 2004 scientific analysis.

Formaldehyde from laminates, building supplies, plastics and synthetic fabrics; mercury from fluorescent lamps; di-electric fluids that encase electrical cables; about four pounds of lead for each computer; PCBs from capacitators, electrical cable insulation and transformers – all poured forth from the site for miles.

“The plume contained – at very least, toxic lead, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, dioxins, mercury, nickel, vanadium, sulphur, PAHs, PCBs, and furans,’’ according to Kupferman.
“And there was more. The WTC had housed…a Secret Service shooting range that kept millions of rounds of lead ammunition on hand. An array of hazardous chemicals was stored in a U.S. Customs lab, including thousands of pounds of arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium,’’ according to a study produced for the NYC Dept. of Design Construction, based on EPA and DEC’s own documents.

And “130,000 gallons of PCB-contaminated transformer oil at an electrical substation at 7 WTC likely contributed to its collapse and …the toxic residue later found in the area,’’ Kupferman writes in “Lost Liberties,’’ a new book.

While EPA testing – and reassurances – began almost immediately after 9/11, the first results were not made public until they were published on the EPA’s website on October 3.
Kupferman claims those original posted results “disingenuous and misleading’’ and says that the samples data posted was “selective and so few…they did not give an accurate picture of what people were exposed to.’’

For example, the website featured 27 out of 442 posted samples that were above the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act standards - which require by law ‘immediate decontamination’ - but explained them as “spikes’’ in toxicity, and argued that they should be averaged into the rest of the data, such that the results would not exceed regulatory limits..”even though that is not how toxicity works: beyond certain levels, even short-term exposure to certain toxins is alarmingly dangerous,’’ according to Kupferman.

Despite the EPA’s citing that the majority of their selectively-posted samples were below the AHERA levels, the standard itself directly contradicts the EPA’s own rules.
The rules, established in 1986 pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act, state that “available evidence supports the conclusion that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.’’

Finally, the EPA misrepresented the AHERA standard in the first place, Kupferman writes, “which is intended for evaluating after a cleanup has taken place.” According to a roundup of EPA Daily Summaries that were only released on October 19 in response to Kupferman FOIAs, the EPA, had, in fact, found, for example, elevated levels of dioxins, chromium, carbon monoxide and benzene, among other toxins, between mid September and mid October.

In retrospect, scientists, federal investigators, investigative reporters and at least one federal judge have concluded that the EPA knew as early as Sept. 12, 2001 that the air around Ground Zero was dangerous at best and highly toxic at worst, but did nothing and said nothing about it.

The collapse was the "largest acute environmental disaster that has ever befallen New York City," according to a 2004 analysis by several dozen scientists in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

“There’s enough evidence to demonstrate that Mrs. Whitman’s statements to the brave rescue workers and the people who live [in lower Manhattan] were false,’’ said Hugh Kaufman, investigator for EPA ombudsman Robert Martin, who investigated the EPA’s response to the WTC attack, according to NY Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez’s book Fallout. “She certainly knew it was false by October [2001] but never corrected the record.’’

In a February, 2006 pre-trial ruling that allowed a class-action suit by residents and rescue workers against the EPA and others to go forward, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts said Whitman's "deliberate and misleading'' statements about the air quality "shocks the conscience.'' Batts also said that the EPA knew as early as Sept 12, 2001 that one of the first air samples contained an asbestos level four times higher than the EPA threshold for danger, according to USA Today.

"Instead of admitting that they had no certainty as to what the danger these substances might cause, EPA risk experts at the NY regional headquarters devised ad hoc safety 'benchmarks' or 'removal action guidelines,'' Juan Gonzalez writes in 'Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the WTC Collapse.'

"They then misled the public into believing that these were federally approved safety levels and reported that only a few of their test results were above these levels. Even so, EPA officials and fire-fighting experts were well aware, from previous studies of a handful of spectacular and tragic fires..that such blazes are capable of releasing a witch's brew of some of the most toxic substances known."

Finally, documents obtained by ABC News appear to directly contradict what Whitman was saying publicly. In an October 6 memo, city DOH associate commissioner Kelly McKinney raises “critical environmental issues’’ regarding the reopening of the areas around Ground Zero writes that there were serious disagreements between the city’s Office of Emergency Management and the EPA over whether the air was safe.

Sept. 13 – EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman reports in a presser that the EPA is “greatly relieved to have learned that there appear to be no significant levels of asbestos dust in the air in NYC.’’

Sept 14 – In a press release, Whitman said that "monitoring and sampling...[has] been very reassuring about potential exposure of rescue workers and the public to environmental contamination.''

Sept 15 – “There is no reason to concern,’’ Whitman told reporters, saying that the latest testing done around Ground Zero showed asbestos levels at or below the one percent level, meaning asbestos made up as much as or less than one percent of the sample. She acknowledged that the highest reading was 4.5%.

Sept. 16 – “The most immediate hazards to health and well-being are from unstable buildings, broken glass, jagged metals and other harmful things,’’ reported a U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services “fact’’ sheet on dust and debris. “We expect the materials that would be present would be at concentrations lower than those normally associated with health hazards.

Sept 17 – New York Stock Exchange and much of lower Manhattan’s financial district reopens, following EPA and other governmental assurances of safety, even though the EPA had delegated the cleaning and monitoring of the insides of affected buildings to the overburdened, under-resourced New York State Department of Environmental Protection.

On the same day, the city’s Dept. of Health issued protocols for cleaning apartments and homes near Ground Zero. “The best way to remove dust is to use a wet rag or mop…Where dust is thick, directly wet the dust with water and remove it in layers with wet rags and mops.’’ The protocols did not note that the dust may be laden with asbestos and other toxic chemicals, or that testing and potentially abatement, or removal, may be required before it was safe to return to the dwellings.

Sept 19 – “Results from our monitoring of air quality…show that the public…is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances,’’ Whitman said. “Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of NY and Washington DC that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.’’

On the same day, the NYELJP took independent samples of dust at Vesey and Liberty Streets on the outer perimeter of Ground Zero, and sent the materials to a lab that had been used by the city and the NYC Board of Education. Four samples indicated asbestos levels between one and five percent – which is up to five times the level at which the law requires immediate decontamination and removal. Soon after these results were publicized, the NY State Dept. of Health threatened local labs with loss of their licenses if they processed any more “independent sampling’’ two lab directors who had received such warnings told Kupferman.

Sept. 21 - the NYELJP filed FOIAs for “all monitoring data studies, and reports of air, dust and bulk…taken in lower Manhattan and Staten Island landfills in response to the WTC collapse.’’
Meanwhile, in a press release entitled “NYC Monitoring Efforts Continue to Show Safe Drinking Water and Air,’’ Whitman stated that “a host of potential contaminants are either not detectable or are below the Agency’s concern levels…”

Oct 3 - The EPA posts first, selective data from air and water testing on its website, in which 27 of 442 samples were found to be above the federal safety level for asbestos.
In a press release, the EPA said it had “been evaluating samples of air against an extremely stringent standard, the AHERA standard’’ and that even “levels above the AHERA standard do not imply that there is an immediate health threat to the public.’’ The statement went on to say that “asbestos exposure becomes a health concern when high concentrations of asbestos fibers are inhaled over a long period of time.’’

Oct 12 – Despite repeated governmental assurances of the safety of the air around Ground Zero, residents were becoming agitated. Many had developed “WTC cough’’ and other ailments, and it was becoming clearer to scientists, engineers and other experts that the environmental fallout from the WTC collapse was worse than the government was leading everyone to believe.
Following a speech at an Asthma Summit at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Whitman again sought to calm fears. “You would have to be there breathing in a lot of it for a long period of time to see long-term health effects,’’ she said. “Certainly at Ground Zero, we have said from the very beginning that it’s really important that people who are down there working on the site, or near Ground Zero, should take some precautions…the good news is that the air samples have all been at levels that cause us no concern.’’

October 19 - the NPELJP’s FOIA requests came back and the group began reviewing more than 600 pages of EPA documents that “revealed that, in spite of their assurances to the contrary, EPA, OSHA and the various other health and environmental agencies – which met weekly throughout the crisis – knew of the dangers present at Ground Zero and beyond, on the ground and in the air,’’ Kupferman writes in “Lost Liberties,’’ a new book on the Bush administration.

The EPA’s own data listed findings that were above regulated levels, but that information was not posted on their site. They later explained that this was an oversight.
November 26 – Dr. Stephen Levin of the Mt. Sinai-I.J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine testified before the NY State Assembly’s Standing Committees on Environmental Conservation, Health and Labor that conditions “seen in adults who have been at or near” the WTC site for “as little as 24 to 36 hours’’ included “reactive airways disease, new onset or exacerbation of pre-existing asthma, reactive airway dysfunction syndrome, sinisitus, irritant rhinitis, persistent cough and diffuse irrtitation of nasal mucosal surfaces.’’
For first responders, rescuers and “individuals who were hit by the cloud of dust and debris’’ Levin found “a dramatic increase in gastro-esophageal reflux symptoms, according to testimony.

By January, 2003, Levin had examined 3,500 rescue workers and volunteers, and found that half suffered either “serious respiratory disorders and/or psychological distress,’’ according to Kupferman, who interviewed Levin that month.

Dec. 3 – A certified industrial hygienist hired by residents at 105 Duane Street found 555,000 asbestos structures per square centimeter in the samples from an air supply vent (at least fifty times the recommended safety level, according to Kupferman. The EPA called the result an aberration, and criticized the testing method – even though they used the same testing method on their own headquarters at 290 Broadway.

9/11 Claims Another Hero

2007-03-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

CBS 2 Exclusive: 9/11 Claims Another HeroCity Transit Worker Dies From Rare Blood Cancer

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_066231113.html
Lou Young
3/7/2007

(CBS) NEW YORK There are new worries about the health of workers at ground zero following the death of a city transportation worker assigned to the site.

Patricia Rooney says toxic dust killed her husband, Phillip. She is still coming to grips with what she lost.

She buried her husband of 12 years on Monday, a city transportation worker who was 35 when assigned to work at ground zero, 38 when the blood cancer started to waste him and 41 when he died. She has no doubt it was the toxic dust and smoke of 9/11 that took Phillip before his time.

"He was fine until he went down there, a totally healthy man," Patricia said. "Prio r to 9/11 he didn't have a job where he was associated with these high risks that are associated with leukemia like the benzene and all the toxins. His job was not like that. He had no job like that. There was nothing in his life to indicate for him to get cancer or the type of leukemia he got."

There's no way to be certain what caused the cancer, but in a man Philip's age we're told it is rare, perhaps 1 in 150,000. Among the ground zero responders, however, the disease seems to be much more common.

"We just did a fundraiser for a man dying of the same leukemia," first responder advocate John Feal said. "Unless you are a fan of mass murder or genocide, you gotta stop the bleeding now. These guys need help. They need help now.

"Phillip left behind three children, a son and 2 daughters. Patricia said they deserve the same benefits police officers and firefighters received in similar circumstances.

"My husband w as a city employee and they are denying him a three-quarter pension and we deserve it. He deserved it and now he's gone and his three children deserve it."

The city's position is because Phillips never had the kind of pre-employment health screening that police officers and firefighters have there's no way to prove he wasn't already sick when they sent to him to ground zero. The Bush Administration has pledged $25 million for health care for ground zero workers, but that comes a little late for Phillip Rooney.

Save a Hero

2007-02-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

A NIGHT FOR JOE http://www.ocobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007702110325
Benefit set for 9/11 rescue worker
Posted by the Ocean County Observer on 02/11/07BY ANGELA SANTORIELLOSTAFF WRITER
TOMS RIVER — It still feels like the Twin Towers are falling for Joe Picurro.
Picurro, a 9/11 responder who spent 28 days at Ground Zero, has lost 26 pounds in the last three weeks, due to the leukemia he was diagnosed with in August that is directly related to his 28-day volunteer work.
His doctor told him Friday afternoon it is likely the leukemia has reached stage four. "He is really, really bad," said Joe's wife Laura. "He hasn't been able to get out of bed for almost three weeks."
Under his doctor's advice, Joe Picurro has not received chemotherapy for his cancer because of the severe vomiting that is caused from the radiation treatment. Doctors said the chemotherapy could cause further cancer in Picurro's throat and a bone marrow transplant would be a safer form of treatment.
"They agreed to tell me when it was late in the game and now it's late in the game," he said.
Picurro will be admitted into a hospital in two weeks so doctors can find a bone marrow match. While Picurro is hopeful one of this two twin sisters will be a match, friend John Feal said he would be the back up plan.
"I offered my bone marrow to him," said Feal. "I would sacrifice myself for any 9/11 responder."
Aside from offering his own marrow, Feal's nonprofit organization — the FealGood Foundation — was created to assist responders like Picurro. The foundation will be sponsoring an upcoming benefit for Picurro and responder Father Stephen Petrovich along with the Artists4Hope organization.
The benefit costs $50 a ticket and is free for 9/11 responders. It will be held from 2-7 p.m. Feb. 24 at Captain Hooks in Seaside Heights with The Hitmen performing while guests enjoy food, giveaways, raffle drawing and the auctioning of a Paul Reed Smith guitar that was sent to the recent James Brown Tribute in Los Angeles for performing artists' signatures.
The cherry wood electric guitar has signatures from band members in 3 Doors Down, the David Sanborn band, the Ted Nugent band, the Dixie Chicks, the Jethro Tull band, Quiet Riot and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.
Paul Reed also placed his signature on the guitar he donated for the benefit and paid for it to be transported to Los Angeles and back to the Picurro's home for the benefit.
The guitar will be posted on eBay Feb. 14 so it can receive the most exposure before the event and the auctioning will end at the benefit with the highest bidder. Feal said he started the foundation to help responders financially and to advocate for them before the U.S. Congress. A 9/11 responder himself for 5 days, Feal lost half of his left foot at Ground Zero when an 8,000 pound beam fell on his foot, causing gangrene to set in, requiring a partial amputation.
Feal said after he felt sorry for himself for about a year; then, after he realized other responders were worse off, he decided to create the FealGood Foundation. "People are suffering and dying and there is nothing I can do to save Joe Picurro and Father Stephen, but I can help ease the pain," he said.
Feal believes the recent $25 million pledge by President Bush to help rescue workers who have been sickened from the site is "political bread crumbs."
"They shouldn't have to suffer because the federal government remains idle," he said, adding, "And the lack of compassion that has trickled down from our leaders has become a snowball in society where 9/11 responders are being forgotten."
Petrovich came to New York from Cleveland to bless the Ground Zero soil, and to help where he could. He said yesterday from his home in Ohio he was blessed himself to meet Joe and Laura Picurro.
The 17 days Petrovich spent keeping the faith among responders, he developed a chronic lung disease and had to have a precancerous part of tongue removed.
"They (government officials) knew who were there because of our identification and never contacted to us tell us something could have been wrong with us," he said, adding Laura Picurro was the one who "knew New York proper" and gave him the numbers he needed to be treated for the illness he contacted from Ground Zero. "It was our duty to go."
While Laura is fighting to keep her husband alive, she is still helping provide the needed assistance for Petrovich, arranging a free round trip flight donated by the Salvation Army of Union and seeing that the Hershey Motel in Seaside Heights would donate a room for his stay along with three other rooms for first responders who will coming to the benefit.
"He is coming up for the benefit but the main thing is to get him to Mount Sinai on the Monday after the benefit," Laura said, adding she will be taking him to New York.
Though the Joe Picurro has been denied funds and treatment promised him by the New York Worker's Compensation Board and the federal government, leaving the family with $63,000 in unpaid medical bills, Laura Picurro said the benefit is not about money that will be raised but more importantly it is "to raise awareness about what we are going through." t
She said a hundred percent of the benefit proceeds will be split between her husband Joe and Petrovich.
"New York (Workers Compensation Board) made it clear they will not cover any type of cancer treatment," she said, adding she can longer be anxious over insurance coverage because she is to concerned with her husband's health.
To purchase a ticket to the benefit or make a donation to Picurro or Petrovich, visit http://www.fealgoodfoundation.com/.

My Dad Is Strong, Now I Will Be, Too

2007-01-25T10:35:00.000-05:00

By Ceasar Borja Jr.
Special to the News
January 25, 2007

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/491675p-414171c.html

THE NIGHT BEFORE my father passed away, I took out our old family photos. I was going to go to Washington to be Sen. Hillary Clinton's guest at the State of the Union speech, and I wanted to remember my father.

My favorite one is from a vacation at Disney World when I was about 3. My dad was giving me a piggyback ride, with my legs draped over his shoulders and his hands holding me up.

I was so small. I like it because it's my dad keeping me balanced and literally carrying me on his shoulders. But now I'm carrying him on my shoulders.

My father, Cesar Borja, was a New York City police officer. In making people feel safe and protected, he felt like it was the best job in the world. He always told me he didn't want to go up in rank. He liked being on the streets where the people are. He felt like he could make the most difference there.

I was never afraid of my dad doing anything because he never failed. He was a hero when he worked at the World Trade Center, and when he passed away Tuesday night, he died a hero.

My dad called everyone "Baby" - he called me baby, and I'm 21. Now, I say it, too. He also called me "Kuya," which is my nickname. He named me after himself, but he spelled my name a little differently because he wanted to make me unique. I know I'm technically not a "Junior" because he spells it differently, but if my father says I'm a Junior, I am.

My father was a pretty macho guy. He didn't talk about a lot of things in depth, but he would take me out to the garage and we would work on cars together. He'd say, "Kuya, come on. Let's go do this." He loved us so much.

He didn't say much, but I know what he would say if he had survived. It would be just one sentence: "Told you I'd come home." And if my dad could talk to George Bush, he'd say just one thing: "Think we deserve this?"

Just being alone in the [hospital] room with my father and studying him, I understand him more.

He looked so tough. Bullies used to pick on me because I'm so small. My dad said, "Kuya, am I the biggest police officer? No. I'm one of the smallest. But I'm never absent, and I always do my best." He's my hero. He taught me everything.

What I'm most proud of receiving from dad is his strength. People say I'm strong to be speaking about him right after he passed away, but if you think I'm strong now, you should have seen my father on a normal day. I'm proud to even get a fraction of his strength.

Now, I'm fighting for my father and for all the heroes of the World Trade Center. He always said, "Do your best or do nothing." I'm doing my best so that everyone who is suffering can get the care and the help that they need, so no other son ever has to go through what I'm going through.

Ceasar Borja Jr. lives in Bayside, Queens. He is a student at Hunter College and plans to major in journalism.

First responder dies from 9/11 illness as son attends 'Union'

2007-01-25T06:18:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — College student Ceasar Borja Jr. wanted to attend the State of the Union speech to represent his father, a former New York police officer who worked at ground zero and lay in a hospital bed with life-threatening lung problems.

Only hours before the speech, the 21-year-old found out he would stand as a symbol of his father's sacrifice not just for the speech, but for the rest of his life.

A devastating phone call during dinner Tuesday night told him his father had just died.

Even though he got the news less than three hours before President Bush's speech, Borja insisted on honoring his father's memory by going ahead and attending the prime-time address. He had been invited by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., a longtime advocate for Sept. 11 health issues.

"He passed away right when I'm down here fighting for him. This is the most I've ever done for Dad," the Daily News quoted Borja as saying as he learned of his father's death.

The father, 52-year-old Cesar Borja, had been a police officer for 20 years. In recent days, he had been in an intensive care ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, breathing through a tube and hoping for a lung transplant.

"Sadly he was not able to overcome his struggle and receive the gift of organ donation, due to the seriousness of his condition," said the medical center's chief executive officer, Dr. Kenneth L. Davis. "His battle will alert others to these devastating diseases and hopefully lead to better outcomes for others involved."

Borja's case is the latest to draw attention to those who have fallen ill after exposure to the toxic debris pile of the World Trade Center site in 2001.

Sen. Clinton called Borja's death a "terrible tragedy."

The son, she said, "is a courageous and remarkable young man. His sense of duty to his father and to the mission that brought him to Washington is inspiring and heartbreaking."

Borja said he came to Washington to make the point that there are many more whose lives are threatened by their exposure at ground zero.

Clinton and other New York lawmakers have been urging the federal government for years to pay for treating Sept. 11-related illnesses.

He Will Tell the Nation about His Dying Dad

2007-01-23T09:22:00.000-05:00

Daily News editorial
January 23, 2007

His father answered the call to duty and now the son follows.

Ceasar Borja, all of 21 years old, will tonight join the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives and members of the Supreme Court in listening to George W. Bush's seventh State of the Union address. The President's words will fill the august chamber as the young man's dad slips ever closer to death.

For, barring a miracle, death is coming for Cesar Borja at the age of 52. He is dying because, as a New York City police officer, he served at Ground Zero after the World Trade Center disintegrated, week after week searing his lungs with the towers' airborne remains.

Without a lung transplant, Cesar Borja will suffocate. In the days just past, he has been battling infection and hovering beneath consciousness at Mount Sinai Medical Center. It's doubtful he will hear the President tonight or witness the moment when the oldest of his three children stands forth as the emissary of all the forgotten victims of 9/11. But there's no doubt he would be proud.

Young Ceasar Borja might just be the man who will prod Bush to see, as Borja said yesterday, "that 9/11 did not end that year. It still continues now to the present day." He might just be the person who prompts the President, finally, to understand that the federal government has a long-term responsibility to pay for health care for thousands of sickened rescue and recovery workers.

This State of the Union address is particularly critical for Bush. He will be speaking to ascendant Democrats while facing deep bipartisan hostility toward his plan for a troop surge in Iraq - and while shadowed by the most debilitating of questions: Is this President relevant anymore?

Early reports have it that Bush will devote a goodly amount of attention to domestic matters, such as energy independence, health insurance and immigration, that have gone by the boards as his administration lost touch with the

American public. Each has long deserved a place high on the national agenda. So, too, providing excellent medical treatment to the men and women who have paid, and will continue to pay, enormous prices because they responded to an act of war.

Young Borja will be the guest tonight of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has long been a leading advocate on 9/11 health issues. With Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Vito Fossella, she pushed and cajoled and embarrassed the Department of Health and Human Services into delivering its first treatment funding last year - five years after the fact. But there's enough money to last only until summer.

Clinton and Maloney, Democrats, and Fossella, a Republican, want Bush to create a line in the federal budget to continue treatment for as long as is necessary, and a Senate committee is set to hold hearings next month on a Clinton bill that would allocate $1.9 billion over five years to 9/11 health issues.

Judging by the dignity with which he has conducted himself since the Daily News told the story of his father's battle with pulmonary fibrosis, Borja may well crystallize for the na

tion how badly the government has failed the 9/11 responders. In anticipation of his trip, he met the press yesterday. Here is some of what he had to say:

"My father Cesar Borja is 52 years old and he is a retired NYPD police officer. He has served and protected the city of New York for 20 years, and retired in 2003. ... "I have two younger siblings. Evan, my brother, who is 16. But I feel sorry the most for my youngest. Her name is Nhia. She's my sister. She's 12 years old.

"I'm going tomorrow to Washington, D.C., with Sen. Hillary Clinton - and I thank her for that - for a chance to reach further more of the press and to promote that 9/11 did not end that year. It still continues now to the present day.

"And I am not the only one affected. But I know that I represent them.

"I hope that the government will pass legislation offering financial support for medical attention, proper health care, for all those heroes-turned-victims due to the fact that they did not hesitate on Sept. 11, 2001.

"It's not just New York's Finest or New York's Bravest, but also volunteers. I remember coming here shortly thereafter to see what was going on. I probably first arrived here at the World

Trade Center, at Ground Zero, perhaps Sept. 14, when my parents thought it was safe for me to come and visit. And I saw license plates from all over America, even Canada. They came to help. ...

"I'm lucky to be 21, to have known my father as long as I have. I hope that with proper medical attention, little girls and young boys like my brother, 16, won't have to go through what my family's going through. ...

"That is why I need the help of the government. Not just me, but everyone, everyone that's been affected, all the heroes, all of the families, all of the wives, the sons, the daughters, the brothers, the sisters, the grandmothers, the grandfathers, everyone that has been affected by 9/11. We need the help of the U.S. government. Please."

Extending a State of the Union invitation to Ceasar Borja was one of Clinton's first acts after declaring her entry into the 2008 presidential contest. Call it political if you will, but accept it as political in the best sense of the word. She is giving a young man on the verge of loss a platform from which to appeal to the conscience of a generous nation, as well as to a President who should listen and respond.

Our Poster

2007-01-22T18:41:00.000-05:00

Our poster depicted in this photo. Rescue and Recovery First Responders and Ceasar Borja jr, son of Police Officer Ceasar Borja

Last Thursday, there was a vigil outside of Mt Sinai Hospital for Ceasar Borja. John Feal attended the vigil outside Mt Sinai for a police officer who has pulmonary fibrosis. The police officer has only one choice of waiting for a lung transplant or dying. John (pictured on the right side of Ceasar jr) had the first responders who attended the vigil sign one of our posters and gave it to the son of the officer. It is important for our poster to extend out into the community for more people to see. Once this poster becomes synonymous with the efforts of bringing to light the health of rescue and recovery workers, we'll be able to have more power in telling the city what we need in order to live longer and healthier lives as opposed to the ones like Police Officer Ceasar Borja have to live through.

THANK YOU!!!!!

2007-01-18T12:24:00.000-05:00

Over the last 7 months, artists4hope has doubled in size and the amount
of support we received was amazing. Without the help of various organizations, we would not be able to survive this long and be able to make ties with other organizations fighting for the same goal. The FealGood Foundation is one such organization. This goal, simply put, is to help those rescue and recovery workers who unselfishly answered the call when the city and country needed them the most.

Today, Artists4hope would like to take this opportunity to thank another partner we’ve made in this fight. Artists4hope thanks Joe Mindak of Tisha Industries for providing us with 2001 copies of our Epilogue poster. This donation will help us to address two goals; primary is to raise awareness to the extent of the problem we now face and second is to raise funds to tackle these problems. Epilogue is a graphic representation of the multitude of ill people and shows the personal and mental anguish of a lone recovery worker fighting so hard to survive with all the health problems he faces.Thanks also go out to Joe Sinnott who donated his time and amazing talent to capturing this image. The funds received from the sale of the special edition posters will be spread across different areas to bring greater resources to help those suffering from the after effects of September 11th. It is people like Joe and Tisha Industries that make it possible for us to fight this uphill battle.

For information regarding the sale of our posters, please refer to our
homepage http://www.artists4hope.org

New lung or WTC cop dies

2007-01-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

Officer stricken after months at Ground Zero

By ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Eva Borja cannot talk to her husband because he is heavily sedated.

Eva and their children (from l.), Ceasar, 21, Nhia, 12, and Evan, 16, are hoping for a miracle.

His family says Cesar Borja did not wear a respirator at Ground Zero because feds said the air was safe to breathe.

Under a jumble of gray wires and clear plastic tubes, Cesar Borja lies unconscious. A nurse checks the monitor at his bedside. The skin on his neck twitches.
Borja is in critical condition with pulmonary fibrosis, kept under sedation, unable to speak even if a breathing tube weren't in his mouth. His eyes are closed.

Beneath the medical hardware that keeps him alive, Borja, 52, still has a handsome, rugged face, topped with the short, spiky hair of a former soldier who never missed a day of work in his 20 years as a city cop.

But everything changed when the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Borja, a father of three from Bayside, Queens, volunteered to work months of 16-hour shifts in the rubble, breathing in clouds of toxic dust.

He filed his retirement papers two years later, about the time he started coughing. A fast-acting disease was crawling through his chest, squeezing his every breath, filling his lungs with scar tissue.

Unless he gets a lung transplant, Borja will die.

"When I see him, I just want him back home," said his daughter Nhia, 12. "My dad is so caring for everyone, and it's just so hard to see him like this, because he doesn't deserve this at all."

At least four other Ground Zero workers have died of pulmonary fibrosis, in which the lungs react to foreign particles by covering them over with scar tissue.

Borja's family is convinced he caught the disease in the line of duty. And although doctors say they can't definitively blame his illness on the air at Ground Zero, scientists are probing for a connection.

"He says, 'I know I got it from there, because a lot of people are dying from it,'" his wife, Eva, 47, said as she waited near his bed in Mount Sinai Medical Center's intensive care unit.

"No doubt for me," she said. "Reading about all these people who have been dying, it has to be a delayed reaction."

Borja was working at an NYPD auto pound in Queens when the twin towers fell. He rushed to Ground Zero and started working long days there - even volunteering to work extra shifts.

Borja is a quiet and reserved man, who rarely talked with his wife and three children about what he saw in his five months at Ground Zero.

But like thousands of other workers, his family said, Borja never wore a respirator - because he believed the Environmental Protection Agency's assurances that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe.

"He said, 'No, I never thought of it. They said in the news that the air was good, so I believed it,'" his wife said. "He's not a complainer. He will do his duty."

An estimated 12,000 of the 40,000 workers who labored in the toxic cloud of Ground Zero to help rescue and rebuild are afflicted with breathing problems.

Soon after Borja retired in 2003, he developed a cough that wouldn't go away. He had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years, but his family said he stopped at least five years ago.

He blamed the cough on allergies. He popped endless cough drops. Finally, his family persuaded him to go see a doctor - who diagnosed him with asthma.

But Borja's health got worse, with his breathing so shallow that he could barely walk.

The Daily News exposed the plight of thousands of World Trade Center workers with similar problems last summer - and pushed for new laws that will give help to those who desperately need it.

Borja avidly read stories about the victims and the laws, his wife said, and learned that Mount Sinai runs a health screening program for World Trade Center workers. Last fall, he made an appointment there.

Soon, Mount Sinai doctors diagnosed him with pulmonary fibrosis - an unexplained illness in which scar tissue builds up in the lungs, crowding out healthy cells and slowly choking its victims.

Mount Sinai transplant doctor Maria Padilla said she has seen several pulmonary fibrosis patients who worked at the Trade Center site.

"Fibrosis is a reaction [by] the lung to any form of injury," Padilla said. "There's no question that there are a number of patients ... with this disease who had Ground Zero exposure. Whether one has led to the other, I don't know if we can say."

Borja is fighting pneumonia and a bacterial infection that he caught after taking drugs that weakened his immune system. If the infections clear up, he can get on the lung transplant waiting list.

"His chances of survival without the lung transplant are very slight," Padilla said.

Eva Borja will soon file paperwork to seek an increased pension for her husband, based on his disability. But they blame no one for his fate.

"We are not the type who want to blame," Eva Borja said. "People make mistakes."

Originally published on January 15, 2007

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/489050p-411862c.html

9/11 hero's fatal sickness

2007-01-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

49-year-old responder dies of esophageal cancer tied to the toxic dust

Wednesday, January 10, 2007
By TEVAH PLATT
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 may have claimed still another Staten Island victim.

Frederick J. Stuck III, 49, a retired deputy sheriff and a first responder on Sept. 11, died yesterday at his Port Richmond home. His wife, Lou Ann, said the cause was esophageal cancer, which she believes resulted from exposure to the toxic dust clouds that have made thousands of New Yorkers sick.

When asked yesterday about her husband's experiences on Sept. 11, Mrs. Stuck's voice became strained. "I can't talk about this," she said. "This was the cause of the whole thing."

The couple's son, Frederick IV, said his father had responded immediately following the attacks and was part of a search for survivors at the former World Trade Center PATH station. For at least six weeks, he worked long hours in the rubble. He returned only briefly to Port Richmond during that time, coming home covered in the dust that smothered Lower Manhattan -- only to sleep and shower and return to Ground Zero.

"He was proud to be a part of the rescue," Mrs. Stuck said. "He was a very proud American. He wanted to be there to help everybody."

Stuck developed asthma shortly after Sept. 11, his wife said, and had to use an inhaler. He developed an ache in his chest, then swallowing became difficult. When he was diagnosed with fourth-stage cancer in April, there was little that could be done.

A report issued this September by Mount Sinai Medical Center found that nearly 70 percent of Ground Zero workers suffered lung problems as a result of their exposure to toxins in the dust-cloud. Manhattan trial lawyers David Worby and Paul Napoli have filed about 8,000 lawsuits claiming the city failed to protect workers from these dangers.

But the city has maintained it is nearly impossible to determine a causal link between the recovery work at Ground Zero and illnesses that arise on an individual basis, and Stuck is a case in point. Whether his selfless acts were fatal has not been medically determined; his doctors pointed to his smoking as a young man (a habit he kicked almost 20 years ago) as a potential cause, Mrs. Stuck said.

What his family knows for sure is that Stuck was, until recently, relatively healthy. The Army veteran and retired deputy sheriff, an outdoorsman who idolized John Wayne, had been, according to his wife, exceptionally "youthful."

HIS BIRTHDAY

Today would have been his 50th birthday. The native of Garfield, N.J., moved to Port Richmond in 1991, following his marriage to the former Lou Ann Ferone in 1988.

He moved to the Island to work for the New York City Sheriff's Office, which he did for 19 years, in all five boroughs. Stuck, who liked to share stories about his job, was injured while making an arrest in 2003. He retired last year.

"There are many Fred Stuck stories," a co-worker said yesterday. "Those of us who had the opportunity to work side by side with Fred knew that they could not ask for a better partner to depend on in any situation."

The Vietnam War-era veteran who served in the U.S. Army from 1974 to 1977 was a member of the Cichon Post, American Legion, in Port Richmond. He enjoyed hunting and fishing in the Catskills -- a passion he shared with his children and many friends. Stuck would pull out his guitar at barbecues and family gatherings and sing Irish and folk songs. He had a large collection of tools and was known in the neighborhood for his handiness, as well as his small talk and his smile, family said. He also collected John Wayne movies, action figures and memorabilia.

HIS KEEPSAKES

Stuck also maintained a solemn collection he kept private -- an album of photographs and keepsakes from the recovery effort. He had swapped badges with fellow officers from around the country, with whom he had forged a bond, and he kept these, along with the American flag bandanna he wore every day at the site.

"He was a true officer and a gentleman, a proud and devoted American," Mrs. Stuck said. She also described her husband, a parishioner of St. Roch's R.C. Church, Port Richmond, as a faithful man who prayed daily, and a devoted father of four.

Friends had encouraged the Stuck family to look into benefits available to ailing recovery workers, but Stuck had said he was receiving health care and just wanted to focus on getting better. He never pursued litigation, though he did alert his co-workers, encouraging them to seek medical tests in hopes they might detect Sept. 11-related health problems early.

"He apologized to me for being sick," Mrs. Stuck said. "He said he was going to fight this. He said, 'Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere.' ... But first you pray to God to keep him, then you pray to God to take him. He was suffering."

HIS SPIRIT

But the young widow also said she had been inspired by her husband, who remained positive throughout his illness.

"I know he's in heaven now, that he's looking down on me and he'll give me the strength to get through this," she said.

According to Advance records, Stuck is the second Staten Islander to die from an illness potentially tied to the recovery effort.

"It's going to continue to be a problem," said Dennis McKeon, executive director of the Bloomfield-based Where-To-Turn, a non-profit group that advocates for families who suffered after Sept. 11.

The American Red Cross operates a Sept. 11 Recovery Program with services for those experiencing health problems. Those seeking information may call 212-812-4348.

Tevah Platt is a news reporter for the Advance. She may be reached at platt@siadvance.com.

Worker injured at Ground Zero to give kidney to stranger

2007-01-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

BY STACEY ALTHERR
Newsday Staff Writer
January 4, 2007

John Feal knows a lot about suffering. Permanently disabled during rescue efforts at the World Trade Center, he dedicated his life to helping others. Now he is giving even more than money or time - he is donating a precious kidney to a former Queens man he met over the Internet.

"He went to my Web site, fealgoodfoundation.com, and told me what good work I was doing," said Feal of Paul Grossfeld, a former Sunnyside resident who now lives in Marlboro, N.J. After Grossfeld told him he needed a kidney, Feal didn't think twice. "I told him, I'll do it. "

Seven days after the terrorist attacks, Feal was working demolition at Ground Zero when an 8,000-pound steel beam fell onto his left foot. The man next to him fainted when he saw the blood spurting from the injury. Feal, an Army veteran from Nesconset, made a tourniquet out of his belt and yelled for help.

After doctors at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan stabilized the foot with pins, gangrene set in. Feal lost half his foot. Through his recovery, he said he felt his life spiraling downward. He couldn't work, he had to cope with excruciating pain, and most of all, he had to deal with the unending frustration of trying to get disability benefits.

But Feal, 40, turned his misfortune into a will to help others. He started the FealGood Foundation, which helps injured 9/11 first responders and workers navigate the maze of paperwork for disability payments and medical treatment. He also raises money for those financially devastated by the event.

"After [the accident], I was ruined," Feal said. "But my mother was my guiding force. " His mother, who died of cancer in April, never complained, said Feal, teaching him to come to terms with his own pain.

Grossfeld, in the meantime, had his own crisis. He was in desperate need of a kidney.

Grossfeld spent 25 years as a volunteer paramedic in Queens and later in North Massapequa, where he lived before moving to New Jersey. Two years ago, he was coaching baseball when a player told him he didn't look well. "I thought it was the heat," he said.

Grossfeld, 55, who has diabetes, was in kidney failure. He is now on dialysis three days a week. A transplanted kidney is his only chance for a normal life, he said, but every time it looked like he might get one, the opportunity fell through.

Grossfeld, who is married and has a 12-year-old son, said he enrolled with matchingdonors.com. Many of the replies he received were from people wanting $50,000 for their kidney.

"One day, I got a hit on the Web site. I flew out to Chicago to meet the man," Grossfeld said. When he got to the airport, his cell phone rang. It was the potential donor saying he had changed his mind.

Disillusioned, Grossfeld said he was surfing the Internet one night when he found Feal's Web site. He wrote Feal and asked whether he could link his Web site requesting a kidney to Feal's.

"He called the next morning and introduced himself," Grossfeld said. "He said, 'You got yourself a kidney. '"

It took a while for Grossfeld to believe that Feal, a complete stranger, was serious. Although they are not the same blood type, they said they have been deemed compatible by the renal transplant team at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, and will know in two weeks the date of the surgery.

"I will be able to enjoy my family and see my son grow. I can watch him fulfill his dreams," Grossfeld said. "John is giving me my life."

1 in 4

Odds of an identical match for kidney transplant between siblings

1 in 2

Odds of a partial match (3 antigens) between siblings

1 in 30,000

Odds of an identical match between unrelated people

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/...ny-health-print

The Year At The World Trade Center Site: Health Concerns Plague 9/11 First Responders

2007-01-06T10:03:00.000-05:00

December 20, 2006

As we wind down 2006, NY1 continues to look back on the year that was. It has been five years since the attacks on the World Trade Center but for many who responded to help there, the health problems are just beginning. NY1’s Rebecca Spitz looks at these health issues that characterized 2006.

A staggering 70-percent of World Trade Center first responders are suffering from respiratory problems. In September, Mount Sinai Hospital released a groundbreaking study on the health of the firefighters, police officers, construction, and transit workers who responded to the terror attacks.

"I have burnt lungs,” said WTC responder John Graham. “I have asthma, reactive airway disease, gastric reflux, post-traumatic stress and a host of other things."

One of the more striking findings was that among those who had no health problems before September 11th, 2001, 61-percent developed symptoms after exposure.

"There should no longer be any doubt about the health effects of the World Trade Center,” said Dr. Robin Herbert of Mount Sinai. “Our patients are sick and will need on-going health monitoring and treatment for the rest of their lives."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was too soon to draw that conclusion. Still, the city opened an environmental health center at Bellevue Hospital for those first responders and anyone who felt they were suffering from the effects of the dust they inhaled after the attacks.

And the state government also did its part to contribute to the health of 9/11 first responders. Earlier, Governor George Pataki signed legislation giving full line of duty benefits to the family of any firefighter, police officer, or uniformed person who dies of a 9/11-related illness.

"We asked a great deal of our heroes after the horrible attacks, and they gave without asking anything back,” said Pataki. “Now it's our turn."

But the fallout from the attacks continued, this time in court, as more than 8,000 workers were represented in a federal lawsuit that alleges the city failed to properly protect them from toxic dust and debris after the terror attacks.

The plaintiffs include police officers, firefighters, and EMTs.

“Yesterday I got a phone call from an electrician whose husband died of stomach cancer,” explained the plaintiffs’ attorney, David Worby. “And three days earlier we got another call from a relative of someone who died from throat and tongue cancer. Those people were given zero protection."

The city's attorneys countered the city and the contractors it hired did everything they could to provide air-filtering masks and instructions on how to use them.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency planned to resume cleaning up toxins around the World Trade Center site. As part of a new $7 million plan, residents and building owners south of Canal Street and West of Allen and Pike Streets can have their air and dust tested for toxins, which the EPA will then clean up.

The plan is getting a thumbs-down from local lawmakers though. Congressman Jerry Nadler and Senator Hillary Clinton blast the program, calling it inadequate. But the EPA is pushing ahead, advertising a two-month registration program to begin in January.

- Rebecca Spitz

I Cried Today

2006-12-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

The following is a post found on a blogsite dedicated to respiratory illnesses called "Not *Quite* Dead Yet" and it is about our charity.

I have been holding back and trying so hard to remain clinical (for the most part), that I have not discussed much of the emotion involved in learning about these difficulties we all share. I then received notification of a new member to this blog today, a person whose email address clearly identified them as a member of FDNY, or the New York Fire Department. My eyes welled up, and I was compelled to write to this person. As I wrote, those welled tears fell in thanks and remembrance for people who aided our fellow country people on September 11, 2001.

Many of the people who aided in first-response on September 11, 2001 are dead. Many of those who aided in first response, lived through the horror, and then went on to work for months respectfully clearing the World Trade Center - Ground Zero - area, are now becoming very ill with interstitial lung disease, COPD, and mesothelioma, not to mention the emotional issues involved.

They were told the air was safe. After the first days, few wore masks. Asbestos flew with each movement of the clean-up crew whose primary concern was not their own painful life and death later, but the immediacy of the job at hand - retrieving the remains of the fallen ones.

Today, many of those brave men and women are becoming our fallen ones. I have added FDNY to the list of member sites in the sidebar of this blog. Please visit. Buy their products, if you can. Remember that we all HEART New York, and honor the memory of those we lost by purchasing the wares being sold to aid those who worked valiantly to remediate a horrible wrong perpetrated on United States soil.

As a disclaimer, I live in Indiana. I have no ties to www.newyorkfire.com, nor their linked sites selling items to aid those who answered when the needs of America were very, very dire.

Posted in Thanks, Site News December 29th, 2006 by OptyMyst | No comments

http://optymyst.com/wordpress/

WTC hero wins health coverage

2006-12-22T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sickened L.I. man also gets workers' comp

BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Vito Valenti, whose 9/11 service led to severe scarring of his lungs, is among first Ground Zero heroes to win full medical coverage.

Crippled 9/11 hero Vito Valenti's lungs were terminally scarred at Ground Zero, but the injury couldn't stop him from seeing justice finally done this week.
For months, the volunteer who was among the first into the World Trade Center's toxic cloud has been relying on the generosity of strangers for vital medicine and oxygen he couldn't afford.

On Wednesday, he heard a judge order his health costs covered - putting an end to the wearying legal battle.

"I felt the pressure lift right off my chest," he said yesterday. "It was like somebody had lifted 1,000 pounds off me."

Valenti, 42, from Elmont, L.I., inhaled the asbestos and chemical-laden dust at Ground Zero as he answered a call for help in the two days after 9/11.

A hacking cough he developed eight months later was eventually diagnosed as pulmonary fibrosis - a scarring of the lungs so severe that without a transplant, he could expect to live for only five to six years.

He had to quit his job as a union rep with District Council 37. With it went his health benefits.

Technicalities in the workers' compensation system stopped him - like many suffering because of their bravery that day - from claiming coverage.

The system, designed for everyday workplace injuries, had a two-year deadline for claims to be made. By the time Valenti's illness was evident, that deadline had passed.

He has been forced to rely on donations from medical companies, doctors and members of the public moved to help.

But on Wednesday, a judge ruled changes to the law made by Gov. Pataki in August after the Daily News highlighted Valenti's plight, and that of many like him, made him eligible.

"What the governor did was make it so that people in that situation could have their case reviewed again," said a Workers' Compensation Board source.

"How can they adhere to a deadline if they didn't know they were ill until after it had passed?"

The judge ordered that the Workers' Compensation Board grant Valenti its maximum coverage of $400 a week in living expenses and unlimited medical coverage, backdated to August of last year.

While hundreds of people like Valenti could potentially seek coverage, an exact number was not available yesterday.

"I am delighted," said Valenti. "I have finally got some good news.

"I can see a doctor when I need to. I don't need to worry about where the next lot of drugs are going to come from, and I can finally get the tests to put me on the list for a transplant.

"I know I haven't got long to live. I know it's a race against time, but at least now, I can enter the race."

Valenti's attorney, Victor Pasternak, said, "Vito could be the poster child as the first positive result for this change in the law.

"After 32 years of practice, it still feels great when someone gives you a hug for helping them."

Originally published on December 22, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/482418p-405909c.html

The Year At The World Trade Center Site: Health Concerns Plague 9/11 First Responders

2006-12-21T22:34:00.000-05:00

Life after 9-11 for a struggling survivor

2006-12-20T16:38:00.000-05:00

More than five years after the attack on America, a Myrtle Beach man is now becoming a victim.

He volunteered to help in the clean up, and now doctors say he suffers from an illness related to his time spent at Ground Zero. He can't work and now with medical bills piling up, he's going to auction off his most prized possesion to make ends meet.

Jay Bingham was a volunteer in the clean up after the 9-11 disaster. He has memory after memory of his two week challenge to find survivors left in the aftermath. Now he faces worries of his own.

"I worry about Rose and the baby, and I just want to make sure that they're taken care of," said Bingham. "I don't want her to have to worry when we have bills and stuff."

Bingham's been in and out of the hospital, and now the medical bills are piling up along with other bills for insurance, taxes, and basic utilities. Doctors aren't sure what's wrong with him, but he has headaches, nasal problems, and constant shortness of breath.

"This is the honest to God truth," said Bingham. "I'm giving the baby a bath, I'm not doing anything, it's just a five minute bath, and got so out of breath, I couldn't finish, and I'm like what's wrong with me."

After the disaster, doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York say they've treated hundreds of other people suffering from the same symptoms as Bingham. The government will pay for treatment, but not at hospitals here where he lives on the Grand Strand. His closest option is Duke, which is almost four hours away. He's been paying for his visits to local hospitals out of his own pocket and says he can't do it anymore.

"This whole time, I'm frustrated, because I'm already spending money, and now I've spent my savings," said Bingham. "And now I'm trying to start all over, and every time I try to start, I'm having health problems."

So now he plans to auction off something very dear to his heart, the helmet he wore during the clean up. It's one of only twelve signed by celebrities and others who visited the site of the disaster.

"I want the baby to have a good life," said Bingham. "So that's more important than the helmet."

Bingham has his helmet on E-bay now, and it'll be posted until Christmas Day for bids.

http://www.wpde.com/news/viewarticle.asp?view=3330

Loss of a 9/11 first responder

2006-12-11T14:37:00.000-05:00

We would like to share an email we recieved from John Feal, who has founded and runs the Feal Good Foundation, a foundation that supports ill 9/11 first responders. Please feel free to stop by his site as see the work that he is doing.
http://www.fealgoodfoundation.com

Also email responses that you would like to sent along to the widow in the email can be sent to us and we will forward them along to John. iloveny_marf@yahoo.com

Dear friends and responders...................I am sad to announce on December 4th we lost a hero, a 9/11 responder, a husband, a son, a brother, and a friend . Giovanni Iacono, a volunteer fire fighter from rocky point, lost his battle to cancer. His wife Melissa, the brave woman that she is, was at his bed side through this very difficult time . I implore all of you, to say a prayer, send an email to me and I will pass it on to Melissa. As she asks for privacy during her time of loss, we can only send condolence,and pray for her. Her husband is a hero,and died because of 9/11 toxic exposure . During the holiday season,give thanks that many of us are still here, and breathing. Granted we struggle everyday, but god has not taking us yet . Please send those emails, so I can pass them on to the wife of a hero.

Sincerely
John Feal

Latest Check Sent Out.

2006-12-11T14:31:00.000-05:00

Our latest check sent to The Meso Foundation. This is only possible because of the support that we have gotten from all of you. We would like to note Saint Johns University for the amazing turnout and Marian Toy for her generous donation. Thanks!

SAINT JOHNS UNIVERSITY STEPS UP BIG AGAIN!

2006-12-01T15:23:00.000-05:00

On November 30, 2006 we hosted another event to raise awareness and funds regarding the plight of thousands of ill first responders as a result of 9/11/01. This was our third event on campus this semester, but rather than people being sick of seeing us, they came out in numbers larger than the first two events! This is amazing on two fronts, not only have these students continue to show up to learn and support our cause, but beint that SJU is a heavy science school - most of these young people are the physicians, PAs, Med Techs and Pharmacists of the future.

We would like to compliment our staff for whom whithout we would be able to get exactly zero done.

We would like to thank Idil Kirmica for not setting a new standard in "customer relations" by being able to convey our message to the most amount of people in the fewest words, AND for getting the SJU radio station to make an announcement about our event.

We would also like to recognize 3 new people who helped us for this event: Nilam Wadhvania, who has been working with us in the Public Relations Dept and Aliza Moorji and Cindy Jairam - who both gave up a day to come and volunteer getting the word out. Thank you ladies!

We also recognized the winners of the "How Much Do You Love NY" contest: Rachelle Ocampo and Leena Thomas who were presented with the Iloveny gift pack that included signed posters from the Ground Zero Museum Workshop, a very generous donation by Gary Marlon Suson. Thank you Gary.

The Winners of This Season's Contest

2006-11-27T16:32:00.000-05:00

Leena Thomas and Rachelle Ocampo
Location: Kew Gardens Subway station

Kew Gardens Subway Station was our location choice. We picked this location is because as college students attending St. Johns University, this subway station is our link to Manhattan. It bridges every culture enhancing our college experience. Not only that, but as freshmen embarking on our new collage path, Kew Gardens was where we both initially met. We randomly stumbled into each other in conversation and realized our commonality of SJU. This station, along with others in New York City, links individuals of different cultures and religions under one common ground.

The winners will receive the Artists4Hope prize pack during this week's event. Artists4Hope would like to thank everyone for their contributions and hope that this contest is only the beginning.

50 unsung New York heroes

2006-11-23T10:52:00.000-05:00

In a special Thanksgiving week tribute, we salute those who make our city a better place to live

Battling for the Bravest

Hundreds of firefighters owe their life to Frank Costello, a nurse clinician at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Burn Center. But he's so humble you practically have to force the fact out of him. The soft-spoken, 65-year-old Jackson Heights native has been at the upper East Side burn center since 1979 (including stints on a Medevac helicopter and teaching critical care), aiding scores of injured Bravest, 9/11 victims and others over the years. Patients with severe burns "are the most vulnerable," says the father of two. "It not only involves the burning of skin, but also shock, trauma and all their other organ systems." Costello and his colleagues are best in the clutch: Of the 34 patients on 9/11, only a handful didn't survive, and he says that today, patients with 85%-90% of their body burned can be saved. Adds the nurse: "I learn every day. It's an amazing place. I've become a much better person from working here."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/473543p-398411c.html

9/11 families remembered

Retired FDNY member Lee Ielpi swallows hard whenever he passes the Tribute Center exhibit of a firefighter's dusty jacket taken from Ground Zero. It belonged to his 29-year-old son, Jonathan, who died in the line of duty on 9/11, leaving a wife and two young children. Ielpi found his son's remains after three months' searching through the rubble, but worked for another six months helping other bereaved relatives locate their loved ones.

He helped establish the September 11th Families Association and co-founded the Tribute Center on Liberty St., a museum of artifacts, images and stories from that terrible day.

"It shows what ignorance and intolerance have done and continue to do," says Ielpi, 62, who regularly leads tours of the exhibition.

The charismatic grandfather of four is also undergoing chemotherapy for a rare form of leukemia - which could be related to his time at Ground Zero.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/473204p-398144c.html

New 9/11 Online Illness Diary

2006-11-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

Unfortunatly, one of our own is suffering right now with respiratory ailments as a result of WTC exposure. They have agreed to use a supplimental blog that is linked on the side of this page to write down experiences, feelings and thoughts. Please check out the progress. Thank you.

WTC responder to tell story at conference

2006-11-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

Hoping to bring attention to the health crisis facing 9/11's first responders, an Elmont man suffering with lung disease has teamed up with a forensic analyst who specializes in cold cases of terrorism and government misconduct to organize a conference in New Jersey on Nov. 21.

At the New Jersey Expo Center in Edison on Tuesday, Vito Valenti will join physicians who monitor the 9/11 responders, along with Congressional members from the U.S. House of Representatives, state senators, attorney's representing the first responders, members of 9/11 foundations and rescue and recovery workers to discuss how his health has been affected since working at ground zero.

Valenti, a union worker for Local 372 (Board of Education employees), has pulmonary fibrosis - scarring of the lungs - which, without a double lung transplant, is fatal. Valenti has no health insurance. It ran out before he completed a series of tests that would have put him on the lung transplant list.

His financial ills, at least in the short term, would be helped by the World Trade Center Disability Pension, which would give him access to the care he needs. In order to meet the qualifications for the pension, public employees must have worked at least 40 hours at ground zero. Valenti said he worked for two straight days, which should make him more than eligible. But union officials told him they could not prove he spent 40 hours there, because he and union Vice President Santos Crespo, the only coworker with him at ground zero, were separated and there is no official documentation of Valenti's service.

"I'm not the only one, there are others," Valenti said. "And our stories have to be told."

Clemente said the key to helping first responders who, like Valenti, have developed illnesses as a result of working at ground zero and have no health care, is to draw attention to what she said is a growing crisis.

"We will not tolerate this nor do we have time to delay assistance to those who need help this conference is a professional forum to explain those areas that are failing our 9/11 responders, the current health crisis, immediate needs, and legislation that could assist them," Clemente wrote in a letter.
Many city workers who got sick after working at ground zero are eligible for three-quarter-pay pensions under the 9/11 pension legislation, which was enacted in 2005.

Though the law recognizes that workers' conditions were caused by exposure to the toxic air at ground zero, Valenti failed to meet the criteria. He did not take part in the city retirement system before the World Trade Center attacks, which may leave him ineligible for the 9/11 disability pension.

WTC worker losing his breath

2006-11-10T17:09:00.000-05:00

By Brian Zanzonico - November 09, 2006

With a nasal cannula supplying his scarred, dying lungs with oxygen, Vito Valenti stops in mid-sentence and starts choking.
He lurches forward, puts one hand on his thigh to brace himself as his body lurches, and covers his mouth with his other balled-up fist. His face reddens, and veins in his neck bulge as he tries to catch his breath. His teenage son hurries from the kitchen with a glass of water. Valenti waves his hand in front of his face to apologize for the coughing fit. When he gets it under control, his body relaxes and he slumps back in his living room chair.

On the wall above him in his Elmont home are numerous citations for his rescue and recovery work at ground zero after Sept. 11, 2001. The one that holds the most meaning is a plaque from his union, Local 372 (Board of Education employees). He received it at a breakfast in November of 2001 that was held for him and a coworker who also helped at ground zero.

Valenti's work came at a price. Months after his time at ground zero, he developed what he initially thought was a cold-related cough. When it persisted, he had it checked, and he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis -scarring of the lungs - which, without a double lung transplant, is a death sentence. Valenti has no health insurance. It ran out before he completed a series of tests that would have put him on the lung transplant list.

With no money to afford refilling the 25-plus pills he is required to take each day, he is running out. His financial ills, at least in the short term, would be helped by the World Trade Center Disability Pension, which would give him access to the care he needs. In order to meet the qualifications for the pension, public employees must have worked at least 40 hours at ground zero. Valenti said he worked for two straight days, which should make him more than eligible. But union officials told him they could not prove he spent 40 hours there, because he and union Vice President Santos Crespo, the only coworker with him at ground zero, were separated and there is no official documentation of Valenti's service. "I'm not looking for a lawsuit," he said. "All I want is a little disability [insurance] and I'll ride off into the sunset."

Sandra Davis, Valenti's union representative, did not return a call for comment.Valenti, 42, a grievance representative for Local 372, was at union headquarters, at 125 Barclay St., just steps from the World Trade Center, on 9/11. It was primary day in the city, and he was assigned to work the phones at headquarters. He was in his office when he heard a bang."I thought it was the air conditioning ducts clicking on," Valenti recalled. "Who would have dreamt of a plane hitting a building?"He went outside and saw the second plane crash into the south tower. Then, before long, he found himself trying to outrun the debris cloud that chased New Yorkers through Lower Manhattan after the south tower fell. "It was like a monster - it kept coming at us, picking up speed," Valenti said. "I turned around to look and it hit me. Day went to night.

"He was covered head to toe with chalky, pulverized remnants of the tower. He choked on the dust, and a police officer nearby offered Valenti his bottle of water. He washed out his mouth and splashed his face.

With people on the streets in a panic, the second tower collapsed. Now people were running in every direction, and Valenti saw an elderly woman knocked to the ground and nearly trampled in the chaos. "I got on my knees and sheltered her so she wouldn't get hurt," he said. "I told her, 'Everything's going to be OK. I won't leave you.' Then I saw a cop and called him over. We got her over to the sidewalk and out of danger.

"Later in the afternoon, there was an announcement that first responders were looking for volunteers to help with rescue and recovery. He turned to Crespo and asked if they should help. Crespo was hesitant, Valenti said. Valenti was not. "I wasn't about to sit around and do nothing," he said.Valenti went to help, and Crespo followed. Valenti was assigned to one team of rescuers, Crespo to another. Valenti pulled fire hoses, gave water to exhausted firemen, helped unload medical supplies. But he wasn't prepared for what he was going to see.

At one point, a fireman walked over to Valenti with his hand on his neck complaining of bleeding. Valenti told him to take his hand away, and blood began spurting out. Valenti walked him over to the triage at Stuyvesant High School.Near 7 World Trade, a police officer came to him holding what looked like a flattened piece of metal, Valenti said. The officer held it at arm's length and refused to look at it. He handed it to Valenti, who upon closer inspection discovered that it was a baby carriage. Like the officer, he didn't want to look at it, afraid of what might be inside. Valenti walked the carriage over to a nurse at the triage, who also didn't know what it was. Valenti told her and walked away.He saw a woman still alive under a steel beam, her skin fused to the metal. Valenti said he worked around the clock on Sept. 11 and 12. After taking a day to rest, he returned to work on Sept. 14. Headquarters were closed, so he reported to the union's building on 5th Avenue.

Weeks passed and everything seemed fine. Then one morning, he went to work ... and broke down. "I don't remember it, but [coworkers] tell me I was nervous and shaking and picked up a staple gun and flung it against the wall and screamed, 'I can't take it.'"

Valenti was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and was out of work for eight months. "It wasn't so much the plane hitting the building as it was the bodies falling and what I saw at ground zero," he said. "And those sirens. I heard them all day long."

In late November of 2001, Valenti and Crespo were honored by the members and executive board of Local 372 with a breakfast and plaque in recognition of their work at ground zero. In February 2002, Valenti began to develop a cough. He didn't have the symptoms of a cold, but the cough was persistent and he couldn't shake it. He went to his doctor, who listened to his lungs and said he didn't sound like he had a cold, but his lungs weren't clear.

Valenti's doctor sent him to a pulmonologist, and he had a CAT scan and X-rays were taken. The CAT scan found a spot, and doctors took a biopsy of his lung. They said they thought it was pulmonary fibrosis. He was recommended to Mt. Sinai Hospital, and a doctor there took a quick test and said immediately that Valenti needed oxygen. In March 2004, he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a lung scarring that does not allow the body to oxygenate blood. It has afflicted many firefighters and police officers who worked at ground zero.The condition worsened. Valenti had to stop working, because his job often took him inside old school buildings that don't have elevators. Walking up a few steps taxes him. Climbing three or four flights is impossible. His doctor told him to file for disability. He applied for medical leave with pay, which lasts six months. Once that was exhausted, he applied for leave without pay for another six months. That expired.

Now Valenti has no insurance. He had his oxygen taken away because he couldn't afford it. The oxygen that keeps him alive now is donated by Homecare Concepts in Farmingdale, which has promised him a lifetime supply. Many city workers who got sick after working at ground zero are eligible for three-quarter-pay pensions under the 9/11 pension legislation, which was enacted in 2005. Though the law recognizes that workers' conditions were caused by exposure to the toxic air at ground zero, Valenti failed to meet the criteria. He did not take part in the city retirement system before the World Trade Center attacks, which may leave him ineligible for the 9/11 disability pension. He also can't prove that he served at ground zero for the requisite 40 hours. There is a 9/11 health crisis conference scheduled for Nov. 21 at the New Jersey Expo Center, with physicians, elected officials and ground zero workers expected to attend.

"I work hard with Congress to try to show there are a couple of things out there that can be done for these people, but the government needs to move on it," said the event's organizer, Angela Clemente, a forensic analyst dealing with cold cases of terrorism and government misconduct.

On the local government level, state Sen. Michael Balboni has also gotten involved on Valenti's behalf, writing a letter to the head of the New York State Workers' Compensation Board. "He asked that this be reviewed as quickly as possible," said Kelly Cummings, Balboni's communications director.In addition to dealing with his own illness, Valenti has had his share of heartbreak since developing pulmonary fibrosis. After a brief battle with lung cancer, his mother, Pauline, died Feb. 10. A spot that turned out to be cancer was found on his father's lung seven days after Pauline's death. Neither Valenti, his mother nor Joe, his father, were smokers. But the three visited ground zero after Valenti's breakdown to bring him some closure, and Joe is convinced that he and his wife got sick there.

"When it rains it pours," Joe said, rolling his eyes. "It's no coincidence."As cancer further depleted Pauline's lungs, she also depended on around-the-clock oxygen. "He was on oxygen, she was on oxygen," said Vito's son, who's also named Joe. "They shared the same tank."The average life expectancy of someone with pulmonary fibrosis is five years, Valenti said. His diagnosis is nearly three years old. He knows the clock is ticking. "When I'm by myself, I break down and cry," he said. "Why is this happening to me?"

Despite his struggle to survive, Valenti said he has no regrets about doing his part at ground zero. He insists he'd do it all over again. "In a heartbeat," he said. "Just to see a little old lady thrown to the ground and people just jumped over her. How can I watch something like that? I'd do it again in a heartbeat."Valenti said sometimes the physical pain of pulmonary fibrosis pales in comparison to what he has experienced from Local 372. The plaque that hangs on the wall is a daily reminder. "My job just forgot about me," he said. "To this day, three years later, no one has called me. I could've been dead a year ago and no one would know."

Health Forums

2006-11-07T10:29:00.000-05:00

A new addition to improving communication between the writers and readers of our page is the Artists4Hope Health Forum. There is a link on the right panel that reads "Artists4Hope Health Forum," click on that and you can enter our forum. Subscribe as a new member to be able to read and comment on the latest posts. This forum will allow readers to communicate easier considering there is a long process of joining on blogger.com.

The forum address is http://a4hhealthforum.proboards52.com/
We hope you visit often.

Nun who says lung disease from 9/11 attack sickened her - dies

2006-11-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

Associated Press

AIKEN, S.C. - A nun who says her lungs were permanently damaged after spending six months at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks died Wednesday.Sister Cynthia Mahoney died at her Aiken home, according to Shellhouse Funeral Home. She was 54.

No cause of death was given, but Mahoney has said in several interviews that she thinks poisoned air where the World Trade Center towers fell gave her a deadly mix of asthma as well as pulmonary and digestive problems.

Mahoney asked results of her autopsy be used in a class action suit by Ground Zero workers who say the air around the site has sickened them.

Mahoney spent every day for six months after the attacks as a chaplain and an emergency medical technician.

"We are sick - physically and emotionally," Mahoney told The Oregonian in a 2004 story. "We cannot work because of health issues resulting from 9/11 rescue activity. We suffer from serious respiratory illnesses to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And no one seems to realize this."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said Mahoney's death should be more proof of how dangerous it was to work at Ground Zero."The death of Sister Mahoney is yet another tragic reminder that September 11 continues to take lives," Clinton said. "Her life and sacrifice embody the heroism that was so prevalent in the days and weeks after the attack."

Mahoney's funeral will be Saturday at Shellhouse Funeral Home's chapel in Aiken. A private burial will follow.

9/11 in the air

2006-11-03T16:23:00.000-05:00

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

THANK YOU.

2006-10-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

We would like to extend our thanks to Jim and Charles Baxley of Hart, Baxley, Daniels & Holton who for the last 4 years worked relentlessly, pro bono, on trademarking our iloveny logo.

The US Trademark office has officially granted us a trademark for our I Love New York logo thanks to their determination and perserverance. Without their hard work, we would not be as confident in making sure our logo will be recognized not only for our distinct cause, but to represent the most diverse city in the world.

Latest Donation to A4H Special Thanks

2006-10-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

This month we have received a $1000 donation from Ronnie and Julie Hemenway of Marrero, LA. Everyone in this charity is thankful for their donation as it will help so many rescue and recovery workers to help us reach our goal of finding a cure to the cause of everyone's illness. We are touched to receive this donation from people who have survived the Hurricane Katrina event in which so many people were left hopeless. We thank you Ronnie and Julie Hemenway.

Scientists tracking health of 9/11 search dogs

2006-10-25T18:37:00.000-04:00

Updated: 4:06 p.m. ET Oct 20, 2006

NEW YORK - They dug in the toxic World Trade Center dust for survivors, and later for the dead. Their feet were burned by white-hot debris. But unlike thousands of others who toiled at ground zero after Sept. 11, these rescue workers aren’t sick.
Scientists have spent years studying the health of search-and-rescue dogs that nosed through the debris at ground zero, and to their surprise, they have found no sign of major illness in the animals.
They are trying to figure out why this is so.
“They didn’t have any airway protection, they didn’t have any skin protection. They were sort of in the worst of it,” said Cynthia Otto, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, where researchers launched a study of 97 dogs five years ago.
Although many ground zero dogs have died — some of rare cancers — researchers say many have lived beyond the average life span for dogs and are not getting any sicker than average.
Owners of the dogs dispute the findings, saying there is a definite link between the toxic air and their pets’ health.
Otto has tracked dogs that spent an average of 10 days after the 2001 terrorist attacks at either the trade center site, the landfill in New York where most of the debris was taken, or the heavily damaged Pentagon.
As of last month, she said, 30 percent of the dogs deployed after Sept. 11 had died, compared with 22 percent of those in a comparison group of dogs who were not pressed into service. The difference was not considered statistically significant, Otto said.
But she added: “We have to keep looking.”

A separate study, to be published soon by a doctor at New York’s Animal Medical Center, focused on about two dozen New York police dogs, and comes to similar conclusions. The results have baffled doctors. A study released last month found that 70 percent of the people who worked at ground zero suffer severe respiratory problems; scientists thought that the dogs might have similar health problems.
Longer noses may serve as filtersThe dogs’ owners and scientists have many theories why dogs aren’t showing the same level of illness as people. Their noses are longer, possibly serving as a filter to protect their lungs from toxic dust and other debris, they say. The dogs were at the site an average of several days, while many people who report lung disease and cancer spent months cleaning up after the attacks.

The research isn’t persuasive to many owners of dogs that died after working at the trade center site. Joaquin Guerrero, a police officer in Saginaw, Mich., took two dogs, Felony and Rookie, to ground zero for 10 days after the attacks. While Felony remains healthy, Rookie died at age 9 in 2004 of cancer of the mouth. Guerrero believes his death was caused by exposure to ground zero.
“If the people are getting it, you know dogs are showing signs of it,” Guerrero said.

Otto said that some of the dogs that worked at the sites could not be found and other dogs’ owners were not willing to subject their pets to annual blood tests and X-rays.
Mary Flood, whose 11½-year-old black Labrador, Jake, is completely healthy five years after working at ground zero, said that dogs’ much shorter life span may also make it harder to track long-term illness.
“Maybe there’s not enough time to develop these things before they’re no longer with us,” she said.

This article can be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15349649/

Enzyme tied to 9/11 Ill

2006-10-25T18:31:00.000-04:00

May explain cough, study sez
BY PAUL H.B. SHINDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Doctors unveiled a tantalizing glimpse yesterday into why some firefighters may suffer from the "World Trade Center cough" while others who endured the toxic dust and fumes at Ground Zero are relatively healthy.
Firefighters whose lung capacity deteriorated faster in the wake of 9/11 were more likely to be deficient in a key natural enzyme that protects against lung damage, according to a study of 90 of the 12,000 Bravest who responded to the attacks at Ground Zero.
But Dr. David Prezant, the study's lead researcher and the FDNY's co-chief medical officer, cautioned against drawing too broad a conclusion from the report.
"This is very, very preliminary information that cannot in any shape or form be translated into a diagnosis or treatment initiative," Prezant told the Daily News from Salt Lake City, where he presented his findings at a gathering of the American College of Chest Physicians.
"It is only one small piece of a puzzle," he said. "We are trying to understand the science behind why some patients come down with World Trade Center respiratory diseases and others do not."
However, the research could eventually help solve the puzzle years down the road, said Prezant, a lung specialist at Montefiore Medical Center.
Using a blood test normally used to screen people at risk of early-onset emphysema, Prezant found that 11 of the 90 firefighters had low levels of an enzyme called alpha-1 antitrypsin, or A1AT.
Of the 11, four had a significant deficiency of A1AT while seven had a moderate deficiency, the blood tests showed.
But none had the most severe kind of genetic deficiency. All have the WTC cough.
"What this enzyme does is it protects the lungs from damage," said Dr. Mark Rosen, a pulmonologist at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center and president of American College of Chest Physicians.
"It prevents the destruction of lung tissue by a variety of mechanisms," he said.
About 150,000 Americans have a severe shortage of A1AT, but many are undiagnosed.
"Many more have a partial deficiency, and most of those people are not diagnosed for their whole lives because most of those people don't get sick" unless they are exposed to toxins such as cigarette smoke, Rosen said.
Prezant stressed that trying to determine whether a particular disease - whether it's WTC cough or breast cancer - is due to genetic or environmental factors is a science that's still in its infancy.
"It's not going to be one genetic trait" that is responsible for WTC cough, Prezant said.
That's why simply testing responders for the enzyme won't be useful, he said.
But the ongoing research at the FDNY is "on the cutting edge for trying to find future cures."
A study published in August by one of Prezant's colleagues at Montefiore painted a grim picture of the lung ailments among the 12,000 firefighters who inhaled dust and smoke on 9/11 and in the following months.
Those firefighters suffered a dramatic loss of lung capacity - 12 times the normal rate that occurs each year as people age, the study found. Originally published on October 25, 2006

This article can be found at http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/465120p-391263c.html

Prize Pack

2006-10-14T20:16:00.000-04:00

We received a donation of 5 autographed posters from the Ground Zero Museum Workshop to give away to the winner of the Artists4Hope "How Muc Do You Love NY Contest". Special thanks goes to Gary Marlon Suson for this donation which we hope will help motivate people to participate in our contest. On the side of this webpage you can visit the Ground Zero Museum Workshop Link to see the work Gary and Firefighter Volunteers have done so far. Stay tuned as our prize pack grows!

Latest St Johns University Event

2006-10-13T20:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks all for your support in our last event. We expected the same amount of sales as last time but this time we were surprised at the number of special orders placed. It amazes me how word of mouth is greater than any other marketing idea ever! Once again St Johns University, THANK YOU!

How Much Do You Love NY?

2006-10-09T17:02:00.000-04:00

The new Deadline for photo entries is now November 15, 2006

If you dont live in the NYC area, DONT worry! After this contest, we will be expanding other contests to include the rest of the country!

One of the Greats

2006-10-05T19:13:00.000-04:00

Thanks Vinny!

Vinny, of the Yankee Stadium Right Field Bleachers Section 39 Vinnys, has joined in our fight to help those becoming ill as a result of the WTC disaster. For Yankee fans, you may remember Vinny from the Ultimate Road Trip Season 1 which airs on the YES Network. Vinny, the quintesential "Bleacher Creature" has a stand outside the stadium where he usually sells his official bleacher creature merchandize, but has set aside some room for our shirts as well. To check out Vinnys stand, go to Stan's across the street from the Bleachers entrance to the Stadium, or look him up online at www.baldvinny.com. Thank you Vinny, its people like you that remind us that those suffering now are not forgotten.

Make sure you visit Vinny!

Students Sick With 9/11-Related Illnesses Want Federal Help

2006-10-05T11:51:00.000-04:00

In addition to the emotional trauma they faced after the World Trade Center attacks, students who went to schools in Lower Manhattan say they are also facing respiratory problems, and now they also want the federal government's help.

Current and former students were told it was safe to return to class after September 11th, and they did, exposing themselves to the same toxic air inhaled by first responders. "They were minors during 9/11; they had no options. They were ordered back to school because the EPA said that the air was safe, and they had no ability to say yes or no," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. "And now we're finding out that it may be that some of these children are going to come down with very serious illnesses."

"A major driver of lymphoma is being exposed to excessive amounts of toxins pollutants, which is exactly what we inhaled when we were down here after September 11," said former Stuyvesant High School student Amit Friedlander, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. "So I think, whether or not my cancer came from September 11, there definitely will be a lot of people who will be getting sick."

The families are calling on the federal government to provide money for medical screening and health insurance for the students.

NY1's Nicole Johnson filed the following report. Olivia Goodkind is celebrating her birthday but not the typical way a ten- year- old celebrates. She is front and center at a news conference addressing 9/11 health concerns facing students who attended school near the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks. "I really think we should do something,” said Goodkind. “Do something really fast, really soon, because something worse will happen."

Olivia’s worry is that one out of three of her classmates at P.S. 89 carries an inhaler, according to Olivia and her father. "It's like at my school everyone shows them off,” said Goodkind. “It’s like the latest thing, like a style in a way."

This is not a good thing in the eyes of these parents and elected officials. And that is why they are calling on the federal government to provide funding for medical screening and health insurance to help children suffering from 9/11 related illness, similar to what lawmakers want for first responders and Lower Manhattan residents.

"We want to demand that the federal government recognize that there is serious health risk associated with the aftermath of 9/11 especially for our young people," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Amit Friedlander, a former Stuyvesant High School student, feels like his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma developed after he and other students were told it was safe to return less than a month after the attacks. "I'm mad about being sick,” said Friedlander. “I don't think I have anyone to be mad at other than the terrorists."

But other students and parents are mad at the government, saying they were lied to about the air quality. Their complaints are coming less than a month after lawmakers accused the Environmental Protection Agency and former Director Christine Whitman of the same thing. "Eventually we learned that the school building had not even been cleaned thoroughly as promised,” said Lila Nordstrom, a former Stuyvesant High School student. “Yet to date, no monitoring of out health from 9/11 has ever been done."

Even though Friedlander is not sure his illness is 9/11 related he hopes his story can help others. "I used to never get sick,” said Friedlander. “Once I started to go to college, I was, and still am, sick all the time. And if I had known at the time that it was symptoms of cancer maybe I'd been able to stop it early. I wasn't able but, if other people can, I'd be happy."

Stringer also says he will continue fighting to get the children affected the health care they need. In the meantime, parents are not letting this go by without a struggle. They say in this case the government left their children behind.

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=19&aid=63079

9/11 hero battling cancer, money woes

2006-10-05T11:48:00.000-04:00

BY NANCY DILLON - DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

He yelled, "We have to get out. Run!" and hustled five junior firefighters out of the north tower moments before the collapse on 9/11, saving them.

Now Roy Chelsen is fighting for his own survival: He's been diagnosed with the same incurable cancer that recently struck an FDNY comrade who also spent weeks digging through the rubble at Ground Zero.

"Nobody will admit it, but I feel I got this from 9/11," Chelsen, 46, said yesterday. "We were there when the towers fell and we sucked all those toxins in."

Yesterday, Chelsen's family organized a blood and bone-marrow donation drive at his Engine 28/Ladder 11 firehouse in the East Village.

"Roy took it upon himself to get his guys out of the building [on 9/11]. It was chaos and he went on instinct," said Robert Salvador, 52, a retired firefighter who turned out to give blood. "I'm really saddened by his illness. He's a great guy. And it makes you wonder what's going to happen to the rest of us," he added.

Chelsen was hospitalized with an infection over the weekend but is still preparing for a stem cell transplant operation Oct. 17. He underwent a procedure yesterday for stem cell harvesting at Westchester Medical Center.

"It's a rare cancer and I'm only 46," Chelsen said. "This usually hits guys in their 60s. "But I'm one of the lucky ones. I made it out [on 9/11]. We lost six guys in our house that day."
Doctors diagnosed Chelsen with Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia last Christmas after he lost almost 20 pounds and began suffering joint pain.

The Warwick, N.Y., dad of a 19-year-old son also is battling a related bone marrow cancer, said his wife, Trish, a nurse.

"It's been a very devastating time for us," Trish Chelsen, 44, said. "We're still optimistic Roy is going to beat this and live healthy again. But it's a daily struggle. And we don't feel we're backed up by the authorities in connecting this to 9/11."

Fellow Bravest Lee Ielpi, who lost his firefighter son Jonathan, 29, in the terrorist attack and spent nine months working at The Pile, was diagnosed with Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia about four months ago after suffering shortness of breath and swelling in his ankles.

Trish Chelsen said her husband's FDNY drug benefits maxed out in June, even though his prescription for Thalidomide still runs $3,000 a month. She's using her part-time salary to pay $500 a month for extra coverage.

Another blood drive organized in Chelsen's honor is scheduled for Oct. 14 at Zion Lutheran Church on Watchogue Road in Staten Island.

With Jonathan LemireOriginally published on October 3, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/457945p-385219c.html

9/11 aid urged for Stuy grads

2006-10-03T11:11:00.000-04:00

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer joined the call yesterday to get federal health insurance for students who attended Stuyvesant High School in the days after 9/11.

"We went back to school before anyone else," said Lila Nordstrom, who graduated in 2002 from the elite school, located across from Ground Zero on West St.

The air was still smoky and fires burned when the students went back to class. Tons of debris from the site was loaded on barges docked nearby.

"There was no one else down here. It was the police officers and us," Nordstrom said.
First responders have lobbied hard for better health screening and benefits as a result of their work at Ground Zero, but little has been said about the students who attended area schools.
"They had no choice, they were ordered to go back to school," said Stringer (D-Manhattan).
Amit Friedlander, who also graduated from Stuyvesant in 2002, was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He is convinced his illness is directly linked to 9/11.

"I had my doubts [about going back]," said Friedlander. "I wore masks for awhile.
"Everyone who was down here should be very careful and look out for any health abnormalities."

Many of the former students, who are now older than 21, are no longer covered by their parents' health insurance plans.

Nadler said he has introduced a bill that would provide care to everyone who has fallen ill due to 9/11.

Lisa L. Colangelo Originally published on October 2, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/457492p-385039c.html

Another Brave Fight

2006-09-25T12:05:00.001-04:00

Bravest battles to beat 9/11 ills
Denis Hamill

A sign on his locker at Engine Co. 234 in Crown Heights reads: "I will be back."
Firefighter John McNamara, 41, posted that promise after he was diagnosed on June 28 with line-of- duty, Ground-Zero-related liver, colon and stomach cancer.

Then he went home to his wife, Jennifer, who is 6-months pregnant with their first child.
"We already know it's a son," he says. "Jack. Can't wait..."

He has been receiving chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since, with surgery scheduled for the fall. But he is not sitting around feeling sorry for himself.
No, this Sept. 11 victim's name is McNamara and he's determined to lead a band of FDNY brothers not yet diagnosed with 9/11 cancer to get early warnings about their illnesses with full-body CAT scans.

"It's great that people who worked down on the Pile are finally getting their lungs checked," says McNamara, who was assigned to Ladder 123 in Crown Heights on Sept. 11. "But that's not enough. The carpenters, iron workers, and detectives unions are all getting their people full-body CAT scans. So should the 6,000 firemen who worked on Ground Zero who are still on the job."

McNamara thinks everyone who worked at Ground Zero should get full-body CAT scans. "Cops, nurses, volunteers, truck drivers, everybody," he says. "I'm out on a line-of-duty injury. The department has been great to me. Dr. Kerry Kelly at the medical office has been great.

"The guys, hell, they drive me for my chemo, they give me money, they even mow my lawn. I only have one complaint. I don't want other guys to go through what I'm going through if a full-body CAT scan can catch a polyp before it becomes a tumor."

McNamara says the FDNY has rejected full-body CAT scans because they claim it risks too much exposure to radiation.

"I just read an article that said you're exposed to more radiation on a cross-country plane ride than a CAT scan," says McNamara. "And if it's a matter of cost, well there's a place called Inner Imaging in Manhattan that does a full-body scan for $600. Which times 6,000 guys is, like, $3,600,000. If it saves one life, it's worth it on a human level. But it'll also save money. It's gonna cost more than $3,600,000 for my chemo, surgery and hospital stays alone."

McNamara also believes that if money is an issue, some wealthy benefactor will step out of the generous heart of the city to pick up the tab.

"On Sept. 11, it was my day off," McNamara says. "I drove to the firehouse and we arrived at the Trade Center around noon. It was already Armageddon. "It reminded me of the end of 'Planet of the Apes' when the arm of the Statue of Liberty sticks up through the rubble. Here were broken pieces of the twin towers, where I'd delivered a thousand packages as a kid as a messenger, rising from the dust. I stood in a snowstorm of dust. No one knew what the hell to do..."

So they started to dig. And dig. And dig. They dug for months in that deadly dust until it started to kill them.

McNamara clocked over 500 hours in alternating 12-hour shifts. Breathing in, breathing out. Planting the seeds of cancer.

"A day on, a day off," he says. "Most of us worked a lot of our days off, too."
In that patriotic time, their government lied to them, told them that the air they were sucking into their lungs - filled with poisons that went into the circulatory system, penetrating the lymph nodes, and bouncing around until they found nice juicy places to grow tumors - was perfectly safe.

The air is always safe in the well-ventilated, wood-paneled rooms of power where the lies are told. Christie Whitman, who ran the federal EPA, resigned, gagging on these blatant lies. As penance, she should be up in Sloan-Kettering emptying bedpans until they put pennies on her eyes.

Tails.

"I grew up in Bensonhurst delivering the Daily News when Son of Sam was out shooting people," says McNamara. "I was terrified at 5:30 a.m. that he was gonna come out of the bushes shooting. I've been in fires that were scary. Sept. 11 was scary.

"The day they told me I had cancer with a baby on the way was scary. What scares me most is that there might be hundreds, maybe thousands more people out there like me who worked on the Pile with time bombs ticking inside of them that could be discovered with a simple full-body CAT scan.

"So, before I get back to work at Engine 234 after my chemo and surgery, I'm gonna do everything I can to get the word out. Please, get checked out. Do it today."

Originally published on August 31, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/dhamill/story/448232p-376983c.html

Thank You Saint Johns University!

2006-09-19T17:13:00.001-04:00

On Monday September 11th, 2006, while most of the country was spending time in quiet reflection of 9/11/01, some very special students of St Johns University in Queens took it upon themselves to help our cause. The day was a huge success due to the participation student body, faculty and staff of SJU. First, Artists4Hope would like to extend our thanks to Elsie Wong and Marcus Cheung of the Chinese Cultural Association, whom without their help, this event would not have been possible. Several students helped with promoting the event and made sure that other students were made aware of our goals. Thanks go out to: James Pormentilla, Leena Thomas, Rachelle Ocampo, Yoosup Shim, Grace Yeon and Rachel Yuen. Special thanks to Idil Kirmica for promoting the event on such short notice and personally making this cause known to all.
Thanks to our staff who set up and managed this event on short notice. Our Director of Operations, Wilson Tam, a brother of Lambda Phi Epsilon Alpha Delta Chapter - SJU. Thank you for making sure the event went as smooth as it did. Thanks as well go to Jones Chan, Public Relations for setting the whole ball in motion and making all the contacts, without that this wouldnt have happened.

Gratitude towards Tony Curiale

2006-09-18T16:29:00.000-04:00

On our blog site, you can click on a link that sends you to newyorkfire.com. New York Fire is one of the first websites that we looked into for a business connection. Ever since June of this year, we connected with newyorkfire.com as a venue for people to buy our shirts and to improve the chances of exposure.

Newyorkfire.com is run by Tony Curiale whose father, Ray Curiale, is a retired firefighter from Engine 55 in New York City. The basis of the recent donation was from Tony, he was very successful in selling our shirts and donated $3 of every shirt to the Meso Foundation and he was gracious enough to include profits from some of his own merchandise in this donation. We, Artists4Hope, would like to thank Tony for his greatest efforts in helping us with our cause and our mission to create awareness of this particular disease. We hope to continue our partnership in expanding our reaches.

I Love NY on CBS Show

2006-09-12T13:47:00.000-04:00

New Links

2006-09-08T21:26:00.000-04:00

Since the events of 9-11-01, many people have become ill, especially the men and women who worked together helping in the relief effort. It was during this time, most of the people became sick. The prolonged exposure to these aerial chemicals made them sick and today they are experiencing the heartwrenching pains of these diseases. As a way of reducing the pain, Rescue workers and Recovery workers talk to each other about their experiences on that day and how they coped since then. The first Link added today is WTCSick.com, a forum in which the ill workers are able to communicate with one another and share their experiences to give hope to one another.

A new project started to provide relief for the Rescue and Recovery workers of 9-11-01 is called the NY Rescue and Recovery Workers Detoxification Project. This project is one of the few which brought true relief to the adverse health effects of working at Ground Zero. This project is provided at no cost and is worth making an effort in trying. This project can be found at nydetox.org

The use of the internet opens a new era in finding information regarding the healths of fellow workers of that event. By being able to communicate, we bring hope to another and make new relationships. The best thing about the use of technology is making word of mouth faster for easier access to information.

Monday Sept 11, 2006 SJU Event

2006-09-08T21:21:00.000-04:00

On Monday, September 11th, 2006, Artists4Hope is proud to have a table in front of St. Augustine Hall at St Johns University. We will be there from 11:30 am -1:30 pm providing information on the effects of Mesothelioma on the Rescue and Recovery Workers.We hope to create an awareness of Mesothelioma and what can be done to slow down the fatal effects of this disease.

We will selling our tee shirts to students for $10 each, the 100% proceeds from that event will be sent to the MESO Foundation. For those new to this site, Artists4Hope has donated upwards of $700 in our short existence of 4 months. Come out and visit the table and donate as much as you can.

Latest Check Sent to MESO Foundation

2006-09-06T19:27:00.000-04:00

This is the Latest check Artists4Hope is sending to the MESO Foundation. At this rate, we'll be making monthly donations and making headway to finding a cure for mesothelioma. Thank you for all your support. Including this check, in the last 4 months, we have received donations upwards of $700 and sent 100% of the proceeds your donations to the MESO Foundation. Thank you everyone, we couldn't have done it without you.
Look out for our 9-11 Fifth Anniversary Tee Shirts currently on sale. We hope to sell more shirts to help to promote finding a cure to Mesothelioma. These shirts will be sold to the St Johns University Student and Faculty Community via our Charity Executives and Directors. If you'd like to purchase these commerative 5th year anniversary Tee Shirts, please email us at IloveNY_marf@yahoo.com and leave your contact information and they will be delivered within the same day or the next day latest. For others outside of the St Johns University Community who would like to order these shirts, order them directly from us and we will ship them directly to you with multiple shipping options!

Immigrant Workers Rally Over Health Concerns At WTC Site

2006-09-06T19:03:00.000-04:00

September 06, 2006
Armed with signs and medical proof, some illegal immigrant workers who spent days at the world trade center rallied Downtown this afternoon, saying they need help with the health problems they've developed since the attacks.

Their protest comes one day after the largest study on the health impact of dust at the World Trade site was released with staggering results.

According to the report released Tuesday by Mount Sinai Hospital, nearly 70 percent of first responders developed new or worsened respiratory symptoms after the attacks. Among those who had no health problems before September 11th, 61 percent developed symptoms after exposure.

Mount Sinai's five-year-long study is based on findings from medical exams conducted between July of 2002 and April of 2004; 9,500 workers were tested.

Many of the immigrant workers say that they are also suffering from respiratory problems from working at the site. The report suggests people who responded right after the attacks experience the worst health effects.

Despite the medical nature of the study, Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed skepticism at the results. "I haven't seen the Mount Sinai study, but I don't believe that you can say specifically a particular problem came from this particular effect," said Bloomberg. His stance is putting him at odds with health care professionals.

"There should no longer be any doubt about the health effects of the World Trade Center," said Dr. Robin Herbert of Mt. Sinai. "Our patients are sick and will need ongoing health monitoring and treatment for the rest of their lives."

Regardless, the mayor announced a series of initiatives to help those who responded to the Trade Center disaster in the days after 9/11. On Tuesday, he announced that the city is creating a five-year, $16-million environmental health center at Bellevue Hospital to treat those first responders and anyone who feels they are suffering from the effects of the dust they inhaled after the attacks. The new health center is set to open in January.

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=62352

Study: 70 percent of WTC workers sickened by lung problems

2006-09-05T18:28:00.000-04:00

Sep 5, 3:58 PM EDT
Study: 70 percent of WTC workers sickened by lung problems
By AMY WESTFELDT Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Nearly 70 percent of workers who cleaned up ground zero in a cloud of toxic World Trade Center dust have had trouble breathing, and many will be sick for the rest of their lives, doctors said Tuesday in releasing results of the largest-ever study of Sept. 11 health.
Mount Sinai Medical Center's study is conclusive proof of a link between recovery work at ground zero and long-term respiratory problems, doctors said.

"There should no longer be any doubt about the health effects of the World Trade Center. Our patients are sick," said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the group that has monitored the health of nearly 16,000 ground zero workers.

Herbert said that most of the patients in the study first came to ground zero between Sept. 11 and Sept. 13, 2001, which exposed them to a higher concentration of asbestos, pulverized concrete, mercury and toxins that will leave them chronically sick.

"Our patients were very, very highly exposed, and are likely to suffer health consequences as a result of that for the rest of their lives," she said.

Herbert was joined by lawmakers who blasted the federal government for not doing enough to protect the workers' health and not spending enough to treat them.

But Mayor Michael Bloomberg cast doubt on the study's claims, saying Tuesday, "I don't believe that you can say specifically a particular problem came from this particular event."

Dr. John Howard, who was appointed by the Bush administration in February to coordinate the various ground zero health programs, called the findings "extremely important" and said they support other researchers' work, including a study of city firefighters.

The study, to be published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, focused mostly on the so-called "World Trade Center cough," a phenomenon that was little understood immediately after the attacks, but has become the chief concern of health experts and advocates since then.

Ironworker John Sferazo, who spent 30 days on the smoldering debris pile and now takes 26 medications a day to deal with his lung problems, said the White House did too little, too late. "If President Bush wanted this situation to be cleaned up, it would have been cleaned up long before now," he said.

He said he was having trouble getting words out at Tuesday's news conference because he is constantly short of breath and has restrictive airway disease. "I'm lucky if I can run a city block without dropping dead," said Sferazo, 51.

In lung function tests, ground zero workers had abnormalities at a rate double that expected in the general population; these problems persisted for months and in some cases years after the exposure, the study found.

The study said that almost 70 percent of trade center responders had new or worsened respiratory problems during or after the attacks. Sixty-one percent of responders who had no health symptoms before the attacks developed problems while working on the "pile" at ground zero. One third of those tested had abnormal lung function, which Herbert said is a rate twice as high as the nonsmoking population.

The study looked at 9,442 ground zero workers examined between July 2002 and April 2004. They include construction workers, police and firefighters and other volunteers who worked at the site, in the city morgue or at a landfill where more than 1 million tons of trade center debris was carted.

Lawmakers said the government has to develop a coordinated funding program to pay for health care for the workers for the rest of their lives, and said environmental officials failed to warn people about the danger of breathing the air near the site.

"It was obvious that the air was hard to see through, let alone hard to breathe," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The mayor announced that a World Trade Center clinic - including treatment for undocumented workers and the uninsured - will open in January at a public hospital.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NY_ATTACKS_HEALTH_BAOL-?SITE=NYNYD&SECTION=MIDEAST&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Official: 9/11 Health 'Warning'

2006-08-31T16:33:00.000-04:00

(CBS/AP) The government's point man on Sept. 11 health programs said he is worried that an autopsy linking a retired detective's death to recovery work at ground zero may be a warning sign of other life-threatening cases.

Dr. John Howard also said it will take time to determine whether there is a scientific link between deaths and exposure to toxic dust. Some epidemiologists have said it will take 20 years or more to prove such a link. Howard, who is to meet in New York this week with congressional leaders about ground zero health issues, was tapped by the Bush administration in February to coordinate the federal response to ongoing Sept. 11 health programs.

That role took on greater urgency with the April release of retired Det. James Zadroga's autopsy, which concluded "with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident." The autopsy said Zadroga died in January of respiratory failure caused by exposure to toxic dust.

The Zadrogas have not filed a lawsuit in connection with the death or their son, and have no intention of doing so, CBSNews.com's Stephen Smith reported in February. They hope to highlight the plight of other ground zero workers who have fallen ill.

Zadroga, of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., died in January of respiratory failure and had inflammation in his lung tissue due to "a history of exposure to toxic fumes and dust," wrote Gerard Breton, a pathologist at the Ocean County (New Jersey) medical examiner's office in the autopsy. The detective spent 470 hours after the attacks sifting through the twin towers' smoldering ruins, wearing a paper mask for protection.

Howard, whose day job is overseeing the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, told The Associated Press in a recent interview the autopsy was "worrisome, and we need to look further in this case."

Doctors and government officials worry Zadroga's death may be a so-called sentinel case, an early harbinger of future deaths from such exposure. "You have a particular case with characteristics that are unusual," Howard said. He cited Zadroga's relatively young age, 34, and diseased heart muscle. "Just based on that, you would say, gee, is this a sentinel case?" he said. "This may be a warning and requires attention and vigilance."

Howard said his primary goal is to find out how many ground zero workers are suffering ill effects.

"The first issue is treatment. That is primary," he said. Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., said he was pleased Howard is aggressively examining cases like the Zadroga death.

"Clearly and sadly, Detective Zadroga and perhaps others will be the first of a wave of those who become the secondary victims of 9/11, though they didn't go down with the towers," Fossella said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/24/health/main1541665.shtml

Five Years After 9/11, Lower Manhattan Residents Still Concerned About Health Issues

2006-08-29T10:42:00.000-04:00

For thousands of residents living in Lower Manhattan, there was no escaping the dust, smoke and fumes in the days, weeks and even months following the September 11th attacks. And now, five years later, many still have real concerns over what could be happening with their health as a result. Health & Fitness Reporter Kafi Drexel has more, as NY1's coverage of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 continues.

Nelson Marty has lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly 30 years. But since the events of 9/11, he says his health just hasn't been the same.
“I am a runner. I have done the New York City Marathon twice. After 9/11, in 2002, my asthma re-manufactured itself,” he says. “Up until then I had no medication whatsoever.” Now he's taking Advair, an inhalable steroid meant to prevent asthma attacks, at least twice a day. It may seem like only a mild change, but doctors and community advocates say Marty serves as just one example among hundreds, if not thousands, of Lower Manhattan residents who could be suffering post-9/11 health woes.

“There are real concerns out there, especially in light of the catastrophic illness of the first responders, about what may be in store for residents in the future who were exposed significantly to the same hazards,” says Kimberly Flynn, Co-Coordinator of 9/11 Environmental Action. Dr. Joan Reibman heads the Bellevue Hospital World Trade Center Health Impacts Treatment Program, which assess and treat residents of Lower Manhattan.
“We did a study in collaboration with the New York State Department of Health looking at health in the residents the year after the event, and we were able to document a four-fold increase in new onset cough, and a six-fold increase in persistent wheezing in that population,” she says. While the health conditions of some of those people seemed to improve, Reibman says what's happening with resident's health now in 2006 is still very unclear.
“The question is how many of those people continue to have symptoms, and that's what we don't actually know,” she says. Reibman says what doctors need are more answers. She's hoping to get those answers from further inquiries made by the World Trade Center Health Registry survey.

But many residents argue, when it comes to 9/11 health concerns, they've been overlooked, and that the registry is not enough. And while they praise the work that clinics like Bellevue are doing, they'll be formally calling on federal officials to do much more. “What we need to see happen is we need for the federal government to make a commitment to fully fund a program that tracks and treats residents, office workers and students who were exposed to the World Trade Center pollution,” says Flynn.

In the meantime, many residents like Nelson Marty are making a point of staying diligent about their health on their own. “In another 10 years we don't know what's going to manifest,” he says. “That's why I keep checking myself. Every year I go for a full physical to make sure that if there is something I can catch it in time.”

- Kafi Drexel

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?&aid=62149

I never complained, or sued, nor will I, but in case I die...

2006-08-25T18:04:00.000-04:00

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

They were among the 40,000 who stepped forward for New York and America after 9/11, and they speak here of the price they paid for serving. Their stories are not unusual. No, they are typical among the more than 12,000 men and women who were sickened by breathing the toxic cloud that shrouded Ground Zero. They tell of damaged lungs and psyches, of fears of worse to come and of beliefs that the cloud has brought on cancers and may bring death.

They feel betrayed by a government that said the air was safe and cast aside by officials who failed to address the sweeping nature of the resulting epidemic. Above all, these personal accounts stand as an indictment of a neglectful city and country, which must now right the terrible wrong of forgetting those who did the extraordinary at great personal cost.

A smell you never forget

For 20 years, I served as a detective with the New York Police Department, and I retire tomorrow at half pay without medical disability.

I can still smell the debris of the Fresh Kills landfill. After you stepped off the bus for your 12-hour shift, the stench was just enormous, and as you walked around, you would see bubbling whirlpools. Fifteen minutes in, I would have splitting headaches. I'd go to the tents, where conveyer belts would bring debris to pick through for human remains.

For years after, I had headaches, and I still have bloody noses and sinus problems. I never complained, or sued, nor will I, but in case I die, I've kept everything since that day, every news article, so maybe my two kids will get some compensation for my life.

Denise Bellingham, 57, Medford, L.I.
Leaving my kids
I was at the site as a volunteer EMT for three days - on 9/11, and then on the 13th and 14th. I was working triage from a deli as WTC 7 burned and fell. Going down there that morning, I left my two children at home. At the time, they thought I was dead, but when you have a job you are trained to do, and you do it well, then you just go do it. And now, I've been officially disabled since 2003. I have acid reflux, migraine and sinus headaches, asthma, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, shingles and flashbacks, but no health coverage because I was a volunteer.

I don't have lung disease from smoking. I don't have lung disease from a meth lab. I don't have it from doing something I shouldn't have been doing. I have it from the World Trade Center. What nobody's talking about is the next time something happens. You can't just run into buildings anymore. Those who did are on Death Row and being punished for what we did.

Reggie Cervantes, 45, Kansas City, Kan.
Running out of time
As an American, as a New Yorker, I thought I had an obligation to help. Somebody demolishes a building in my city, it's my duty to clean it up. I'm a union worker. But now, I'm living through a nightmare. The city employees got taken care of, but we didn't get anything.
Each time I go to Mount Sinai Medical Center, I lose more of my lung. The first time, it was 21% gone. The next, 33%. Now they say I've lost 44%. I can't even walk up a flight of stairs. I've got three kids and can't afford to take time off work, but I'm worried about the future, about my wife and my children. The lung specialist I went to couldn't diagnose my problem. He didn't know what to say to me, except to guarantee that in 10 years I wouldn't be walking around.

Daniel Arrigo, 51, Staten Island
Denied
I worked more than 100 hours doing search and recovery as a police officer. I was in the lobby when the building started collapsing, and I was there through the end of the cleanup. Now I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I've got acid reflux. I've got asthma and upper-respiratory infections. I can't go near large buildings anymore.

The Police Medical Board, four times now, denies medical liability. They say my diseases are not related to the World Trade Center, or that my paperwork isn't good enough, or that I need to go to their doctors instead of mine. I just want to be home with my kids. The money doesn't matter now. I'm never responding to a terrorist attack again: I'm just going to go right home with my wife and kids.

Robert Curcio, 34, Staten Island
Whitman's people lied
When we went out to The Pile, initially all we got was a Home Depot-type dust mask. Eventually, they gave us sturdier ones. I worked there from 9/11 until May as an EMS lieutenant and put in well over 100 hours.

Two years later, in March 2004, I had my first real asthma attack. That same month, I was forced into the process of retirement.

Christie Whitman's EPA people lied: They said the air was safe. Eventually, I got three-quarters disability, but the city had played these little technicalities. The lawyer for the city said that because the department hadn't filed a form, there was no proof that the accident I was claiming for had actually occurred. The judge had to instruct the lawyer for the city that it can be taken for a given that 9/11 had happened. Because I did my duty on 9/11 and in the recovery operations, I'm now totally and permanently disabled.

William Gleeson, 45, Hicksville, L.I.
An incurable disease
On 9/11, I was a captain in the NYPD. I was home with my family when the attack came, and as the first tower fell, I left my pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter. Both cried, pleading for me not to leave. I went with only one request to the city: Take care of my family.

I retired in 2004 at the age of 42, believing myself healthy. Within nine months, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is caused by asbestos, smoldering steel and benzene, all present at Ground Zero. Since then, most of my time has been spent at Sloan-Kettering, getting stem-cell transplants and chemotherapy. And now, after 20 years of service, I'm left with a half-pay pension and little more than an incurable, life-threatening disease and partial paralysis in both hands. Yet not a single city, state or federal agency will acknowledge the air at Ground Zero might be a problem.

Patrick DeSarlo, 44, New City, N.Y.
Forgotten
I volunteered first from the Red Cross then later on with the Salvation Army, working 12-hour shifts with no protection. While most of my duties left me inside, I was exposed to the air going between buildings and as I brought coffee and warm clothes to the men on The Pile.

Ever since, I've had chronic sinus infections, and many other volunteers have worse. We weren't paid workers, so we can't retire or go on disability, and there's no way to pay our medical bills. We gladly did what we did - but we are now forgotten.

CANCER HITS 283 RESCUERS OF 9/11

2006-08-24T18:08:00.000-04:00

Since 9/11, 283 World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers have been diagnosed with cancer, and 33 of them have died of cancer, says a lawyer for the ailing responders.
David Worby, a lawyer for 8,000 World Trade Center responders, including cops, firefighters and construction workers, said the cases include blood-cell cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's and myeloma.

Doctors say the cancers can strike three to five years after exposure to toxins such as benzene, a cancer-causing chemical that permeated the WTC site from burning jet fuel. "One in 150,000 white males under 40 would normally get the type of acute white blood-cell cancer that strikes a healthy detective," said Worby, whose first client was NYPD narcotics cop John Walcott, now 41. Walcott spent months at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill. The father of three is fighting leukemia.

"We have nearly 35 of these cancers in the family of 50,000 Ground Zero workers. The odds of that occurring are one in hundreds of millions," Worby said.
Others suffer tumors of the tongue, throat, testicles, breast, bladder, kidney, colon, intestines, and lung, said Worby, of Worby, Groner, Edelman, & Napoli, Bern, which filed the class-action suit.

WTC workers who have died of cancer include paramedic Deborah Reeve, 41 (mesothelioma); NYPD Officer Ronald Weintraub, 43 (bile-duct cancer); and Stephen "Rak" Yurek, 46, a Port Authority emergency technician (brain cancer). The families say they were healthy before 9/11.
Dr. Robin Herbert, a director of WTC medical monitoring at Mount Sinai Hospital, said some of the nearly 16,000 responders screened to date are getting cancer.
"We do not know at this point if they are WTC-related, but some are unusual cancers we see as red flags," Herbert said.

Dr. Iris Udasin, principal investigator for the Mount Sinai screening of 500 in New Jersey, said the 9/11 link is "certainly a possibility," she said. "It's what we worry about, and what we fear."

susan.edelman@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/cancer_hits_283_rescuers_of_9_11_regionalnews_susan_edelman.htm

Website Lauch - The Meso Foundation

2006-08-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

Another email sent out regarding the positive changes happening at The Foundation!

It is with great excitement that we announce the launch of the Foundation's new website. This new site is a virtual resource center designed to be an interactive tool for the meso community – supplying the latest information about mesothelioma, offering resources and support, and connecting community members with each other.

We hope that you will take full advantage of all the tools that the site has to offer. • The Meso Community Bulletin Board is the perfect place to connect with other patients and family members, share information, get expert advice, and offer support.

• The Archives host a vast document library that is fully searchable, and you can submit documents and articles you feel should be a part of the archive so that we can maintain a library that is up-to-date and relevant.

• You will also find other resources such as information on the leading meso medical specialists, and current clinical trials.

As a community we are not alone – we are strong – and we will continue to work until we have eradicated this cruel disease!

To visit the site now, click here: www.curemeso.org Should you have comments, questions, or suggestions we want to hear from you. You can email the Foundation at info@marf.org or call and speak with any Foundation staff member at: (805) 563.8400.

Yours in the fight,
Rob Grayson Director of Development

LAST GASP

2006-08-24T13:52:00.000-04:00

Ground Zero volunteers suffer in silence as the clock ticks on their health
By Sushil Cheema

Come here today and see groups of smiling tourists snap pictures of the scene and of each other. Buy postcards and trinkets from street hawkers. Read about the site’s history on signs attached high up on the fence that surrounds the site.

Come here today and close your eyes. Take a deep breath. On a breezy day, dust from the nearby construction might hang in the air. But the air is clear—clearer than it was for months on end, just a few years ago. Just as the surrounding sites are starkly different from the death and destruction that has marked the area forever, the air too has changed, It’s no longer thick with dust, fumes and debris—that filled the lungs of John Feal, John Sfezaro, Scott Aline, Jack Saltarella, Jim LaPenna and thousands of other recovery workers, cleanup workers and volunteers who toiled here in the days and months following the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Today this place is known as Ground Zero, or the World Trade Center Site, but to the first responders who inhaled the devastation and picked through ruined buildings and bodies, it is still known as “the pile” or “the pit.” The weeks and months they spent here have resulted in drastic changes in their lives, and, experts say, more remains to be seen.

“Everything was a dust, like a fine powder,” says 66-year-old Saltarella, a former tugboat operator who worked at the Fresh Kills site in Staten Island where debris was taken and deposited. “It was like working in the thickest fog you could imagine in your life.” The lack of protection provided frustrates him and many of his fellow rescue workers most. “For two months they refused to give us any masks.” He pauses and coughs—a distinctive cough. The World Trade Center cough.

From sleep apnea to severe depression, these men and women are undergoing a host of health problems presumably related to their rescue work. But in the nearly five years since the attacks, they have faced numerous obstacles in their quest to obtain workers’ compensation and other benefits.

Last Monday, just three days before construction began on the World Trade Center Memorial and less than a month before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, Governor George Pataki signed into law bills that acknowledge the plight of the first responders. One new law gives those responders who may die from illnesses related to the attacks the same benefits as those who died during the attacks. A second law allows individuals whose illnesses emerged after the two-year deadline the opportunity to reapply for workers’ compensation benefits. Now, workers and volunteers have two years from the time at which their illness emerges to file. A third, final law allows those who have retired to change their pension status to that of accidental disability should a 9/11-related illness emerge after they have stopped working.

Though Pataki’s new laws are welcomed by responders and volunteers, many hurdles still remain. And, many responders say, that these changes may still not be enough to help them.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s five years too late,” says John Feal of Pataki’s new laws. “It should have been three or four years ago.” Though he has respiratory trouble, and deep breathes permeate his sentences, passion for his work easily rouses Feal. “As a country, we took one on the chin and moved forward, and that’s great. But we left 40,000 people who are sick.”

Feal, 39, is the founder and president of The FealGood Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the plight of sick and injured first responders and to providing volunteers and recovery workers with financial assistance. A foot injury sustained during the recovery efforts led to gangrene and the subsequent loss of part of that foot, and he says he has had thirty subsequent surgeries. Among his other afflictions stemming from his work at Ground Zero, Feal suffers from acid reflux, a scarred lung and asthma. When he speaks, he gasps for air as though he has just finished a sprint. “Excuse me, I get out of breath sometimes,” he says. Feal claims he is also very compulsive now. “I will count the ceiling tiles and say you have 41 tiles,” he explains. Feal says such behavior has its roots in his military experience and in growing up in a strict family. “But now it’s at another level.”

Feal questions Pataki’s motivations for signing the legislation last week. “Part of me believes it’s because he is running for President.” The $50 million being used for the first responders, he says, will not be enough money to help the thousands of sick and injured who need help. “It’s political breadcrumbs,” he says. Feal also worries about the amount of time the filing process will take before individuals begin to actually receive the financial help they need. “These 9/11 responders don’t have years,” he says. “They need help now.”

“I thank God every day,” says Scott Aline, a crane operator who worked at Ground Zero, of Pataki’s new legislation. “There was a window. The window was closed to us.” He understands, however, that there is a caveat to the good news. “Who knows how many years it’s going to be once we get the money?” he asks. “My lungs are already aged,” he adds. According to a recent medical screening, his 45-year-old’s lungs are equivalent to those of a 59-year-old’s. “What’s going to happen when I’m 50?” The news of his lung condition has him worried about the future. “I’m scared,” he says.

Aline also suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares and sweats. “I worked for two or three months, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.” The pile, he says, was so hot it melted several pairs of work boots. “We’re the ones that found the bodies,” he says of himself and his fellow first responders. “Vietnam was a party compared to what was down there.”

Today, Aline is unable to continue the work on which he was weaned—his father owned a rigging and excavation business. “I can’t work. I’m on a lot of medications. I would be a danger to operate the cranes.” Aline says he has not yet received any funding or workers’ compensation to help him pay his medical bills. Only recently did he begin to be reimbursed for the money he has spent on multiple medications.

Other recovery workers, cleanup crews and volunteers who worked at Ground Zero also have a litany of health problems, some more serious than the ones that Feal and Aline currently suffer. David Worby, a lawyer based in White Plains, is representing more than 8,000 people in a lawsuit against New York City for failing to protect the rescue workers and volunteers adequately from the toxins in the air. His clients are scattered across the country, among them are those scores of independent volunteers who came to New York City to assist in rescue efforts. And, he says, more sick responders call his office every day. “I’ve had about 100 phone calls in the last 36 hours,” he says. Of all his clients in the two-and-a-half-year-old case, Worby says 60 have died. “They have died from causes that were 9/11 related,” he says. Among the illnesses are leukemia and other cancers.

Suzanne Mattei, an attorney who currently works as the head of the national field office of the environmental group the Sierra Club, has been a leading force in the fight to address the plight of 9/11 rescue workers. In 2004, she wrote “Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero,” a Sierra Club report that states, “...if our federal government had responded to the disaster with proper vigilance for people’s health, many toxic exposures could have been avoided.” This report embodies the retaliation against Christine Whitman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency at the time of the attacks who has since resigned, and her declaration that the air in Lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe” just one week after the World Trade Center buildings came down. Largely because of such reassurances from government officials, most rescue workers and volunteers working on the pile did not have air masks to help filter out toxins from the air they were breathing. Some had surgical masks or painter’s masks but most had nothing at all.

The treatment of 9/11 first responders has included a number of hurdles. In preparing the 2006 budget, President Bush had originally planned to eliminate $125 million in federal funding allocated for the responders. In December, the House restored those funds. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) was a driving force behind that decision. The day after the reimplementation, Maloney’s office issued a press release explaining how the funds would help the workers and volunteers. “The bill approved last night restores the $125 million, directing $50 million to the New York State Uninsured Employers Fund to reimburse workers’ compensation claims and $75 million to the Centers for Disease Control to screen, examine, monitor and…treat sick and injured 9/11 responders.”

In April, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued a report confirming that the World Trade Center attacks resulted in subsequent respiratory diseases and mental distress for survivors and workers at the site. According to Maloney, everyone—from volunteers to schoolchildren—exposed to the toxins in Lower Manhattan for extended periods of time should be “monitored and treated.” Though the $125 million has been restored, Maloney was quick to point out in a telephone conversation last week that the use of the money has been slow. “To this day, not a dollar has been spent on treatment,” she says. “Those who rushed down selflessly to help other people, we need to help them.”

Though happy about the new laws Pataki has implemented, Mattei believes responders still face hurdles in getting their compensation. “Anyone who wants to do this has only one year—until August 14, 2007—to get a special form from the Worker’s Compensation Board and swear they were rescue, recovery or cleanup workers,” she explains. “A lot of people won’t know about that deadline. How would they find out?” She points out that media coverage of the new laws did not mention specifics about the process by which rescue workers should go about getting compensation. “The bill won’t accomplish it’s purpose if it’s not publicized.”

Cheryl Wood, General Counsel for the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, explains the details of the filing process. “There is no requirement that you have to have spent a certain amount of time [participating in the recovery process],” she says. “If you are injured or ill now because of the rescue or recovery process, you can apply for the workers’ compensation.”
Mattei also notes that some individuals have not yet begun to see their illnesses. “The reality is if a worker is not suffering health effects right now, they are not paying attention,” she says. “They don’t know there is a heart condition or a cancerous condition developing in their bodies.” In fact, many illnesses, physical and mental, related to 9/11 do not show up for years. Posttraumatic stress disorder, for example, can take anywhere from five to 20 years to manifest.

Jim Lapenna, an electrician based in Middletown, New York, is one person who has no faith in the government’s willingness to help him. On September 11, 2001, he left his work site at the Palisades Center near the Tappanzee Bridge and drove to Lower Manhattan as soon as he heard about the first plane’s collision with the North Tower. Lapenna was one of the volunteers who assisted in the rescue of John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno—the characters central to the plot of Oliver Stone’s film World Trade Center. Lapenna worked at the site for 14 consecutive days, helping in the search and rescue process. Because he left his work site at the Palisades Center, he says, he was fired from his job. After taking on a new job at St. Luke’s Hospital in Newburgh, Lapenna says he began to develop respiratory problems, PTSD, dizzy spells and headaches, among other ailments suffered by many other responders. As a new hire at the hospital, he was inelligible for an extended leave of absence. Unable to continue working, the hospital fired him after a year of service.

Bills, including medical ones, began to add up, Lapenna says. “I had to work to make ends meet,” he says. Subsequently, he began to work on his own. In addition to his early ailments, Lapenna today suffers from blurred vision and anxiety. “There’s days I have to come home early because I just can’t do it anymore,” the 51-year-old father of three says. “Everything is out of whack.” He talks about his life prior to the attacks as full of physical activity. He would train and coach his sons’ soccer teams, he says. But now, “I can’t do nearly what I used to do. The whole thing is frustrating.”

Lapenna went to Ground Zero on his own accord. “No one had a table that said ‘Sign up here,’” he recalls. Though there is no written documentation to prove he volunteered at the site, Lapenna has photographic evidence. A photograph in TIME magazine’s special issue released just days after the attacks shows Lapenna—dressed in a short-sleeved black polo shirt and wearing a surgical mask—in the middle of a throng of firefighters and other rescue workers. In addition, he says he still has the clothes he wore during his time at the site in storage. “I should probably get rid of those,” he says, “but my kids want me to keep them.”

Kim Mann helps Lapenna with day-to-day business duties like bookkeeping, and she is very concerned about the volunteers like Lapenna who volunteered at Ground Zero on their own, not affiliated with an organization like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. “The one’s who came on their own are on their own,” she says. The frustration comes out in the tone of Lapenna’s voice. “When people ask me who my employer is,” he says of his attempts to file for worker’s compensation and other aid, “I say, ‘God.’ And when people ask me how they know I was down there, I say, ‘You don’t know.’” Despite Pataki’s new laws, Lapenna believes he is on his own just as Mann feared.

Wood says that individuals in Lapenna’s situation should still file for compensation. “I would tell anyone to file a claim,” she says, including private sector employees and independent volunteers. “They will look at it and ask questions to establish the relevancy. Every claim will have to show medical evidence that the illness is related to work at Ground Zero.” Mattei notes that people submit a variety of forms of evidence, from paperwork to photographs to witness accounts.

Mattei points out other problems with the new legislation. She comments that it does not acknowledge that an illness stems from a responder’s work at Ground Zero. “The issue of an illness being caused by pollution exposure is a very difficult thing to prove,” she explains, despite the number of volunteers and rescue workers developing debilitating—even fatal—diseases.

Responders and advocates are not the only one’s who are skeptical about the effects of Pataki’s laws. Mayor Bloomberg has spoken out against the governor’s move, but for very different reasons. Bloomberg has publicly stated that he thinks the new law is fiscally irresponsible. In regards to line-of-duty death benefits, he demands that a direct connection between a responder’s illness and his or her work at Ground Zero be proven beyond a doubt. “You can take your insurance company and payout all billion dollars now,” Bloomberg said at a press conference on Tuesday, August 15. “What do we do in ten years when people come down with a disease that you could show was connected to the service that they provided on 9/11? We have a responsibility to them to make sure there are resources available for that.” Bloomberg’s contribution to the fight against tobacco infuriated many first responders, including Feal. “Bloomberg can donate money to fight cigarettes. They cause cancer, but 9/11 caused cancer, too,” he says. “I went to 9/11 university and I’ve got a five year degree now,” he says of his experiences. “It’s a crime that [Bloomberg] says he can’t see enough evidence of illness.” He adds, “I’d like to take my good foot…and put it in his mayorial ass! That’s not a very good leader in my mind.”

Despite his difficulties, Feal maintains a sense of humor. “This is why I act like a clown when no one’s around. Because if I didn’t have a sense of humor about this I would have killed myself by now.” And he takes great pride in helping other first responders. “These people risked their lives with no prejudice.” He devotes himself fully to his efforts. “I’ll go weeks without utilities, days without food,” he says. “Their suffering is my strength.”

John Sferazo is president of the Unsung Heroes helping heroes. His experiences as a rescue worker were similarly traumatic. “There were things that we did there and stuff that we found that I don’t even want to talk about,” he says between heavy breaths. While post-9/11 daily life is forever altered by new illnesses, Sfezaro and the other responders do not regret having volunteered and worked at Ground Zero. “Everybody assumed there would be plenty of opportunities to help and look for survivors and that was my main contention.”

Though they feel abandoned by the state and the federal government, these first responders and volunteers continue their fight. And they look to themselves for solidarity and hope. “9/11 responders are going to help themselves,” says Feal. “With a little grassroots movement, we are going to be all right.”

http://www.nypress.com/19/34/news&columns/feature.cfm

Check number 3 on the way!

2006-08-21T16:33:00.000-04:00

Thanks to all of you!

So far our organization cumulatively donated $550. Thank you for all your support and we hope to bring in more donations to the Meso Foundation in the upcoming season!

9/11 rescue workers get expanded benefits in N.Y.

2006-08-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

From Rossana Shokrian CNN
Tuesday, August 15, 2006; Posted: 2:25 p.m. EDT (18:25 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Three bills signed by New York Gov. George Pataki expand health and death benefits to 9/11 rescue workers who became sick or have died in the nearly five years since the attacks on the World Trade Center.

One of the laws, all of which Pataki signed Monday, gives families of those who died after the terrorist attacks the same benefits as those who were killed on September 11, 2001.
Another one allows recovery workers who became ill after a two-year deadline to reapply for workers' compensation benefits, according to the governor's office.

"As it is clear that many champions of 9/11 have developed debilitating illnesses over time resulting from their selfless acts, these New Yorkers need to know that New York state will not abandon them," Pataki said.

"New York will never forget the heroes of September 11, the men and women who tirelessly worked at the site of the world's most horrific terror attacks, to help save lives, recover the remains of loved ones and begin the rebuilding process in Lower Manhattan."
A third law will allow those recovery workers who have retired from public service to have their retirement status reclassified as accidental disability if they later become ill due to their efforts at Ground Zero.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday criticized the new laws, saying they could cost the city up to $500 million.

"It's just another example of the state of New York doing something that they want to do, but making the city pay," said Bloomberg, who like Pataki is a Republican.
The governor's office was unable to give any immediate estimates as to how many workers the laws will cover or how much money will be needed.

Responding to the criticism, Pataki said, "First of all, we don't think the cost will be anything like some of the estimates. ... Second of all, a significant part of those costs will be picked up by the state. Finally, when it comes to honoring those who risked their lives or gave their lives helping us get through the worst attack on America, we have got to do what it takes to help them and to help their families. "

Until recently, the state of New York had not directly linked any death or illness of a 9/11 recovery worker to the conditions at Ground Zero after the attacks.

But that position changed after the January death of 34-year-old retired police Detective James Zadroga from brain and respiratory diseases. A medical examiner and coroner's office in New Jersey concluded in April that Zadroga's death was directly linked to the September 11 recovery operations.

The new legislation was created for Zadroga and other victims of the 9/11 efforts, said Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for the governor's office.

"The bill was created for him to ensure he received full line-of-duty benefits and also encompasses any first responders to 9/11 who could die of any complications," she said.
"Mr. Zadroga was the first person that the medical community had found a link to; therefore, the bills were created to directly impact him as well as others who are affected by 9/11."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/15/911.health.benefits/

Historic Wins for Mesothelioma Research Funding

2006-08-16T10:30:00.000-04:00

I thought Id share an email sent to me by The Meso Foundation's Director Christopher Hahn!

Dear Joseph,

Were very happy to share this exciting news:

Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation Achieves First-Ever Federal Appropriations for Asbestos-Cancer Research

Santa Barbara , CA , August 15, 2006 -- The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (Meso Foundation), the national nonprofit dedicated to eradicating mesothelioma as a life-ending disease, announced today two historic victories in federal research funding to combat the deadly asbestos-related cancer.

Meso was just included as an eligible disease in the Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program, enabling meso investigators from across the nation to compete for research funding under the programs $45 million budget for 2007. At the same time, the National Mesothelioma Registry, which is being created through a 2006 year-end appropriation to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), was just awarded another $1 million for 2007.

The inclusion of meso in the DOD Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program, and the allocation to NIOSH for the National Mesothelioma Registry, represent the first federal appropriations for meso research ever. They resulted from an intense advocacy effort by the Foundation. In May, Meso Foundation Executive Director Chris Hahn testified before the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcomittee on the high proportion of military veterans who develop mesothelioma. He, the Foundations government affairs representatives, the Foundations Scientific Advisory Chairman Harvey Pass , M.D., and other scientific representatives met extensively with Senators and their staffs, educating them on the disease and the exciting potential for treatment breakthroughs if research funding were available. The Foundation also organized a large grass-roots campaign, and many meso investigators, patients, families and volunteers contacted their states Senators to urge their support.

The meso community is incredibly excited about these research opportunities. Meso has been an orphan disease for far too long. But, the growing energy and support by public leaders, committed investigators, and our patient community is helping to shine a spotlight on this deadly cancer. The commitment of these new federal dollars to support meso research is a reflection of the significant progress weve made, Hahn said.

The DOD Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program was established to provide funding opportunities for medical research projects of clear scientific merit and direct relevance to military health. The connection between mesothelioma and military service makes it an appropriate and deserving area of research to include in the program, said Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang , Meso Foundation Board Chairman. We are also thrilled that in addition to the research opportunities through the DOD, the newly established National Mesothelioma Registry continues to receive considerable support.

The National Mesothelioma Registry was established as a pilot project through the FY 2006 LHHS appropriations legislation. Ultimately, the registry and associated tissue bank will provide vital tools necessary to understand the disease better and advance meso research. NIOSH is expected to announce its initial grant award to commence the registry in the next two months.

Our research community, physicians, patients and families are grateful to the continued support and leadership of our champions in the U.S. Senate. Together, we will continue to make strides against this deadly cancer, said Hahn.

For more information, contact the Meso Foundation, http://www.curemeso.org/
Christopher E. Hahn
Executive Director
The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation
(877) End Meso (363.6376) toll free

http://www.curemeso.org/

NEW NAME, SAME GREAT FOUNDATION

2006-08-14T08:25:00.000-04:00

Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation has changed its name and is now known as the MESO Foundation. From the new MESO Foundation website: Charity Navigator awarded the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation four out of a possible four stars. In earning Charity Navigator's highest four star rating, the Meso Foundation has demonstrated exceptional financial health, outperforming most of its peers in its efforts to manage and grow its finances in the most fiscally responsible way possible.

Please help me go on living

2006-08-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

WTC volunteer needs swift action to survive

A man's life is at stake. His name is Vito Valenti. On Sept. 11 he was caught in the maelstrom and stayed at Ground Zero as a volunteer to help in the frantic rescue and recovery operation.

And today he is dying.

He is 42 years old.

He cannot work.

He has no pension.

He has no health insurance.

He has no money for medications.

His lungs are being destroyed by pulmonary fibrosis.

His only hope is a double lung transplant, but he cannot afford even the oxygen he needs to make it day by suffocating day.

Only through the good graces of a generous medical supply company is he being sustained with the fundamental requirement of life: breath.

"After hearing that he was a 9/11 volunteer, we decided to donate the oxygen," said Ed Brown, sales representative for Homecare Concepts in Farmingdale, L.I.
Someone in power must help Vito Valenti, for he will die without it.
Numerous officials have responded to this series of editorials by pledging to aid the forgotten victims of 9/11. Today, they can be of critical service.

Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Pataki and every elected and health official who let the 9/11 epidemic expand unaddressed ought to knock this morning on Valenti's door. Inside the upstairs apartment of a two-family house at 1320 A St. in Elmont, L.I., they would meet a man who personifies how seriously ill some Ground Zero responders are. And they would see, in the most extreme way, that many are being denied proper assistance.

Like thousands of others, Valenti is at the mercy of a workers' compensation system that is ill-suited, if not hostile, to reimbursing them for lost wages and picking up health care costs. New York's compensation law was written to cover standard accidents, such as falling off a ladder, and illnesses directly related to a specific occupation, such as repetitive stress nerve damage among meat cutters. The law was not designed for illnesses that emerge over time from the inhalation of unprecedented amounts of toxins by 40,000 workers with disparate jobs.

As a result, Valenti is among a vast legion who are barred from filing claims because they realize they are sick more than two years after 9/11, the time limit for starting a case. His only hope rests in legislation that would extend the filing period for9/11 responders. Such a bill is on Pataki's desk. So Valenti lives on $1,430 a month in Social Security and cannot afford drugs to treat his illness and prepare him for a transplant.

"He is dying," said Dr. Maria Padilla, medical director of Mount Sinai Medical Center's lung transplantation program, who began seeing Valenti in April 2005. "Unless he can get coverage for his medications and get ready for a transplant, there is no hope."
Valenti is a divorced father of two. He lives with his 74-year-old father, who is battling heart problems and cancer, and he lost his mother to cancer in February. For more than a decade, Valenti worked as a lunch aide in a Queens middle school and then became a grievance representative for his union, Local 372, with half his $60,000 salary paid by the union and half by the school system.

Valenti's office was at 125 Barclay St., directly behind the World Trade Center, making him witness to the full horrors of 9/11 and positioning him to serve as a volunteer. Over the next two days, in the thick of a toxic cloud, he distributed water and supplies and remembers escorting a dazed and bleeding firefighter to a triage nurse. He slept on West St. with a roll of paper towels as his pillow.

"The smell of death was everywhere," Valenti said. "It was like hell."
The nightmare took a toll. Diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, Valenti went on paid leave for six months and unpaid leave for four. Because he filed on time for PTSD, workers' comp reimbursed the Education Department for his sick pay.
By February 2002, Valenti was also coughing. Over the coming months, his respiratory distress worsened, leading eventually to a diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis in March 2004. Fibrosis is a scarring of the lungs that prevents the body from oxygenating the blood. It is a form of interstitial lung disease, the illness that took the lives of Firefighter Stephen Johnson, Police Officer James Godbee, Detective James Zadroga and telephone worker Mark DeBiase.
Valenti exhausted his health benefits in December 2005, making it impossible for him to afford more than a dozen medications. The company that provided his oxygen supply took its equipment back.

Lacking his medications, Valenti gave up on the lung transplant program. Two weeks ago, he was admitted to Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola in the throes of a respiratory failure. Doctors stabilized him, gave him a 30-day supply of medicine, and a nurse secured free oxygen for him from Homecare Concepts.

Many city workers who were disabled after responding to 9/11 are eligible for special three-quarter-pay pensions under legislation enacted in 2005. The law says their illnesses are presumed to have been caused by the event. But here, too, Valenti is out in the cold.
First, he had declined to join the city retirement system before9/11, a decision that may make him ineligible for the special pension. Second, he would need to prove that he served at Ground Zero for 40 hours. His only witness, union Vice President Santos Crespo, said he believes Valenti served for the required time. But Crespo lost track of Valenti in the chaos and so can't swear to it.

State Sen. Michael Balboni's office is trying to figure out whether Valenti is entitled to a disability pension. The law is unclear, leaving Valenti to wait for the end of a long, bureaucratic process, when he has no time to wait. The life expectancy of people with his disease may be as little as three years. Much of that time is already gone.

"I'm begging for someone to help me," Valenti said. "I do not want to die."

He shouldn't have to beg.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/442271p-372474c.html

Next Check on the WAY!

2006-08-02T14:39:00.000-04:00

Our second check is on the way to MARF this month! Pride at those who have made this possible is not an adequate word to describe how we feel! Thank you.

Thank You FDNY!

2006-07-27T21:26:00.000-04:00

We would like to extend our thanks to the brothers that are helping us to reach our goals and all the others that are spreading the word for us! Some pics of the most active below!

The making of a health disaster

2006-07-25T22:28:00.000-04:00

Ground Zero workers were sent into 'the largest acute environmental disaster that ever has befallen New York City' without proper respiratory protection - and thousands are paying the price.

For Christopher Hynes, life as a forgotten victim of 9/11 is a battle for breath.
Five years ago, Hynes was a 30-year-old, healthy, nonsmoking New York City police officer. Then, in September and October 2001, he was assigned to Ground Zero duty, spending more than 100 hours patrolling the perimeter of the smoldering rubble of the twin towers. The air was thick with dust and smoky particles.
Today, Hynes, married and the father of a 4-year-old son, has sarcoidosis, a disease that scars lung tissues, and asthma, a disease that inflames and obstructs the airways of the lungs. He coughs constantly and cannot exert himself without losing breath. He survives with the help of steroids and performs restricted duties for the Police Department.
"I will probably have this for the rest of my life," he says.

For Winston Lodge, life as a forgotten victim of 9/11 is the torment of chronically inflamed and bleeding sinuses.
Five years ago, Lodge was a 44-year-old ironworker who helped build things. Then, called on to help dismantle The Pile, he pitched in at Ground Zero for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month. Today, Lodge's nose runs constantly and often bleeds. He suffers headaches from sinus pressure, has shortness of breath from chronic bronchitis and is bedeviled by acid reflux, a painful heartburn. He has undergone surgery to relieve sinus difficulties and is awaiting a second operation. Since 2004, Lodge, a divorced father of four, has been unable to work. "I am sick to my bones and I need help," he says.

For Jeffrey Endean, life as a forgotten victim of 9/11 is a struggle with scarred lungs and ruined sinuses.
Five years ago, Endean was a 51-year-old division commander for the Morris County, N.J., sheriff's office. He was healthy, able to run several miles. Then, he was pressed into Ground Zero service because he had experience helping first responders cope at horrific scenes. He worked 12-hour shifts from Sept. 11 to Nov. 22, 2001. Today, Endean has reactive airways dysfunction syndrome, or RADS, a rare, irritant-induced form of asthma, his sinuses often bleed and he is prone to headaches and upper-respiratory infections. Married, the father of three and grandfather of three, Endean retired in 2002. "I start the day with four to five inhalers and a pill," he says. "Will I have cancer at 66? Will I live my life as long as I should?"

The forgotten victims of 9/11 are legion among the 40,000 people who massed at Ground Zero in New York's hour of greatest need. Well over 12,000 are afflicted with conditions similar to those that plague Christopher Hynes, Winston Lodge and Jeffrey Endean.

They gasp for air with asthma or illnesses that scar deep in the lungs. They lose their breath from exertion. They endure pain from persistently swollen sinuses and constant burning from acid reflux. At a minimum, they cough and cough, hacking with a syndrome known fittingly as World Trade Center cough. And, beyond all doubt, at least four responders - Firefighter Stephen Johnson, Police Officer James Godbee, Detective James Zadroga and Emergency Medical Service paramedic Debbie Reeve - died as a direct consequence of their service.

The magnitude of the epidemic has worsened for five years as every level of government has failed to face the reality of what happens when large numbers of people without proper respiratory protection are exposed for long periods to air thick with toxic substances. .....
The failure to create the comprehensive public health campaign that was so obviously called for is especially outrageous because public health officials have long had access to evidence of a public health disaster in the making. Medical researchers have published at least 27 studies detailing how the toxic cloud that erupted with the collapse of the World Trade Center ate at the lungs of the workers who labored to find survivors and cart away the massive rubble. ....

The reports are available in publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Chest, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Many were written by the Fire Department's own doctors, who are among a handful of officials who have performed in exemplary fashion since 9/11.
The collapse of the twin towers was, in the words of a 2004 report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, "the largest acute environmental disaster that ever has befallen New York City." The air became laden with highly alkaline concrete dust, glass fibers and particles of lead, chlorine, antimony, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, iron, zinc and calcium. Flaming fuel and plastics released carcinogens including dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls and polychlorinated furans.

Three days after the attack, rain helped cleanse the atmosphere, but particulate levels rose and fell for weeks, dropping at night when the air was still and rising with flareups in The Pile. Construction machinery added diesel exhaust to the stew, and caked gray-white dust was omnipresent. It was not until December 2001 that the fires were extinguished and dioxin levels returned to normal. The final pieces of steel were trucked away five months later.
The devastating consequences of laboring amid poisons became immediately evident.
In the first 24 hours, 240 firefighters and Emergency Medical Service workers sought treatment, half for dire respiratory symptoms. Three were hospitalized for life-threatening inhalation injuries, two of whom went into acute respiratory arrest. Within 48 hours, more than 9,000 firefighters - 90% of the FDNY's earliest responders - suffered acute cough, nasal congestion, chest tightness or burning. Three out of four told researchers that for the first week, they didn't wear respirators, which cover the nose and mouth and filter out contaminants. Some used paper masks that were practically useless.

Two weeks after 9/11, a 38-year-old firefighter was admitted to Bellevue Hospital with acute eosinophilic pneumonia, a rare disease caused by exposure to extreme amounts of dust, according to the description of his case published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. He had ash, fiberglass, silica, metal particles and asbestos in his lungs.
The firefighter, whom the FDNY declined to identify, had arrived at the Trade Center 20 minutes after the collapse and worked 16 hours a day for 13 days, wearing no respiratory protection for at least the first week. Early on, he coughed up black phlegm, and for two days before he was hospitalized he complained of fatigue, muscle pain, fever, dry cough, chest discomfort and breathlessness. He required three weeks of treatment before recovering.
A team of doctors, including David Prezant, the Fire Department's deputy chief medical officer, wrote up the case as an example of a condition known as interstitial lung disease. ILD affects tissues deep in the lungs that extract oxygen and is far rarer than illnesses that obstruct breathing passages, such as asthma. It is the type of illness that led to the deaths of Johnson, Zadroga and Godbee.

In October, doctors diagnosed almost 60 firefighters as suffering from airway hyperreactivity, a narrowing of breathing passages commonly found in miners after years of exposure to airborne particles. The firefighters' conditions worsened over the next six months. In November and December, researchers for Beth Israel Medical Center and Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities examined hundreds of cops and cleanup workers and found that they, too, had coughing, wheezing and other lung ailments. For example, Beth Israel doctors checked 240 Emergency Service Unit cops and found that 77% had developed new or worsening respiratory symptoms within days after 9/11, and that one-quarter of the 240 still had symptoms three months later.

In February 2002, a study of 97 ironworkers who were at Ground Zero during the first five days found 77% had respiratory symptoms such as cough, chest tightness and wheezing.
Symptoms emerged among people who had not been on The Pile. Two-thirds of the residents in 414 randomly selected households in Battery Park City, Southbridge Towers and Independence Plaza reported eye or throat irritation six weeks after the attack, and nearly half had persistent coughs.

A survey of downtown women who were pregnant on 9/11 found shorter gestation periods and smaller babies than normal. The maternal and cord blood of women who lived within a mile of Ground Zero had elevated levels of PAHs in the month after the attack. PAHs are associated with genetic damage.

One woman told researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore that she had had an abortion because she feared birth defects. Still, the Ground Zero recovery workers suffered the worst illnesses. Thirteen firefighters contracted pneumonia in the first three months, and by month six more than 30 firefighters had come down with reactive airways dysfunction syndrome, the asthma that struck Jeffrey Endean. An additional 332 firefighters and one EMS worker had a severe enough cough to require four weeks of sick leave - the first medical definition of what became know as World Trade Center cough.

All of them had coughed up black or gray phlegm containing pebbles or particles in the first days after the attack, and one year later, more than half of those 332 showed only partial improvement. Almost nine out of 10 also suffered from persistent, severe heartburn or acid reflux, an ailment common among the forgotten victims of 9/11. (Doctors believe that breathing concrete dust inflamed lungs and sinuses, and swallowing it damaged digestive systems, causing the release of acids. Vapors generated by those acids then worsen the respiratory inflammation, creating a vicious cycle. One retired firefighter had a cough so severe that the constant jarring of his teeth knocked out most of his fillings, said the FDNY's Prezant.) Most stunningly, FDNY doctors calculated that the average lung capacity of Ground Zero firefighters and EMS workers had decreased by the equivalent of 12 years of aging. The doctors also saw sarcoidosis, the lung-scarring disease that afflicts Christopher Hynes, at more than five times the usual rate in the first two years.

That's where the scientific measurements of the Ground Zero health crisis end for the moment, but more is known because Fire Department physicians and doctors at the Mount Sinai World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program have monitored or treated tens of thousands of patients. Their conditions are similar to those suffered by Hynes, Lodge and Endean: asthma, RADS, interstitial lung diseases, bronchitis, sinusitis, acid reflux and, most commonly, World Trade Center cough. The doctors say that while aggressive treatment has helped many to improve, few have been restored to the health they enjoyed before 9/11. Many are severely debilitated.

The Daily News is calling on Mayor Bloomberg to lead a public health drive on behalf of the forgotten victims of 9/11. His long dedication to public health, his command of municipal resources and his ability to get things done ideally suit Bloomberg for the job. Not incidentally, he also occupies a position from which to mobilize the state and federal governments into fulfilling their responsibilities to the Ground Zero responders. And those responsibilities are, indeed, huge. They belong to, among others, Gov. Pataki and his successor in Albany come January, state Health Commissioner Antonia Novello and her successor come January and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, who assigned Dr. John Howard, head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, to serve as federal WTC health coordinator. All must begin to accept their obligations. Bloomberg responded to our call with a commitment to study "whether we are doing everything that we can," and a promise to do what he can "consistent with what our resources are, to make sure that this city acts responsibly and recognizes the great sacrifice and the hard work that people made down at the World Trade Center site." To which we say, "Good, Mr. Mayor, take a close, hard look." Action will surely follow, and we look forward to seeing the start of a comprehensive, aggressive crusade, because the facts demand it. Even a cursory study will show that Trade Center responders were falsely assured the air was safe. And that they didn't get or use proper respiratory protection.
And that the primary medical program for most responders, the one run by Mount Sinai, has never been adequately funded so that cops and construction workers must wait four months for an appointment for treatment. And that doctors at Mount Sinai and affiliated hospitals are experiencing a surge of new patients five years after 9/11. And that many of Mount Sinai's patients arrive after having been misdiagnosed or ineffectively treated. And that medical experts, including Dr. Kerry Kelly, FDNY's chief medical officer, and Prezant; Dr. Robin Herbert and Dr. Stephen Levin, who run Mount Sinai's program, and Dr. Alvin Teirstein, a noted Mount Sinaipulmonary specialist, are concerned that the forgotten of9/11 may be on the verge of more serious illnesses. Tumors and lung-scarring diseases have been known to emerge between five and 20 years after a toxic exposure. The responders are about to cross that five-year milestone.

They served New York and it cost them their health and even their lives. They deserve nothing less than long-term, gold-standard health care - now.

Originally published on July 24, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/437742p-368865c.html

FIRST CHECK SENT OUT!!!!!!!

2006-07-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who has enabled us to send our first check to MARF today! This is the beginning and without support from everyone - we wont be able to do anything more than talk about changing the future.

9/11 first responders getting sick and dying

2006-07-11T15:48:00.000-04:00

What the Investigators found out about dust from Ground Zero

.....many first responders to the 9-11 terror attacks seem to be getting sick or are dying at an alarming rate because of exposure to toxic chemicals. Tonight the Eyewitness News Investigators test items of clothing used by an angry responder. Jim Hoffer with his exclusive report.

An NYPD detective dies at age 34. An autopsy links his death to dust exposure at Ground Zero. An FDNY medic dead at 41, doctors point to his "exposure to the World Trade Center disaster." ......

Patrick Bahnken, Pres. FDNY EMT Union: "The reality is we are dying quicker than medical science can catch up to us."

We ..... took his clothing to this lab to be tested for any toxic substances.

Patrick Bahnken, Pres. FDNY EMT Union: "It's not a coincidence, there is a common linking factor and that is the trade center and what you see on my shoes and on these clothes is exactly what people breathed in."

Environmental Testing Lab spent a week analyzing the clothing, running numerous tests to determine whether they contained any hazardous levels of heavy metals, which are known to cause lung damage.

Even though nearly five years had passed, contaminants were still found some at high concentrations.

Newman: "They are red flags because exposure to any of these substances at sufficient level would be cause for concern."

We asked industrial hygienist David Newman to interpret the lab findings.
Dust from the shoes and clothing contained several heavy metals including cadmium which can damage the lungs. It existed at two times the level that's considered hazardous in soil.
Newman: "It would be 100 percent above the trigger that would warrant a cleanup."

The lab also found mercury, linked to respiratory problems, at four times the level the state considers hazardous for soil.

David Newman, Hygienist: "Over a period of time evaporates. We are four years past 9/11 so I'm surprised to find any mercury."

Lead tested at two and a half times above the hazardous level. Chromium, known to cause lung disease, existed at ten times the level that would require a mandatory cleanup.

Newman: "These are toxic substances if they get in the air and if you breath them inhale them at sufficient concentrations and for significant periods of time they have the potential to do serious significant health damage." FDNY medic John Viciguerra believes the months he spent breathing in dust at Ground Zero has given him lung disease at age 38. No matter how many medications he needs or how many medical reports he gathers, the city has yet to acknowledge a Ground Zero connection.

John Vincingera, FDNY Medic: "I was denied workman's compensation. They told me that too much time had passed since 9/11."

The clothing we had tested for contaminants was worn by John's friend and colleague. The samples that tested high for heavy metals came from the same dust that he and thousands of others inhaled and that many now believe has made them ill.

If you have a tip about this or any other investigative story, give our tipline a call at 877-TIP-NEWS.

(Copyright 2006 WABC-TV)

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=investigators&id=4203468

DETECTIVES GET 9/11 SCAN

2006-07-11T15:44:00.000-04:00

By CARL CAMPANILE

July 10, 2006 -- Fear of 9/11-related illnesses among its ranks has spurred the police detectives' union to line up medical body scans for its members - particularly those who worked at Ground Zero.

"We don't know what we were dealing with down there," said Michael Palladino, head of the New York City Detectives Endowment Association.

More detectives are getting sick, he said - notably James Zadrogra, who died of pulmonary disease in January. A coroner linked his illness to Ground Zero.

Inner Imaging will conduct comprehensive exams of each cop's heart, lungs and abdomen.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/detectives_get_9_11_scan_regionalnews_carl_campanile.htm

New Artists4hope homepage.

2006-07-05T16:55:00.000-04:00

Come and see our new Artists4hope home page. There are links for the homepage, NYfire.com, MARF at the bottom of this blog!

THANK YOU!!!!!

2006-06-24T21:26:00.000-04:00

Our most sincere thanks to all of the Volunteer Ambulance Services and the FDNY-EMS that participated in the Glendale Volunteer Ambulance Corps' EMT/CFR First Aid drill. The event was held at Forest Park in Queens today and under the expert supervision of the drill coordinator, Sharon Byrne, even the torrential rain could not dampen the spirit of the day. A great thanks goes out from us to all the people who donated and received their Iloveny tee shirt. Wear it in good health, but also wear it with pride that you are making a difference in lives!

iloveny staff.

Asbestos bill widens to 9/11, hurricane claims

2006-06-05T13:23:00.000-04:00

By Susan Cornwell
Reuters Sunday, June 4, 2006; 12:06 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Until now it has been the elephant in the room during Senate debates about asbestos poisoning: What about the vast cloud of dust that blanketed New York City when the World Trade Center collapsed?

Several senators have spent years working to craft a $140 billion fund that could process thousands of injury claims from people sickened by asbestos.

There has been little discussion of whether a new wave of claims may arise from the September 11, 2001 attacks, when a mix of pollutants was spewed over Manhattan as the Twin Towers fell. A new Senate proposal, however, has raised the subject.

Language allowing New Yorkers, along with victims of last year's Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, to file claims may attract more support for legislation to create the fund but raises new questions about whether the fund will quickly go broke.

"You have an awful lot of people whose lungs are exposed to this material," said Dr. Stephen Levin of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. It has been monitoring the health of thousands of rescue workers from the September 11 disaster.

"Asbestos has been found in bulk samples, both on the pile at Ground Zero, as well as in settled dust in buildings and offices. It's surely around," Levin said in an interview.
Asbestos, a fire-retardant mineral, was widely used in building insulation and other products until the mid-1970s, and asbestos victims' groups say the World Trade Center had tons of it. Inhalation of its fibers has been linked to cancer and other diseases, which usually take years to develop.

A Senate bill by Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter and Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy would create a $140 billion fund to pay up to $1.1 million to individual asbestos victims. It would be financed by companies that made or sold asbestos products -- such as W.R. Grace -- and their insurers, who in turn would be shielded from legal liability.
The senators' stated aim is to unclog courts, stop "abusive" lawsuits and pay claims of the truly ill.

But the fund would mainly pay claims of people exposed to asbestos on the job, such as construction workers. Others who believed their illness was caused by asbestos could seek compensation, but under the bill, a panel of physicians would decide whether they qualified.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/04/AR2006060400298.html

WTC responders' illness worse than expected

2006-06-02T21:52:00.000-04:00

Almost five years after terror attacks, new critical health cases are surfacing
BY RIDGELY OCHS
Newsday Staff Writer
Posted June 1 2006

Doctors who treat World Trade Center responders say they are surprised almost five years later by the growing number seeking help for the first time -- 100 people a month in the biggest monitoring program -- and by the severity of illnesses among Sept. 11 workers already in treatment."There's no question there's continuing demand and many in the treatment program are quite ill," said Dr. Robin Herbert, codirector of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.Herbert, whose program has examined about 15,000 responders since 2002, said doctors are finding "remarkable persistence" in breathing disorders such as chronic sinusitis and asthma, stomach ailments such as gastrointestinal reflux disease and psychological problems such as post traumatic stress disorder -- a suite of maladies one survivor called "my 9/11 plague."Some patients also have come in with severe lung scarring, which can be fatal.And there have been cases of cancer, which worries experts, though they are unwilling to directly attribute them to exposure to Ground Zero toxins.

Doctors are also surprised by the numbers of new patients. Mount Sinai's screening program sees 100 new people a month, Herbert said.Despite adding more health care providers, Herbert said that for the last six months, the waiting list for treatment has grown to more than three months. "We honestly did not expect such ongoing demand," she said.Dr. Ben Luft, program director for Long Island's World Trade Center monitoring program at Stony Brook University Hospital, which is following about 1,800 workers, said about 250 new workers from Long Island have come to the program in the past year."It's very surprising. Originally, we felt these are people who had an acute exposure and acute reaction, and we didn't think we were going to continue at this level for five years after exposure," said Luft, whose program, like Mount Sinai's, follows and treats Sept. 11 responders.In some, he said, there appears to be "a period of latency" before symptoms develop. In others, symptoms have worsened over time, becoming bad enough to drive the person to seek help for the first time. "There's a chronic, progressive element to this," he said.Herbert said she is also concerned about a small number of cases of lung scarring similar to that which killed Det. James Zadroga, 34, of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., in January. The coroner there found swirls in Zadroga's lungs caused by foreign material, which he linked to Ground Zero dust -- the first death to be officially tied to World Trade Center exposure."We're concerned because now we have a very small number of World Trade Center responders with much more serious lung scarring diseases," Herbert said.Luft said he has also seen a handful of such cases.Dr. David Prezant, chief medical officer in the Office of Medical Affairs in the New York City Fire Department at Montefiore Medical Center, said he also has seen some cases of lung scarring among the 14,000 fire fighters and emergency medical workers being monitored. He believes larger numbers of scarring cases and other diseases may show up in "another wave" decades from now.

Prezant coauthored a study published last month that showed the average lung function decline among fire fighters who were at Ground Zero one year after Sept. 11 was the equivalent of 12 years of aging.World Trade Center workers are exchanging stories of cancers in colleagues -- especially of the blood, kidneys and pancreas -- they believe are the result of inhaling and ingesting pulverized cement, glass fibers and other toxic substances at Ground Zero."We have a rough estimate of 200 to 300 people who are between the ages of 30 and 50 [with cancer]," said Jon Sferazo, 51, of Huntington Station, presiding officer of Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes, an advocacy group for Sept. 11 responders. "These cancers seem to be occurring in people far too young," he said.Doctors are unwilling to link the cancer cases and exposure to Ground Zero toxins because it generally takes years for cancers to develop -- but they are tracking them closely. "We don't know if these are just normal, sporadic cases or if a pattern is developing. The methodology [in monitoring patients] has to be vigilant," Luft said.

Mental health problems, including depression and post traumatic stress disorder, are also not going away, experts said. As with new cases of physical ailments, health professionals are seeing new cases of psychological difficulties among people who previously hadn't sought help."What we're seeing is people coming forward for the first time," said Michael Arcari, the head of Faithful Response, a free mental health program for World Trade Center responders in North Bellmore.Arcari, a former New York City Police Department lieutenant, said it is not unusual to see more people seeking help four to six years after a major trauma when their "coping mechanisms" start to falter. Since it began last year, his program has seen 130 people, the majority of whom are from Long Island."You start to see it in their personal lives and in their work performance," he said. "... A marriage is breaking up or something else is going on and their backs are up against a wall."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/ny-liwtc0601,0,4002341.story?coll=sfla-news-health

New Link Added

2006-05-30T23:41:00.000-04:00

There is a new link that allows all visitors to order their own ILoveNewYork t-shirt and merchandise to help the MARF foundation with the proceeds going to be donated to that organization.

NYC deputy mayor claims 9/11 illness

2006-05-17T13:18:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-17T13:11:00.000-04:00

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

Zero for Heroes

2006-05-12T12:41:00.000-04:00

Many of the people who spent months in the pit at ground zero have respiratory ailments. And no health insurance. And no aid from the government. Why?
By Greg Sargent

David Rapp used to pride himself on being an active guy. A 250-pound construction worker, he drove piles on the Williamsburg Bridge and on projects all over the city. He could carry a sack of cement on his shoulder as easily as you carry an order of takeout sushi back to your desk. He liked fixing cars. He went crabbing in Jamaica Bay.
Then came September 11. Rapp spent several months at ground zero, drilling steel reinforcements into the “bathtub wall”—the slurry wall between the pit and the Hudson River that prevented the water from flooding the area.

Rapp’s illness began with a faint dizziness and shortness of breath, but it steadily got worse. Before long, he was useless to his former employers. They laid him off. Now Rapp is very, very sick. He’s suffering from severe pulmonary disease—meaning he never gets enough air. He has frequent respiratory infections. He’s on twelve medicines. He carries an oxygen tank wherever he goes. “I just went straight down,” Rapp says, his voice somewhere between a whisper and a rasp. “It’s real depressing.”

Rapp is one of perhaps thousands of people who are not cops or firefighters but who toiled at ground zero and are now sick, even disabled, from asthma, chronic infections, and other respiratory illnesses. These conditions, some experts maintain, were caused by the “crud”—the mixture of dust, ash, fumes from burning plastic, pulverized concrete, and vaporized human remains around ground zero.

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/citypolitic/n_9384/

9/11 Ground Zero Volunteer Saves Asbestos-Laden Shirt

2006-05-12T12:34:00.000-04:00

9/11 Ground Zero Volunteer Saves Asbestos-Laden Shirt
This ArticleAlso Appears In
Cancer / Oncology
Public Health

Main Category: Asthma / Respiratory NewsArticle Date: 14 Apr 2006 - 0:00am (PDT)The New York Post recently reported that a plain white dress shirt, worn by a volunteer who spent about 48 hours at Ground Zero immediately after the attacks, is laden with extremely high levels of asbestos. The shirt, belonging to community liaison Yehuda Kaploun, was stowed away by the volunteer in a plastic bag just a few days after the attack.

Kaploun originally saved the shirt to honor those who had perished in the attacks on the World Trade Center, including his friend Father Mychal Judge. Today, he hopes the findings as to the levels of contamination on the shirt will help 9/11 volunteers get help for the diseases they are likely to develop in the future, such as asbestos-related mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs.

Kaploun, at the time a 35-year-old liaison between the Police and Fire departments and the Orthodox Jewish community, as well as a part-time Hatzolah Ambulance volunteer, was told that the analyzed portions of his shirt collar revealed an extremely toxic concentration of chrysotile asbestos - 93,000 times higher than the average typically found in the environment in U.S. cities. That appears to be even higher than what the EPA said was found in the most contaminated building after 9/11, reports the Post.

The shirt was also found to be contaminated with zinc, mercury, antimony, barium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead and molybdenum, which are just some of the heavy metals that burned in the fires that lasted for nearly four months after the attacks. In early April, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 62% of the individuals caught in the dust cloud of the fallen towers were suffering respiratory problems.

In addition, 46% of those who lived or worked in the area (but avoided the dust cloud) also reported consistent respiratory illnesses. Though these numbers are staggering, they are sure to worsen as many asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma, take 10-40 years to surface. That means, in the next 5 to 10 years, New York City could be facing a serious health crisis.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=41603

Link Deaths of 3 Firemen, Cop To WTC site.

2006-05-10T21:16:00.000-04:00

The Chief - News of the week. January 20, 2006
Health Officials Urge Screening, Offer Free Treatment
By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

The Uniformed Firefighters' Association announced Jan. 13 that two of its members and a Battalion Chief have died in recent months due to lung illnesses the union believes are linked to toxic exposures from Sept. 11 and its aftermath.

UFA Vice President James Slevin said the recent deaths of Firefighter Walter Voight, 55, Firefighter Stephen Johnson, 48, and Battalion Chief Joe Costello were unexpected and quick.
All three men were involved in either the initial response or rescue and clean-up efforts at Ground Zero. Firefighter Voight and Firefighter Johnson were among the many Fire Department members who retired a few years after 9/11. Both left the FDNY in good health, on normal service pensions. Battalion Chief Costello also died of lung-related disease. He left active service in 2005 on a disability pension and died this month, according to the union.

Two Emergency Medical Technicians, both non-smokers, died last year from respiratory-related diseases. EMT Timothy Keller, 41 and EMT Felix Hernandez, 31, responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11. Mr. Keller's autopsy listed the cause of death as a heart attack linked to respiratory distress. The details of Mr. Hernandez's death haven't been released by the family, but he was on medical leave from the Fire Department for a lung-related illness.

http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2006/0120/News/004.html

A cop dies & kin blame 9/11 debris

2006-05-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
By ROBERT F. MOOREDAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU Saturday, January 7th, 2006

A retired NYPD detective, who worked more than 450 hours at Ground Zero, died Thursday from brain and respiratory complications that his family insists were linked to the World Trade Center cleanup.

While autopsy results are pending, union officials maintain James Zadroga's death is the first post-9/11 death of a city officer linked to hazardous material from Ground Zero.

"Our detective is a hero," said Mike Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association. "He had a disregard for his own health and life and tried to save others."

Zadroga was inside 7 World Trade Center as it began to collapse on 9/11. He returned to the site for weeks to help search for victims' remains.

Palladino said he feared the deaths of more emergency workers could follow. "We're just starting to learn now the long-term effects on first responders," he said.

Six 9/11 Police Officers Have Brain Cancer

2006-05-10T19:55:00.000-04:00

NY Post (April 9, 2006)

An alarming number of 9/11 responders have been stricken with brain cancer - including six NYPD cops, The Post has learned.

At least 11 of the Ground Zero rescue and recovery workers and their families claim in a class-action lawsuit - which includes dozens of other cancer victims - that toxic air and dust caused or triggered the rare, often fatal, brain illness. The six NYPD cops with brain cancer range in age from 33 to 49.

Other brain-cancer victims include an FDNY fireman, 55, a female Red Cross social worker, 58, a male Tischman construction worker, 40, a male city transportation worker, 48, and a male city environmental protection worker, 49.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

FDNY EMS Paramedic Succumbs to Post 9/11 Cancer

2006-05-10T17:23:00.000-04:00

A funeral will take place Monday, March 20 for FDNY EMS Paramedic Deborah Reeve, who died Wednesday of a rare lung cancer that her doctor and family attribute to her work at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Reeve spent several months at the Ground Zero morgue sorting debris and body parts. She started to get sick in late 2003, suffering breathing problems and chest pain, and was diagnosed with mesothelioma, said Marianne Pizzitola, benefit and pension coordinator for Local 3621.

She was 41 years old, and is survived by her husband David, also an FDNY EMS paramedic, and their children, Elizabeth, 10, and Mark, 6. Reeve was the first female to die post 9/11 of a 9/11 injury, and the first Ground Zero worker to be awarded a disability pension from the state retirement system under a bill signed by New York Gov. George Pataki last year, but she died before seeing payment.

http://www.emsresponder.com/article/...tion=1&id=3110
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My part

2006-05-07T16:02:00.000-04:00

I think everyone who's ever worked for the city would agree that 9/11 was the worst job ever.
After everything stopped falling, everyone there went to work. No one really payed much attention to what was flying around us in the air. We worked for days, then the days became weeks and some of us stretched those weeks into months.
Whenever it was that you finally left, the next thing you did is move on. I've heard people say that there is something noble in this - but there isn't. Its a lack of options. You took the job to help people and you don't stop because you had a really bad day. So little by little you go back to what you were doing on 9/10.
Then one day you wake up and feel sick as hell. Or maybe its something you realize that you've been feeling for a while. For me it was a stomach thing. Something I ignored for about a week, thinking that it would pass. Something I eventually figured needed medical attention and went to the ER to have looked at. Something that would have me in the hospital for the next 5 and a half months and still be with me today.
For me this somthing has a name - chronic pancreatitis, and it has changed almost every aspect of my life. For a while the doctors thought I was a chronic drunk. For a time they thought I was an addict. They figured that by removing my gallbladder it would go away. They were all wrong. They finally figured out that whatever I inhaled at the trade center caused this - and it was never going to go away. I remember my GI doctor standing at my bedside one night telling me that if I survived this I would spend every day of the rest of my life in pain. No thanks. Once again I considered my recovery a lack of options.
I've proved the doctors wrong, its taken work and dedication. I've had to change my life in drastic ways. I've been forced from the job I love, my diet and lifestyle have become what most people would consider "restricted". But I still feel like I've been given a second chance.

My part 2

2006-05-07T15:04:00.000-04:00

The questions is 'what do I do with my second chance'? Well so far I've gone back to school to study to be a Physician Assistant, and after meeting Mike and putting our heads together - I've put my efforts to into raising awareness and money to fight mesothelomia.
Like most people before taking this on, my knowledge of this disease was that it was something that was mainly connected with miners. But like most things in life, as soon as you think your fairly safe from something - it usually bites you in the ass.
Quite simply, mesothelomia stands a chance of bitting us because asbestos exposure causes mesothelomia. Hundreds of tons of it was pulverized and released when those towers came down. Mesothelomia also has the distinction of being very hard to detect in its early stages, and by the time it is detectable - your done.
So being the student I am I added it all up: thousands of people + exposure to lots of asbestos + a disease that's very hard to pick up and is extremly lethal = we need to do something.
Next equation I plotted out was: the need for better ways of detecting this disease earlier + more treatment options for patients in all stages of the disease = research and development.
Final formula: raising awareness + raising money + non profit foundation designated to erradicate mesothelomia = the resources needed to mount a meaningfull attack on something deadly BEFORE its too late.

Joe

2006-05-04T09:41:00.000-04:00

My father was never sick. He worked hard everyday to raise his family and did the best he could. At the age of 65 my father retired and was looking forward to moving to the Jersey shore, living out his golden years and meeting his grandchildren someday. This was not to be. Suddenly, my father developed chest pains and shortness of breath. We later discovered he had an incurable cancer called mesothelioma, caused by asbestos exposure 30 years prior. In only six months my father was gone.

On September 11, 2001 400 tons of deadly asbestos was released into the air at the WTC. I was so moved by the events of the day, that I was inspired to update the "I Love New York" symbol and am creating a new venture for charities, called artists4hope.org. It is my intention to use all net profits from the sale of the symbol on tee shirt, as well as other merchandise to help find a cure to my fathers killer.

After extensive research, I have concluded that the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF) is the right charity for this "I Love New York" symbol. I know that the fallout from September 11th is not over. The rescue workers and people at ground zero who were exposed to airborne asbestos can develop mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer many years from now. I know this all too well, I think about my father’s tragic death everyday. It is my motivation.

Please help find a cure before it’s too late. Every dollar donated will bring us closer to a cure.

Mike

Saturday in SoHo

2006-05-01T12:08:00.000-04:00

This saturday we staked out a position in SoHo to launch our fundraising efforts. Considering the site had great foot traffic, we were really unsuccessful in catching much of an audience. This was definitely the wrong venue to set up at. Case in point: There was a man who argued that the campaign was really for frivalous lawsuits against the city. When asked to clarify himself, he replied that all this 9-11 sickness is "upper level bullshit." This indicative of what we have to overcome in order to create an awareness. If you know of any other places that would draw more attention in the NYC area, please contact us iloveny_marf@yahoo.com.

If you or someone you know, had their health adversely affected, we would like to collect accounts of how your health has changed because of 9-11. If you cant post on this site - email your stories to us and we will post them for you with as much or as little personel information as you wish.

iloveny staff

JOIN THE FIGHT

2006-05-01T11:21:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Artists4Hope's Ilovenewyork Campaign website. Here you will learn more about our cause and the fight against mesothelioma caused by the asbestos exposure on 9-11 in New York City.

iloveny staff