An advisory panel examining which conditions should be covered by the Zadroga Act appeared close Wednesday to recommending that some cancers be included, members said.
While the fund covers numerous illnesses linked with breathing 9/11 toxins, cancer is currently excluded because of insufficient scientific proof — a decision criticized by first responders and city officials who believe the link is crystal clear.
Evidence that there is a cancer link appears to be mounting.
There are 297 cops who have been diagnosed with cancer since working at Ground Zero — and the average age is a shocking 44 at the time of diagnosis, according to the data from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
The cancers range from lung — which is the most prevalent, with 19 cases — to rarer cancers that affect the bile duct, tongue and nasal passages, according to the data obtained from a random sampling of retired cops.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, 56 cops have died from cancer, the PBA said.
And an average of 16 cops are applying annually for cancer-related disabilities since the terror attacks, compared with about six a year before 9/11.
Interestingly, New York City is not releasing the names of the NYPD who worked at the destruction site of the WTC. NY Daily News has this:
Scientists at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan have asked for the full roster of officers who served at Ground Zero, but the NYPD’s surgeon refused, citing privacy concerns.
In a statistical model, PTSD mediated the association between exposure at the site and respiratory symptoms among both police officers and other types of responders, Evelyn Bromet of Stony Brook University in New York and colleagues reported online in the journal Psychological Medicine.
The results suggest “an indirect association of exposure with respiratory symptoms through PTSD, a finding that mirrors research conducted with Vietnam veterans,” the researchers wrote.
“Mental and physical health are integrally linked,” Bromet said in a statement. “It is not always obvious which one is the driver, but, in the end, what matters is that both mental and physical health are recognized and treated with equal care and respect.”
Respiratory illness and PTSD are both signature health problems among rescue workers who responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but the relationship between the two conditions isn’t clear.
So Bromet and her colleagues assessed 8,508 police officers and 12,333 other types of responders who were evaluated at the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program between July 16, 2002, and Sept. 11, 2008.
….
The study was limited because the sample was comprised of volunteers, which could introduce bias, and by the fact that police officers may under-report PTSD symptoms because of concern about keeping their jobs.
A state appeals court decision to award full benefits to the widow of a police officer who died of cancer after 9/11 could help ensure compensation for the disease for first responders, advocates said Wednesday.
But it isn’t clear whether it will have much impact on the 1,500 to 1,600 first responders who have lawsuits pending against New York City and the Port Authority.
They have until Jan. 2 to decide whether to drop their suits and join the $7.8-billion federal victim compensation fund.
The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Nilda Macri of Forest Hills was due accidental line-of-duty benefits after husband Frank, 51, who worked about 350 hours at Ground Zero and at Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, died of lung cancer in 2007.
The decision overturned rulings by the city’s police Medical Board and the Police Pension Fund Board of Trustees.
The boards contended that Macri, a nonsmoker, already had the disease before he was diagnosed with an aggressive lung cancer in August 2002.
The appeals court disagreed, citing a 2005 state law. The law holds that administrative panels should presume the onset of certain illnesses among first responders was caused by their 9/11 exposure.
More than 1,600 people who filed lawsuits claiming that their health was ruined by dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center must decide by Jan. 2 whether to keep fighting in court, or drop the litigation and apply for benefits from a government compensation fund.
For some, the choice is fraught with risk.
Federal lawmakers set aside $2.76 billion last winter for people who developed illnesses after spending time in the ash-choked disaster zone.
But to be considered for a share of the aid, all potential applicants must dismiss any pending lawsuits by the deadline and give up their right to sue forever over Sept. 11, 2001, health problems. Anyone with a lawsuit still pending on Jan. 3 is barred from the program for life.
In July of 2011, federal health officials basically stated there is little or no scientific evidence of a link between cancer and the contaminants police, firefighters and other first responders were exposed to at the World Trade Center site of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. As a result, the Victim Compensation Fund has been denying claims for medical costs for treatment of severe personal injuries such as cancer.
It is hardly surprising that federal officials refuse to acknowledge the obvious connection. In fact, I recall when former New Jersey Governer/former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman came out shortly after 9/11 and stated in substance that the air “was safe to breathe” at the 9/11 site. In 2007, in an appearance before Congress, Whitman reportedly defended her record and refused to express regret for assuring residents and workers the air around Lower Manhattan was safe. She also reportedly denied her remarks were made as a result of political pressure from the Bush White House. However, Whitman reportedly “admitted she had not read the clinical reports from the Mount Sinai Medical Center’s World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program. A Mount Sinai study last year found seventy percent of around ten thousand Ground Zero workers developed new or worsened respiratory problems” (http://www.democracynow.org/).
A federal law, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, enacted by Congress last year, provides health care, medical monitoring, and financial compensation for emergency response, recovery, and cleanup workers at Ground Zero who subsequently developed certain conditions, including respiratory illnesses, mental health disorders, and injuries caused by heavy lifting and repetitive stress. But the act excludes individuals who are diagnosed with cancer. Instead, it instructs the World Trade Center Health Program administrator to periodically review scientific and medical evidence to determine whether to add cancer to the list of covered conditions.
NPR reports that the death toll from 9/11 has been raised by 1, bringing the number to 2,753. The recent addition to the number of people who were murdered without a proper investigation on 9/11 came from a Manhattan worker who inhaled the initial dust cloud (like thousands of other people).
Last year, it was reported that upwards of 900 people had already died from 9/11 related illnesses. NY 1 reported last year:
Rodriguez, of Lindenhurst, L.I., the mother of two young boys, is among nearly 900 first responders to have died from an array of ailments traced to their service at the smoldering World Trade Center.
The clean-up of the WTC site was a disaster in many ways: From hasty removal of crime scene evidence to lies from the EPA and other agencies. Here is a clip from a report at World for 9/11 Truth:
Nearly 100,000 first responders have been exposed to toxic elements such as Asbestos and were not instructed to wear any special equipment to avoid medical problems. In fact, as demonstrated in the shocking documentary Dust to Dust: the Health Effects of 9/11, the EPA and the U.S. Government told them the air was safe to breathe.
A man who died last year of lung disease was added Friday to the official
list of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
New York City’s medical examiner ruled that 63-year-old Jerry Borg, of
Manhattan, who died in December, was killed by complications caused by a lung
condition he got from inhaling dust from the collapse of the World Trade
Center.
Borg suffered from pulmonary sarcoidosis, a disease in which inflamed cells
can make someone’s lungs stiff and interfere with normal breathing.
“This is a time for reflection, not retribution.” – Barack Obama, 2009
Obama is no hero. Only after so many wrongs could the recently passed 9/11 Health legislation seem right.
The Twin Towers on 9/11, had they not been destroyed by demolitions, would have been a hard days work for the NYPD and NYFD; yet the fires would have been put out. In fact in many parts of the buildings the fires were put out, or going out. It is quite possible that the NYFD would have lost a few good men through the day fighting the fires inside the WTC on 9/11 had they had the chance to do so, maybe 10 to 15 firefighters even. But surely not hundreds, especially not a thousand.
343 of NY’s first responders were killed in the World Trade Center demolitions of 9/11/01. They were murdered along with thousands of civilians and no one responsible has gone to jail for those crimes.
The WTC demolition created a cloud of debris-turned-to-dust that covered the city of Manhattan streets, homes, schools and lungs of tens of thousands of people. This could not have happened without explosives and demolitions; volcanoes aside.
The month following 9/11 was so filled with mistakes, possible criminal intent, disinformation, and irresponsibility from the EPA and CEQ that I will just have to list some highlights below:
US President Barack Obama signed a benefits bill on Sunday that will help police, firefighters and other emergency workers who became ill after working in the area around the World Trade Center towers that collapsed on 9/11.
The airwaves are filled with blame for Republicans for not passing the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Bill, yet that is the short-sighted view of a very long and unnecessarily drawn out issue. Blame is across the board for the last 9 years of delays.
After a wrenching seven-year battle, more than 10,000 workers who sued New York City over health damages they claimed after the 9/11 recovery efforts have approved a settlement, clearing the way for payouts totaling at least $625 million, lawyers said Friday.
Their responses, delivered to a federal judge in Manhattan, ended months of wrangling over whether the city and its contractors were shortchanging the workers for the respiratory and other illnesses they developed after toiling in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.
Thousands of rescue workers sickened after the September 11 attacks in New York have until the end of Monday to accept a settlement that could near 800 million dollars.
The staggering death toll for Ground Zero responders has soared past 916 – and still no one knows what really killed them.
Now, nine years after the terror attacks, doctors and some New York lawmakers are urging the federal Department of Health and Human Services to draft autopsy protocols to pinpoint 9/11-related fatalities, the Daily News has learned.
Astonishingly, there are no written standards to help doctors diagnose post-9/11 deaths, leaving a void that’s wreaked enormous emotional pain and conflict on survivors.
“It was heart-wrenching,” said Joe Zadroga, who watched his NYPD officer son, James, slowly deteriorate from scarred lungs until he died in 2007.
Only 24 names will be displayed for now, but that doesn’t change the fact that over 900 first responders have passed due to their 9/11 related diseases.
Firefighters and emergency-medical technicians who died of illnesses related to their service at the World Trade Center will be memorialized with a special plaque to be installed by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Fire Department Commissioner Salvatore Cassano announced Wednesday.
The plaque will stand parallel to the Memorial Wall of Honor at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn, which enshrines the names of those who died while in the line of duty. According to the firefighters union, the move marks a change in the FDNY’s stance on memorializing those who died of illness relating to 9/11. Union officials said they have been lobbying for years for a place on the Wall of Honor.
Mr. Cassano made the announcement during an annual memorial service that honors the members of the FDNY who died in the past year. This year, 14 members were memorialized, all of whom died as active members of the department but not while on duty. Mr. Cassano said three of them were victims of illnesses traced to their service at Ground Zero.
“In the years since Sept. 11th, we’ve realized that our jobs have become dangerous in ways that none of us could have ever imagined,” he said.
Those who gathered for the ceremony at the Firemen’s Memorial Monument on the Upper West Side, which included the families of the fallen, offered tepid applause. Initially, 24 names will be engraved into the memorial plaque which will include firefighters and emergency medical technicians, officials said.
Posted by Brian 
