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High Asthma Rates Among 9/11
Workers
DEVLIN BARRETT
AP
Monday Aug 27, 2007
A new survey of Sept. 11-related illnesses has found an alarming
increase in asthma -- 12 times higher than normal -- among those
who toiled on the toxic debris piles of ground zero.
The study was released Monday by the New York City Department
of Health, based on responses gathered by the World Trade Center
Health Registry.
The data show 3.6 percent of the 25,000 rescue and recovery workers
in the registry reported developing asthma after working at the
site -- more than 12 times the expected figure for adults over
a similar time period.
"The risk was significantly elevated for fire and rescue
workers, medical workers, and police and military personnel compared
to volunteers," according to the study published in the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives.
(Article continues below)
Firefighters, police officers, construction workers and volunteers
swarmed to the site immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror
attacks. While most of them were from New York, hundreds or more
came from across the country to help in the moment of national
crisis.
Overall, workers who arrived at the disaster site on the day
of the attacks and stayed more than 90 days reported the highest
rate of new asthma -- 7 percent. Volunteers accounted for almost
one-third of those responding to the survey; firefighters accounted
for about 14 percent.
Workers who reported wearing protective respirators on Sept.
11 and 12, when the contamination was at its worst, had lower
risk of developing adult-onset asthma, the study found.
"These findings reflect the critical importance of getting
appropriate respiratory protection to all workers as quickly as
possible during a disaster, and making every effort to make sure
workers wear them at all times," said Dr. Thomas Frieden,
the city's health commissioner.
The results buttress previous research that found 70 percent
of those who worked at ground zero later suffered lung problems.
The doctors who conducted that study said they expect thousands
to need treatment for 9/11 illnesses, and New York politicians,
including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have pushed for a $1.9
billion program to treat those workers.
The authors of the new asthma study cautioned the findings are
based on self-reporting by those answering their survey questions,
so they cannot verify diagnoses or rule out over-reporting by
those who responded.
The authors also said there is little pre-existing data on the
prevalence of asthma among first responders -- but separate research
published by Swiss doctors in March in the medical journal Chest
found asthma was "considerably underdiagnosed in firefighters."
The World Trade Center Health Registry was launched in 2003 to
track the long-term health effects of ground zero exposure to
workers, volunteers, and residents.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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