Ground Zero respiratory claims: Lung Function After Seven Years

Graph above: Abnormal Lung Function in Firefighters and Emergency-Medical-Services (EMS) Personnel Who Had Never Lung Function in Firefighters and Emergency-Medical-Services (EMS) Personnel Who Had Never Smoked and Who Worked at the World Trade Center Site during the First 2 Weeks after 9/11


Three years ago in Will the Post 9/11 World be a Post-Tort World? I wrote:

At the site of the attacks in New York enormous effort followed— first in the nearly fruitless search for survivors, then for the recovery of remains of the dead, and finally in removal of the debris of the fallen towers. In the wake of the catastrophe came labor, dust, and disease.  We are witnessing the unfolding of an epidemic of industrial disease that evokes the historical epidemics of silicosis, asbestosis, and cancer.

Today we are learning of the epidemic of industrial illness at Ground Zero from Dr. Irving Selikoff’s successor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Philip Landrigan informed us in 2002 that the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not only the worst assault on the American homeland in the 225-year history of the United States:

"It was also the most massive acute environmental disaster that ever has befallen New York City. The destruction of the twin towers released thousands of tons of toxic materials into the air of lower Manhattan—asbestos, particulate matter, lead, soot, PCBs, and dioxins. Workers and children were the groups at greatest risk of exposure."  Philip J. Landrigan, Lessons Learned: Worker Health and Safety Since September 11, 2001, 42 AMERICAN J. IND.MED. 530-31 (2002)

 It was possible then to hope that the early results would not predict the long term.  But today we have learned the sad news - from the WTC Medical Monitoring Program of the New York City Fire Department - that the researchers and health care personnel at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have concluded:

Exposure to World Trade Center dust led to large declines in FEV1 for FDNY rescue workers during the first year. Overall, these declines were persistent, without recovery over the next 6 years, leaving a substantial proportion of workers with abnormal lung function.

FEV1 - forced expiratory volume at 1 Second - is a key measure of lung function.  The news is disheartening.   Aldrich, et al., Lung Function in Rescue Workers at the World Trade Center After 7 Years, New England Journal of Medicine, April 8, 2010 vol. 362 no. 14.


We can only hope that Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who has labored heroically on the World Trade Center catastrophe litigation, will soon complete the work of cobbling together a settlement that recognizes the wrongfulness of the conduct of the City of New York which slighted workers health and safety as it urged them on as heroes engaged in the grim efforts to rescue the few survivors and to put out the fires which smoldered at the sit of the fallen towers.