More Republican Failure: WTC Health Victims' Undertreatment

by DemFromCT

So what's it mean in the Republican dictionary when you read "limited government"? Too often it means this:

Five years after the World Trade Center towers collapsed in a vortex of dust and ash, government officials have only recently begun to take a role in the care of many of the 40,000 responders and recovery workers who were made sick by toxic materials at ground zero.

But for many of the ill and those worried about becoming sick, government actions — coming from officials whom they see as more concerned about the politics of the moment than the health of those who responded to the emergency — are too limited and too late.

The delay in assistance along with a lack of rigorous inquiry into the magnitude of the environmental disaster unleashed that day is all the more disturbing, they say, as the country faces a future in which such disasters could happen again.

Dr. John Howard, who was appointed by the Bush administration in February to coordinate the federal government’s 9/11 health efforts, readily admits that costly delays and missed opportunities may have shattered responders’ trust in the government.

“I can understand the frustration and the anger, and most importantly, the concern about their future,” Dr. Howard said in an interview. “I can’t blame them for thinking, ‘Where were you when we needed you?’ ”

What really happend is a scandal. For political reasons, EPA head Christie Whitman reassured all the first responders, ignoring the concerns about particulate matter in the air.

"Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breath[e] and their water is safe to drink."

—Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, as quoted in an EPA press release issued on Sept. 18, 2001

As a result, there was more exposure than  was necessary, resulting in "WTC lung", a diminution of lung fuction from inhaling the noxious mix. And the response since?

“They seem to be running from the people who are sick, not standing with them and helping them,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens and has been critical of federal efforts at ground zero. “And that is just plain wrong.”

One of the thorniest problems, and one reason officials have given for the long delay in responding, is the difficulty of linking the dust and smoke to specific symptoms and diseases. Making a medical diagnosis for illnesses related to toxic substance exposure requires extensive and sophisticated tests. Simply measuring the toxicity of the dust has proved to be controversial.

This terror stuff is supposed to be a Republican forte. Remember how well they did in the hours after 9-11? Chances are you remember wrong. Bush's first speech was poorly recieved, he was missing in action for some time, and only when he grabbed the bullhorn days later did he get his political footing back. But what's really a tragedy is that his response since has ignored the real heroes that day, the first responders.

A large-scale medical study came out in 2004, when the Mount Sinai Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine reported that more than half of the first 1,138 workers it had examined had serious respiratory problems.

Workers also suffered gastrointestinal problems, acid reflux, asthma and mental stress. (Mount Sinai is scheduled to release a far larger study today, and it is expected to show serious ailments among many more workers.)

Successive studies through the years have found that the health hazards were more persistent than first thought.

A Fire Department study released this year showed that firefighters had suffered a loss in lung capacity in the first year after the attack equal to what they might have lost over 12 years of normal duty. The department has also found that the incidence of sarcoidosis, a serious lung scarring disease, rose to five times the expected rate in the first two years after 9/11.

This is not new news, but alas, it is typical for this government. They talk the talk, but they never walk the walk. This what Democrats mean when they say "support the troops", and those first responders at the WTC site were every bit terror troops as the soldiers, sailors, airmen (and women) and marines we sent overseas to Afghanistan.

Why firefighters or any other worker would support Republicans and their enablers is beyond me. But then again, 2006 isn't 2001. Read the entire article.

When Dr. Howard was appointed a few weeks after Detective Zadroga died, many in the city were relieved to have a federal czar in charge.

But Dr. Howard, who was trained as a pulmonary specialist and is the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, has not assigned a single one of his 1,300 employees to work full time on ground zero medical issues, though about 20 work on such issues part time. And though the institute has a budget of about $285 million, he has not received any additional money to address the complex medical issues involved.

“I’m a czar without a budget,” he said.

There's an accounting coming in November, and some things are worth remembering properly.

Comments

[Doev]

The mayor told everyone to stay. They had no idea what was there. An inventor came up with a sniffer for things in the air and was not allowed to use it.

The terror could easily have been combined to be puyt into the air after the crash into the building. Those are alot of people in one place and there are alot of firemen and poicemen.

This was a cover up and we should expect the same response if it happens again.

[DemFromCT]

read this

DeFrank leads his story with this gem: "'The security issue trumps everything,' a senior Bush official said last week. 'That's why even though they're really mad at us, in the end they're going to give us another two years.'"

and read what I posted. Who would trust this bunch on anything, let alone security.

[DeanOR]

"They talk the talk, but they never walk the walk."

This administration does government by Public Relations (another term for media manipulation and propaganda). Former members of the administration and investigative journalists have confirmed this in many areas. BushCo's first, and sometimes only, concern regarding any issue is how they will look politically. Image is everything, and reality is secondary (if it matters at all to them). It is hard to believe that Bush Republicans would be so unconcerned about actually addressing real problems, but they have shown this time and time again, and it has worked well for them politically. As this post points out, the consequences of their irresponsibilty can be tragic.
Regarding "limited government", I just learned that vice-president Gore led a commission investigating security that recommended requiring replacement of airline cockpit doors with steel doors. This was prior to 9/ll. Republicans defeated the proposal because it would "cost too much" (for the corporate airlines). The context is that airline security was left to the airlines. Republican philosophy says the free market will take care of everything, so the airlines would compete to have the best security measures, which of course is a joke. And small government, and government not "interfering" in private enterprise and profit-making, meant that those doors would cost too much. How much has 9/11 cost us?

[Joe]

Even though the truth about the physical condition of the 9/11 first responders and government inaction towards it has surfaced recently in the media I wouldn't have expected anything less from the Republicans. How ironic...God forbide we "cut and run" from Iraq, yet when it comes to helping those who were the soldiers on that fateful day (first responders) it's fine.