On This 9/11 Our Casualties Still Suffer From The Dust Cloud
A Pocketful of Terror: Deciphering My Toxic Dust From 9/11
Subtitle:
After 10 years, I thought maybe it was time to finally understand my chemical 9/11.
Headshot of Michael McAuliff
Michael McAuliff
Senior Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post
“It burned the lining of the respiratory tract,” Landrigan said. “The initial burning then turned into a scar. And the scar results in contractions that destroy the architecture of the lung.”
A study of some 27,000 trade center responders released Tuesday by Landrigan and others at Mount Sinai found that 42 percent had lung damage, 42 percent have sinusitis and 39 percent have GERD.
I’m not one of them, although a 9/11 advocate John Feal convinced me to sign up for Mount Sinai’s monitoring program shortly before last year’s anniversary. I had wanted to keep some distance — I didn’t want any benefits from something I covered as a reporter, and since I am healthy, I didn’t really want to go looking for trouble.
But Feal, who runs the Fealgood Foundation, argued that no doctors anywhere else in the world would be more able to spot something before it grows deadly. His organization has recorded the deaths of dozens of Sept. 11 responders from cancer that many believe stems from 9/11.
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