9/11 and Katrina Five Years Later
    NPR - Living on Earth | Radio Interview

    Friday 08 September 2006

Hosted by Bruce Gellerman, with guests Dr. Phillip Landrigan, Dr. Gina Solomon, Dale Kemery.

    Gellerman: From NPR - this is Living on Earth.

    Gellerman: I'm Bruce Gellerman. 9-11 five years later and only now is there research confirming that dust from the world trade center disaster is causing death and disease among rescue and recovery workers.

    Sferazo: I was starting to cough ... and then I was coughing up these things that looked like silver dollars. I started getting severe lung infections and then succumbing to pneumonia.

    Gellerman: And medical investigators say there could be tens of thousands of chronic cases just like this one.

    Landrigan: I'm concerned, given the nature of these problems and given the type of disease that we're seeing, that the effects are going to be permanent in a substantial proportion of these people.

    Gellerman: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley studios in Somerville, Massachusetts - this is Living on Earth. I'm Bruce Gellerman. Steve Curwood is away.

    Can it really be 5 years ago? 9/11 is still raw in our hearts and minds and it continues to claim victims. The plume of dust from the collapse of the twin towers flew high into the air and deep into the lungs of people living and working near ground zero. We have two updates on the health effects of the World Trade Center disaster. We begin with reporter Rachel Gotbaum.

    Gotbaum: Today ground zero is a construction site fenced off from the public. A place of silent memorials and tour guides.

    Gotbaum: Looking at the site today it's hard to imagine that precisely five years ago, this was a scene from purgatory. When the planes hit the twin towers on 9/11 the buildings were pulverized. It's estimated two million tons of dust containing cement, asbestos, glass, lead, PCBs and other known carcinogens rained down on lower Manhattan.

    Gotbaum: Ever since the attacks researchers have been trying to understand the health effects of the dust and smoke that filled this area. Among them is Doctor Paul Lioy a professor of occupational and environmental health at Rutgers University. Lioy took dust samples at ground zero soon after 9/11.

    Lioy: This is unprecedented. We don't have any benchmark from which to play from. We're looking at a material that's a mixture that we never ever characterized before. So that I cannot say to you that exposure will lead to a long-term health effect. There's no answer to that question at this point in time.

    Gotbaum: But for many of those who worked on the rescue and recovery at ground zero there is no question that their medical problems are due to the air they breathed at the site. John Sferazo was an ironworker who volunteered at ground zero.

    Sferazo: The smell of death was in the air. You could smell the bodies burning or what was left of bodies burning. Sometimes the smoke was so bad your eyes would burn you couldn't open your eyes.

    Gotbaum: Sferazo says at first he says he was offered paper masks to protect against the dust and the smoke. He wasn't worried about toxic exposure because just days after the attacks government officials said the air was safe. But he began to get sick.

    Sferazo: I was starting to cough and then I was coughing up these things that looked like silver dollars. They were silverfish gray and sometimes there was blood in it. Short after that I started getting severe lung infections and then succumbing to pneumonia. And I've never had pneumonia in my life. Nor have I ever had any pulmonological problems.

    Gotbaum: Today John Sferazo is 51 and can no longer do construction work. He receives workers compensation and federal disability payments because he has been diagnosed with reactive airway disease, gastro reflux disease, and posttraumatic stress disorder. More than 40 thousand people worked in the recovery and rescue at ground zero. And thousands of workers including firefighters, police, and construction crews have filed for workers compensation and disability.

    City, State and Federal agencies say they provided respirators and urged workers to wear them. But less than half of the workers say they did.

    Herbert: Good deep breaths with your mouth wide open please. And again.

    Gotbaum: Doctor Robin Herbert is examining Daniel Lewis. Lewis delivered lunches to rescue and recovery workers in the days after 9/11. He is now disabled.

    Lewis: I'm taking antibiotics. They was considering steroids cause I have a hard time breathing.

    Gotbaum: Lewis is one of 16 thousand workers from ground zero evaluated at the World Trade Center treatment program at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. The patients here range from undocumented immigrants who cleaned dust out of nearby office buildings to emergency service workers to fire fighters who worked at the site for months. Doctor Herbert directs the program.

    Herbert: When we would look in people's nasal passages it was as if the nasal tissue were just burnt out, it was bright cherry red. I mean, our patients initially couldn't sleep through the night. They couldn't sleep for more than an hour they were coughing so badly.

    Gotbaum: In a just-released study of 10 thousand patient's in the Mt. Sinai program, 70 percent show signs of new and lingering health problems related to their time at the world trade center site.

    Herbert: One of the primary causes of the respiratory problems was exposure to pulverized cement and glass. The cement in particular was very alkaline, very high Ph, extremely irritating, and we think that that then caused chronic inflammations in our patients.

    Gotbaum: The federal government is paying for Mt. Sinai's monitoring of patients, but it's the Red Cross that's footing the bill for their medical care. Forty percent of those in the program don't have health insurance.

    Worby: Thousands of people are going to die from this problem.

    Gotbaum: That's attorney David Worby. Worby is suing New York City, federal agencies and private contractors who were responsible for the cleanup at ground zero.

    Worby: This case is about thousands upon thousands of people who are sick. Many of whom are dying. A lot more of whom will die because of the rush to clean up garbage after September 11 when we were not saving lives because of a governmental decision and contractors' decisions to do everything possible to keep 50 thousand people busy, 24/7, with zero protection in the middle of the worst toxic waste site ever.

    Gotbaum: Worby represents 8,200 clients who worked ground zero. One of them is New York City police detective John Wolcott. In 2003 Wolcott was diagnosed with leukemia. He believes working at the 9/1l site caused his medical problems.

    Wolcott Well, when I got admitted to the hospital I was diagnosed that morning and they said you had a week to live and you had to go to the hospital. The nurses would come in and interview you, and they found out what kind of leukemia I had. I fielded about a hundred questions about were you ever in any kind of employment with chemicals? Did I ever work in the airports? Did I ever deliver jet fuel? Was I ever around benzene? And I didn't put two and two together. I had other things on my mind at that time. And my sister said, "what do you think was burning down at the World Trade Center?"

    Gotbaum: Wolcott thinks the fuel from the jets that crashed into the towers may be responsible for his cancer and his partner in the police department needing a kidney transplant. Attorney David Worby says the connection is obvious.

    Worby: How does one partner have kidney failure and the other have leukemia and the only thing they have in common after 12 years of partnership is 9/11? Sitting in my office a week and a half ago were six cops with leukemia. These were all people who have been diagnosed in the last year. All people who had significant, at least two weeks, many of them seven months, some of them two years of exposure at 9/11.

    Gotbaum: Five years after 9/11 the question of the health effects from ground zero is a matter for medical researchers and the courts. New York City health officials have just announced a new16 million dollar program to monitor and treat residents of lower Manhattan and 9/11 workers. The Bush administration has allocated 52 million dollars for medical treatment, but federal officials admit that's not nearly enough for those who may seek medical care because of the effects of Ground Zero.

    For Living on Earth, I'm Rachel Gotbaum.

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    Gellerman: The Mt. Sinai World Trade Center screening program that reporter Rachel Gotbaum just cited in her story was founded by Dr. Philip Landrigan. He's chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at the medical school there and one of the authors of the 9/11 health effects study which found the dust at Ground Zero was the cause of health problems. He joins me on the phone.

    Gellerman: Thanks, Dr. Landrigan.

    Landrigan: Thank you, Bruce. It's good to be here.

    Gellerman: Do you expect this to be chronic problems? Are they going to be disabling problems?

    Landrigan: Well, those of course, are the big unanswered questions. I think the best way to give a partial answer to the question is to tell you about the composition of the dust these people inhaled. The dust was very toxic. Sixty percent or so of the material was comprised of pulverized concrete; very alkaline, very caustic, a Ph of 10 or 11. In essence what this material did was it seared the upper and lower respiratory tracts. It caused burning, which progressed over time into scarring. Which, I think, is why we are now seeing evidence of restricted lung disease. So, the scarring causes shrinking and distortion of tissues and hence the functional abnormalities that we are seeing.

    I'm concerned given the nature of these problems and given the type of disease that we're seeing that the effects are going to be permanent in a substantial proportion of these people. Probably not in all, we're learning to treat them aggressively with steroids and other approaches and we certainly get some benefit from that. But there is a high likelihood that a lot of this impairment is going to be permanent.

    Gellerman: Now, soon after 9/11 happened, just a week actually, people went back to work. The Environmental Protection Agency said it's safe to go down there and breathe the air.

    Landrigan: Yes, that's true. And unfortunately that statement may have been a bit premature. The data that we presented make it plain that the air was not safe.

    Gellerman: So, what happens now to these people?

    Landrigan: Well, first of all, we have a good continuous stream of federal funding for diagnosis and evaluation. Secondly, the federal government has made the decision to provide money for the first time for treatment. Up until now the feds have been giving money for diagnosis and evaluation. And all that was well and good the problem though was that approximately 40 percent had no health insurance or if they had it before ground zero they lost it as a consequence of the disabilities they incurred. It was clear that diagnostic and screening programs weren't enough. And so, we're very grateful that the feds have come through with funds for treatment.

    Also, the mayor of New York, Michael Blumberg, is appropriating 16 million dollars from the city budget to establish a much enhanced diagnosis and screening and treatment program at Bellvue Hospital and that's obviously a very important step to the good that will help a lot of people.

    Gellerman: We've been talking about the health consequences, but physical health consequences, what about the mental health consequences of 9/11?

    Landrigan: Well, we know that there have been a lot of mental health consequences. We know that folks have suffered from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Some have the full-blown syndrome, others have symptoms that move in that direction. Still more folks have suffered from depression. We're in the process right now of wrapping up an analysis of the mental health findings, which we intend to publish within the next couple of months.

    Gellerman: Now, your study found that 70 percent, seven out of ten, had some kind of serious health effects. Did you have any deaths that were directly attributed to the exposures of 9/11 in New York?

    Landrigan: There have been several deaths reported now among responders and there was a finding issued just recently by a coroner in New Jersey in which the coroner declared that a particular death was related to World Trade Center exposures. We certainly don't have enough deaths yet to do any kind of epidemiological analysis on them. But we are very concerned about deaths. We are very concerned about cancers. We are very concerned about cases of severe lung disease of which several have been reported. And we have now in place a very aggressive tracking system for following up on cases such as those when they occur.

    Gellerman: Dr. Phillip Landrigan, is chairman of the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and one of the founders of the World Trade Center medical screening program. Dr. Landrigan, thank you very much.

    Landrigan: Thank you, Bruce. It was a pleasure.

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    Related Link: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - Environmental Health Perspectives Report.

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    New Orleans Health

    Gellerman: Unfortunately, the unprecedented catastrophes of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina have forced the United States to learn many lessons about the health and environmental consequences of disasters. But the lessons can be harsh and difficult. It can take years to investigate the effects on people and the places they live.

    In New Orleans, The US Environmental Protection Agency has given the city a clean bill of health and residents the green light to return to their homes. But some say environmental health hazards still plague New Orleans. Gina Solomon is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She joins me from New Orleans where she's collecting air and water samples.

    Dr. Solomon, welcome to Living On Earth.

    Solomon: I'm happy to be here.

    Gellerman: We were just talking about the after-effects of 9/11 in New York City. What happened in New Orleans with Katrina was very different but are there any lessons to be learned? Are there any similarities?

    Solomon: You know, five years after 9/11, and one year after Hurricane Katrina, it is really interesting to look at the parallels of these two major human health and environmental health disasters. And people in both places are concerned about their environmental safety, about chemical contaminants, and pollutants, and also about the health symptoms that many people are having, certainly in New York among the 9/11 workers, but also down in here in New Orleans.

    Gellerman: I know that in New York City, there's something, I think it is called World Trade Center cough and you have something called the Katrina cough. Any similarities?

    Solomon: Yeah, I think there are some similarities and some differences. A lot of the air pollutants were quite different. In New York we were talking about very alkaline particulate matter that was severely irritating to the lungs along with all of the combustion products from everything that was burning. Here in New Orleans it was mostly organic matter, so it was sediments blowing around in the air and also mold spores and also endotoxin from bacteria. All of those kinds of things can irritate the lungs terribly but it's a bit different both in terms of what it does to your lungs and also the kinds of long term health problems that we might think about.

    Gellerman: Well, I know that the NRDC has been doing studies and sampling the environment down in New Orleans, and so has the EPA. Do your findings jibe?

    Solomon: EPA has not done all of the same sampling we've done. In fact, we sampled for mold in New Orleans, and for endotoxin, and EPA has not sampled for either of these. So, our results are the only results published so far on mold concentrations in New Orleans in the air. EPA has been testing the sediment, and so have we. And our results, the numbers actually agree very well, but our interpretations are rather different.

    Mold is still prevalent in many homes in New Orleans. It's believed to be causing respiratory health problems among residents.

    Gellerman: How so?

    Solomon: We have been comparing the numbers with the EPA's own clean up standards that they normally use for waste sites or any other facility that might be contaminated. And we've discovered that the arsenic levels, lead levels, diesel fuel levels and levels of other sooty contaminants are all over numbers that would normally trigger clean up, or at least investigation. EPA has dismissed those results saying that the contamination likely was present before the hurricane. Well, first of all I'm not convinced that it's ok just to dismiss results even if the contamination pre-existed the hurricane. And secondly, they don't even have any evidence to say that those levels were high before the hurricane, especially for the arsenic levels, which are quite high in the city.

    Gellerman: Dr. Solomon, I understand that the EPA has given its approval to start bulldozing in the area that was struck by Katrina. Am I right about that?

    Solomon: The EPA has announced that it's not going to enforce its normal regulations on asbestos that may be generated from bulldozing places in New Orleans. That means that it's possible that the asbestos levels in the air here could be quite high, especially for people right near where homes are being bulldozed. We're down here to see if there's a problem with asbestos in the air, and to do some independent sampling.

    Gellerman: What do you find in terms of the people that were victims of the hurricane? Do they have faith in the EPA that their health and well-being is being looked after?

    Solomon: The talk of the day down in New Orleans right now is about the 9/11 situation. I'm hearing person after person say, "We now know that the EPA wasn't to be trusted in New York after 9/11, so why should we trust the EPA and what they're telling us now after Katrina?" It seems ironic to people that EPA is announcing that the sediment is safe and that there are no toxic contaminants left behind from the flooding right at the same time that there's information revealed that they gave a false all-clear in New York. So, there's a lot of skepticism, a lot of mistrust, and EPA, frankly, has a long way to go to earn back people's trust down here in New Orleans.

    Gellerman: Dr. Solomon, thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

    Solomon: Thank you.

    Gellerman: Gina Solomon is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and she joined us from New Orleans.

    We contacted the EPA for a response to Dr. Solomon's claims that the agency is not properly monitoring and testing for pollutants. Dale Kemery, a spokesperson for EPA says in fact they are testing for asbestos, mold and other pollutants, but he acknowledges that the agency will not be enforcing normal asbestos regulations in upcoming demolition projects in New Orleans.

    Kemery: EPA has not waved environmental or occupational rules for asbestos materials. What the agency did was to use its discretion for reasons of safety and flexibility. You see, certain residential buildings in Louisiana or Mississippi are unsound or uninhabitable for environmental reasons, so the agency is allowing those buildings to be torn down without inspection or removal of asbestos materials.

    Gellerman: EPA spokesperson, Dale Kemery.

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    Related Link: National Resources Defense Council's New Orleans Site.

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