|
OPINION: Fall out from 9/11 Continues to Impact the Health of New Yorkers
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Six years after the disaster of September 11, the general public may think that all those who survived but became ill from exposure to the toxic fallout were cared for and have moved on with their lives. Certainly the Bush Administration wants us to believe that aside from the first responders at Ground Zero no one was affected. Right after 9-11, EPA head Christie Whitman reassured the public that beyond the World Trade Center pile the air was safe to breathe; this June she reiterated this position. And now President Bush has just vetoed a bill that would provide $52.5 million for the screening, monitoring, and treatment of workers and residents whose health continues to suffer because of the 9-11 fallout. As hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers—and very likely even more—experience worsening health problems because they breathed in the contaminated dust, smoke and fumes from September 11, it is time for our Federal government to take responsibility for this deepening public health crisis.
Besides the thousands of first responders, hundreds of thousands of residents of Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey are ill from exposure to 9-11 toxic air. Most of the estimated 40,000 clean-up workers, the majority of whom have no health insurance, are sick. Another several thousand office and service workers of downtown Manhattan are ill. Many students from high schools and colleges downtown have health problems, even though they since moved on to other schools. Some mothers who were pregnant at the time of the disaster now say their children are suffering respiratory and other health problems. And, the New York City Health Department released a report last month finding that children who were exposed to the 9-11 dust had much higher rates of asthma than other children. Not only are all these people ill, but most are developing new symptoms and more complicated health problems as time goes by.
Despite the enormous attention given to the post-9/11 recovery effort, initially no government assistance of any kind was available to Lower Manhattan residents, low-income or otherwise, whose health and economic well-being were devastated as a result of the events of 9/11.
Organizing affected workers and residents to voice their needs, the Beyond Ground Zero Network, a coalition of workers organizations and health and legal advocacy groups, succeeded in convincing Bellevue Hospital, a public hospital in New York City, to partner with us in setting up a treatment program called the World Trade Center Environmental Healthcare Center. Begun in 2004 with no funds, this program is now recognized as a public-health model. Since we started this program the floodgates opened, with residents from the West Side and downtown, and office workers, service workers and others coming forward and seeking help.
In response, last year New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg allocated an initial $16 million over five years to expand the pilot program developed by BGZ and Bellevue, and this fall Bloomberg announced the further expansion of the program to Gouverneur and Elmhurst Hospitals, setting aside $100 million dollars over the next five years to address 9/11 health problems, $45.9 million of which will go toward the Bellevue/HHC WTC program. Last month Congress approved a one-time appropriation for the screening, treatment and monitoring of affected individuals, which the President vetoed.
Given the devastation on the health and economic situations of so many families in the wake of September 11, we call on the federal government to provide assistance to these forgotten victims.
Please join us in communicating your concern to your Federal representatives. Many of the affected individuals have families throughout the nation who will ultimately also shoulder the impact of this problem for years to come. Only with a comprehensive integrated strategy will hundreds of thousands of Americans have a shot at rebuilding their health and their lives.
For more information, please contact JoAnn Lum of the Beyond Ground Zero Network at joann@nmass.org or (212) 358-0295.
Community Health Leaders may submit an Opinion on an issue of their choice that affects the health of Americans. The opinion is that of the author and not the Community Health Leaders program or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Send Opinion submissions to info@communityhealthleaders.org.
|
