Donna Summer is one of an estimated 1000 people who appears to have died as a result of breathing the toxic dust that spread over Manhattan on 9/11. Summer had been in her nearby apartment when the deadly cloud containing asbestos, lead and mercury filled the sky after the atrocity in 2001.
It is believed that around 1,000 people exposed to the dust have died — 350 of them from cancer. Cancer rates among police officers who attended the scene have tripled. Another study found 60,720 people were at risk after inhaling dust and fumes.
Scandalously however, officials downplayed the health risks of returning to Manhattan in the weeks after 9/11. In one instance, a warning that people should not report to work on a busy thoroughfare in the financial district—Water Street—was rewritten and workers instead were urged to return to their offices as soon as the financial district opened on Sept. 17. In another, federal officials declared that testing showed the area was safe when sampling of the air and dust—which ultimately found very high levels of toxic chemicals—had barely begun.
Within days of the twin towers' collapse, when the air was heaviest with asbestos and dioxin, a warning that office workers in New York's Financial District might be at risk if they returned to their workplaces was removed from public statements at the request of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
The original draft of the release that was going to be issued by the Environmental Protection Agency said "higher levels of asbestos" had been found in seven samples taken on Water Street in the Financial District. The Inspector General's office examined inter-agency emails and found that after the White House reviewed the draft and suggested revisions, the information about Water Street was removed, as was a warning to office workers.
A week after the attacks, local workers, students and residents were told it was safe to return to their jobs, schools and homes. It was business as usual. Ever since so-called first responders have been reporting illness and protesting their treatment by the authorities. More than 5,000 city workers who filed lawsuits claiming that the city had failed to protect them from the dust settled their cases in 2010. Others are still fighting for compensation.
A decade after the attacks, a law was signed by President Obama, establishing the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program, which aims to ensure that those affected by 9/11 receive monitoring and treatment for 9/11-related health problems through at least 2015.
However the government have only recently officially accepted that the WTC attacks caused cancer. Only last month the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee in charge of assessing WTC health impacts decided to recommend including approximately 30 cancers that correlate with Ground Zero exposure, including cancer of the lung, stomach, mouth and thyroid. But it will be many more months before those who are sick can expect to start receiving treatment.
The New York City Department of Health recorded 836 deaths of World Trade Center (WTC) responders from illnesses generated by working on the site by 2010. But because no centralized database exists to identify each person present at the WTC site, there is no assurances that all deaths were identified. As well as the official figures, there are currently another 20,000 recorded sick by the WTC Medical Monitoring Treatment and Environmental programmes. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to the World Trade Center Health Registry, 410,000 people were heavily exposed to WTC toxins causing restrictive respiratory illnesses and cancers, which changes 11 September from a terrorist attack into a full-blown environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl, where the initial toll was overshadowed by deaths and illnesses that were still occurring up to 20 years later.
Summer believed that breathing it triggered her cancer. Speaking of her trauma, the devout Christian said the attacks caused her to suffer deep depression: “I was really freaked out by the horrific experiences of that day. I couldn’t go out, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I had to keep the blinds down and stay in my bedroom. I went to church and light came back into my soul..”
Summer also had a premonition that terrorism would strike New York a month before it happened. She recalled in 2008: “My husband and I were walking down the street. I had this feeling. I said, ‘Honey, I feel like terrorism, high on top of the buildings.’ I knew something was going to happen. When it did, I flipped out.”
It is truly incredible that she and thousands of others were not warned about the real dangers to their health from the 9/11 dust they were breathing in the days and weeks after the attacks.What kind of government would knowingly let thousands of people walk into a lethal situation of that kind? Perhaps one that knew about the terror attack plans months before hand but didn't do anything to stop it.
It's frightening really. I was under the Twin Towers when the planes struck and in the marinara when the first tower collapsed. I was completely engulfed in the cloud of dust and debris and was evacuated to New Jersey on the other side oof the Hudson River. That same night I returned to my apartment, a block away from Ground Zero, where I spent the next few days, tramping through the dust to get supplies. Tragic.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry to hear that. It was a very tragic day. I went down to ground zero two weeks afterwards and a couple times I drove through that area in a taxi cab and I could barely breath. I was holding my breath. Go on a RAW diet. Eat raw foods and contact Dr. Stanley Bass. He lived in New York City and he is a fasting and raw food expert. He is 94 years old. Don't get depressed about it.
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