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9-11 Casualty; James Zadroga dies at 34; compensation
As indicative of America values, the 9-11 casualties were paid off by occupation: a stock broker was worth 10 million, a cafeteria worker 2 million. A cop, who knows? This particular person got some disability benefits and a pension of maybe 60 thousand, and that's that. (Maybe his family will get police life insurance policy benefits.):
Toll from 9/11 climbs, albeit too quietly
Toronto Star
www.thestar.com
Jan. 13, 2006. 03:26 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
It was long ago that the funerals ended for the victims of 9/11.
But in a New Jersey church this past week, a police officer was laid to rest who may have been the 2,753nd casualty of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
His family believes it. His employer — the NYPD — believed it, at least insofar as providing a disability pension for pulmonary disease "related to 9/11."
And certainly James Zadroga, aged 34 when he died last Thursday in his parents' Little Egg Harbor home, believed it.
"No one cares at the job," Zadroga, a decorated cop, had written in a letter one year after the 9/11 atrocity. "They tell me I'm fine, go back to work. But, truthfully, I haven't felt this bad in my life. ... And what thanks do I get now that I'm sick?"
There's an old joke about the inscription on a tombstone: "I told you I was sick."
Zadroga told them and told them and told them. Finally, with supporting letters from doctors, there was agreement and retirement in 2004, his tax-free pension benefits equivalent to about three-quarters of the salary he'd been earning as a detective with the elite Manhattan homicide unit.
Still, this young, widowed father of a 4-year-old, left behind some $50,000 in medical bills.
"Nobody's stepped forward to take responsibility for what happened to my son," Joseph Zadroga, himself a retired chief with the North Arlington, N.J., police force told the Star in an interview yesterday.
"I hope somebody will do that because we have such a sense of betrayal. He felt a sense of betrayal. I can't begin to tell you how that feels. Is this how we treat heroes?"
Zadroga, among the first responders, was in Building 7 of the WTC complex when it collapsed Sept. 11, 2001, after Al Qaeda operatives flew two planes into the 110-storey Twin Towers. He narrowly escaped death.
In the first month after that attack on America, Zadroga spent 470 hours at Ground Zero, aiding in rescue and recovery. The officer was among those assigned to picking over the ruins, but also volunteered so many extra hours that he was often at the site from morning till night. "He wanted to help as much as he could," his father recalls.
That exposure to toxic contaminants, Zadroga's family asserts, directly caused the black lung disease and mercury on the brain allegedly responsible for the premature death of a man who never smoked and who was hardly sick a day before 9/11.
Autopsy results are still pending.
Zadroga was far from alone, of course, at Ground Zero. Thousands of others, from across the city and across the country, had arrived at the smouldering crevice in Lower Manhattan to do the same, in what was a long, long clean-up and debris-trucking process.
How many of them are ailing now? How many of them might die because of illnesses attributable to the contaminants they inhaled, or the particles absorbed into their skin, at a time when many frantic responders weren't even wearing proper protective gear or respiratory apparatus?
"I've talked to the father of one firefighter who died like my son," Zadroga says. "And they treated him like they treated my son — like hell."
Only New York Senator Hillary Clinton has called to offer condolences, Zadroga says.
The health status of disaster responders and residents of Lower Manhattan is being tracked by several agencies, and they have drawn various levels of public confidence.
"We are concerned about the emergence of more long-term diseases such as cancer," says Dr. Robin Herbert, director of Mount Sinai hospital's World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program (clinical division), in New York City. "It's too early to say yet. We might not start seeing these illnesses for another 10 to 20 years."
While she can't speak specifically to the Zadroga case, with which she had no direct involvement, Herbert told the Star: "It is certainly conceivable that people could develop respiratory problems severe enough to cause death."
None has yet been formally recorded. But, after examining thousands of workers over the past four years (beginning in July 2002), Herbert says the program's medical staff are "very surprised" about the severity and persistence of respiratory illnesses in particular.
"There's no question that emergency responders were in contact with quite toxic exposures — a toxic soup of combustion particles and dust."
One survey, of 1,138 responders, from the period of July to December 2002, showed 60 per cent reported lower airway breathing problems and 74 per cent reported upper airway breathing problems.
Federal employees were told not to participate in the Mount Sinai program, that a separate monitoring agency would be established for them. But such an agency appeared and disappeared with fewer than 600 people seen, according to one of the 9/11 civilian watchdog groups.
In the 10 days immediately after 9/11, the Environmental Protection Agency put out five press releases reassuring the public that air and soil samples indicated no heightened levels of cancer-causing agents in the air or soil anywhere beyond the immediate Ground Zero area. Some EPA officials have since admitted those assurances were unfounded and may have been influenced by political pressure. Certainly the Sierra Club has alleged a cover-up of what was clearly an acute environmental disaster, even though the environment was hardly foremost in people's minds at the time, as relatives searched for loved ones and the White House planned a military response.
What became quickly known as the "WTC cough" was prevalent among emergency responders. A later study undertaken by a private environmental firm — at the behest of a company contracted to perform some of the cleanup — found more alarming developments, with positive tests for significant asbestos levels. That firm suggested the sheer force of the tower explosions shattered asbestos into fibres so small they evaded the EPA's ordinary testing methods.
Ground Zero inhalation tests of ambient air showed WTC dust consisted predominantly (95 per cent) of coarse particles and pulverized cement, with glass fibres, asbestos, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated furans and dioxins.
James Zadroga must have inhaled a ton of it.
On the morning his son died, Joseph Zadroga broke the news to his 4-year-old granddaughter, a child who'd lost her mother to cancer a year earlier, a child who would often lie on the floor alongside her ailing dad's bed.
"At first she said, `No, no, Daddy's just sleeping.' But about an hour later, she said, `He's gone to be with Mommy.'"
Descending the stairs afterwards, Tylerann Zadroga also said this, according to her grandfather:
"I knew my daddy was gonna die. I didn't know it would happen so fast."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
As indicative of America values, the 9-11 casualties were paid off by occupation: a stock broker was worth 10 million, a cafeteria worker 2 million. A cop, who knows? This particular person got some disability benefits and a pension of maybe 60 thousand, and that's that. (Maybe his family will get police life insurance policy benefits.):
Toll from 9/11 climbs, albeit too quietly
Toronto Star
www.thestar.com
Jan. 13, 2006. 03:26 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
It was long ago that the funerals ended for the victims of 9/11.
But in a New Jersey church this past week, a police officer was laid to rest who may have been the 2,753nd casualty of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
His family believes it. His employer — the NYPD — believed it, at least insofar as providing a disability pension for pulmonary disease "related to 9/11."
And certainly James Zadroga, aged 34 when he died last Thursday in his parents' Little Egg Harbor home, believed it.
"No one cares at the job," Zadroga, a decorated cop, had written in a letter one year after the 9/11 atrocity. "They tell me I'm fine, go back to work. But, truthfully, I haven't felt this bad in my life. ... And what thanks do I get now that I'm sick?"
There's an old joke about the inscription on a tombstone: "I told you I was sick."
Zadroga told them and told them and told them. Finally, with supporting letters from doctors, there was agreement and retirement in 2004, his tax-free pension benefits equivalent to about three-quarters of the salary he'd been earning as a detective with the elite Manhattan homicide unit.
Still, this young, widowed father of a 4-year-old, left behind some $50,000 in medical bills.
"Nobody's stepped forward to take responsibility for what happened to my son," Joseph Zadroga, himself a retired chief with the North Arlington, N.J., police force told the Star in an interview yesterday.
"I hope somebody will do that because we have such a sense of betrayal. He felt a sense of betrayal. I can't begin to tell you how that feels. Is this how we treat heroes?"
Zadroga, among the first responders, was in Building 7 of the WTC complex when it collapsed Sept. 11, 2001, after Al Qaeda operatives flew two planes into the 110-storey Twin Towers. He narrowly escaped death.
In the first month after that attack on America, Zadroga spent 470 hours at Ground Zero, aiding in rescue and recovery. The officer was among those assigned to picking over the ruins, but also volunteered so many extra hours that he was often at the site from morning till night. "He wanted to help as much as he could," his father recalls.
That exposure to toxic contaminants, Zadroga's family asserts, directly caused the black lung disease and mercury on the brain allegedly responsible for the premature death of a man who never smoked and who was hardly sick a day before 9/11.
Autopsy results are still pending.
Zadroga was far from alone, of course, at Ground Zero. Thousands of others, from across the city and across the country, had arrived at the smouldering crevice in Lower Manhattan to do the same, in what was a long, long clean-up and debris-trucking process.
How many of them are ailing now? How many of them might die because of illnesses attributable to the contaminants they inhaled, or the particles absorbed into their skin, at a time when many frantic responders weren't even wearing proper protective gear or respiratory apparatus?
"I've talked to the father of one firefighter who died like my son," Zadroga says. "And they treated him like they treated my son — like hell."
Only New York Senator Hillary Clinton has called to offer condolences, Zadroga says.
The health status of disaster responders and residents of Lower Manhattan is being tracked by several agencies, and they have drawn various levels of public confidence.
"We are concerned about the emergence of more long-term diseases such as cancer," says Dr. Robin Herbert, director of Mount Sinai hospital's World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program (clinical division), in New York City. "It's too early to say yet. We might not start seeing these illnesses for another 10 to 20 years."
While she can't speak specifically to the Zadroga case, with which she had no direct involvement, Herbert told the Star: "It is certainly conceivable that people could develop respiratory problems severe enough to cause death."
None has yet been formally recorded. But, after examining thousands of workers over the past four years (beginning in July 2002), Herbert says the program's medical staff are "very surprised" about the severity and persistence of respiratory illnesses in particular.
"There's no question that emergency responders were in contact with quite toxic exposures — a toxic soup of combustion particles and dust."
One survey, of 1,138 responders, from the period of July to December 2002, showed 60 per cent reported lower airway breathing problems and 74 per cent reported upper airway breathing problems.
Federal employees were told not to participate in the Mount Sinai program, that a separate monitoring agency would be established for them. But such an agency appeared and disappeared with fewer than 600 people seen, according to one of the 9/11 civilian watchdog groups.
In the 10 days immediately after 9/11, the Environmental Protection Agency put out five press releases reassuring the public that air and soil samples indicated no heightened levels of cancer-causing agents in the air or soil anywhere beyond the immediate Ground Zero area. Some EPA officials have since admitted those assurances were unfounded and may have been influenced by political pressure. Certainly the Sierra Club has alleged a cover-up of what was clearly an acute environmental disaster, even though the environment was hardly foremost in people's minds at the time, as relatives searched for loved ones and the White House planned a military response.
What became quickly known as the "WTC cough" was prevalent among emergency responders. A later study undertaken by a private environmental firm — at the behest of a company contracted to perform some of the cleanup — found more alarming developments, with positive tests for significant asbestos levels. That firm suggested the sheer force of the tower explosions shattered asbestos into fibres so small they evaded the EPA's ordinary testing methods.
Ground Zero inhalation tests of ambient air showed WTC dust consisted predominantly (95 per cent) of coarse particles and pulverized cement, with glass fibres, asbestos, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated furans and dioxins.
James Zadroga must have inhaled a ton of it.
On the morning his son died, Joseph Zadroga broke the news to his 4-year-old granddaughter, a child who'd lost her mother to cancer a year earlier, a child who would often lie on the floor alongside her ailing dad's bed.
"At first she said, `No, no, Daddy's just sleeping.' But about an hour later, she said, `He's gone to be with Mommy.'"
Descending the stairs afterwards, Tylerann Zadroga also said this, according to her grandfather:
"I knew my daddy was gonna die. I didn't know it would happen so fast."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
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