Posted on 01/10/2006 4:15:46 PM PST by presidio9
I wonder how pollution from 911 compares to that of cities bombed during WWII.
Speaking as someone who, despite my handle, was 5 blocks away from the Towers on 9/11 (inhaling plenty of the crap that these people did, although only for 5 hours or so)-- and who lives in NYC now -- this is one of the few times in my life when I DON'T have a problem with union involvement. The people who participated in the 9/11 cleanup are public heros. If they got sick performing a public duty, we have an obligation to pay our taxes and take care of them -- the same as if a cop gets shot in the line of duty. Most of these people are middle and working class, and lack the resources to protect their rights on their own. Fighting for things like this is maybe the ONLY legitimate function unions serve today.
I live in NYC, and pay exhorbitant taxes to do so. Most of my $$$ goes to fund government waste and USUAL union scum (witness the transit strike fiasco). But this is one of the few things I'll pay taxes for gladly.
They have three years' worth of the guy's medical records. No great mystery.
In most cases, when someone is attended by a physician at the time of death, that is sufficient to establish cause of death without an autopsy; I suspect the only reasons for an autopsy at all in this case are to document a legal claim or to advance scientific knowledge of what happened to the rescuers after 9/11.
No way. All the mercury in the flourescent lights in those buildings wouldn't come close to making the resultant mass a RCRA waste...
I wouldn't like to see a flurry of lawsuits; I'd prefer to see the local, state and federal government get out in front of the issue and take care of these people and their families. The police and firefighters who ran into the rubble are as surely heroes, and as surely victims of terrorism, as the ones who ran into the towers before they fell. They're just suffering longer.
I don't think that's answerable, because there was so much hunger, disease and other collateral damage around. NYC was a unique case of that much damage in the center of a major city with the rest of the infrastructure more or less completely intact.
I don't know enough about mid-20th century construction to know whether WWII-era buildings had the kind of concentrations of benzene, mercury and other nasties that the WTC had, and they certainly wouldn't have been as locally concentrated. I suspect that there was a lot of asbestos in the air, but the link between asbestos and ling disease wasn't known at the time, so it wouldn't have been documented.
One person has died -- many more are sickened and likely to die. And I strongly suspect that the MDs and other scientists investigating the illnesses learned the difference between correlation and causation somewhere in their 20+ years of education.
IIRC, a study was done that showed WWII was basically the equivalent of every man made environmental disaster occurring once a day, every day for 3+ years. Add to that, three large releases of radioactive material. The planet survived just fine.
Yeah, I know that they're uncomfortable, sometimes it is hard to breath in them, and they can be just a general pain to wear, but they save lives. It isn't like they had to wear Level-A suits.
Post #5 well said.
Wait a sec: I never said that these people shouldn't be taken care of. The right thing to do would be for the city to step forward. But the minute one of these guys sues the city, he ceases to be a hero. At that point, he is a mercenary. There's a difference. Not all mercenaries get rich, and some commit heroic acts, but heroism implies a personal disregard. And, no, the the heroism of cops who helped with the cleanup does not begin to approach the heroism of running into a burning building. The cops and firefighters realized the buildings were coming down almost as soon as they arrived on site.
If a dead hero's family goes through the courts so his widow isn't stuck with crippling medical bills, his kids can go to college, his family can stay in its home, that somehow negates his heroism?
There are certainly abusive lawsuits, but there are also legitimate wrongs than can be addressed through the courts. We're actually not talking about either of those at this point, because the AP story at the top of the thread does not talk about a lawsuit or a threat of lawsuit.
And, no, the the heroism of cops who helped with the cleanup does not begin to approach the heroism of running into a burning building. The cops and firefighters realized the buildings were coming down almost as soon as they arrived on site.
That does not jibe with the accounts I've read. If the cops and firefighters went in knowing that the towers were coming down and they could not save anyone -- which I do not believe to be the case -- that's suicide, not heroism.
An in the early days, the cops were not helping with "cleanup" -- they were there on a rescue mission. It was widely believed that living survivors could be trapped in the rubble. Hospitals throughout Manhattan were setting up triage tents and calling in the troops. Tragically, no one was rescued from the site beyond the first few hours.
I could weigh charging into an intact, though damaged, building against charging into an unstable pile of shifting rubble, but trying to calculate relative levels of heroism is beside the point. Det. Zadroga died serving others, and his sacrifice has earned our gratitude and our support for his family.
This is analogous to how we treat soldiers relative to how we treat veterans -- a full measure of glory for those who fall in battle, and their families, but do we extend the same compassion to those whose war wounds take longer to kill them? We should, but too often we don't when their sacrifices have fallen off the front page.
Yes, I'm aware that his "union" must have known "something". But they are not medical experts, and it just seemed a bit premature to jump the gun before the official autopsy was released. As I've posted, this mercury poisoning claim is pretty new. I have not heard about mercury being a problem before, and I'm curious.
I understood -- or possibly misunderstood -- you to say that inhaling an "element" was not such a big deal; after all we used to drink from puddles .... Maybe I didn't get your point.
10-4. My mother cashed in all her chips a few months after that conversation. So it goes.
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