Posted on 09/07/2007 12:22:03 AM PDT by neverdem
Much of what is known about the health problems of ground zero workers comes from a small clinic in Manhattan that at the time of the trade center collapse had only six full-time doctors and a tiny budget.
Yet in the weeks after 9/11, its doctors stepped into the fray in the absence of any meaningful effort by the city, state or federal government to survey, interview or offer treatment to potentially sickened recovery and cleanup workers.
Since then, the clinic, the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, based at Mount Sinai Medical Center, has examined more than 15,000 workers and volunteers and has overseen the examination of 5,000 more at clinics elsewhere.
Those programs have received more than $100 million from the federal government for tracking and treating those workers. The clinic’s doctors published the largest and most often quoted study of recovery workers’ ills. And they have testified about the health problems before city and federal committees.
But six years after the disaster, it is clear that while the center’s efforts have been well meaning, even heroic to some, its performance in a number of important areas has been flawed, some doctors say. For years after 9/11, the clinic did not have adequate resources or time to properly collect detailed medical data on workers exposed to ground zero dust.
The clinic’s doctors presented their findings in what other experts say were scientifically questionable ways, exaggerating the health effects with imprecise descriptions of workers’ symptoms and how long they might be sick.
Researchers in this field say that the clinic’s data collection was so badly planned that its usefulness may be limited. Others say that doctors at the clinic, which has strong historical ties to labor unions, have allowed their advocacy for workers to trump their...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The day the towers fell on 9/11 I remember saying there would be a lot of sickend people from the dust. Even the office workers exposed on that day were at risk from the acute exposure.
What I don’t seem to understand though in reading the article, is most of the workers responding to Ground Zero had/have baseline occupational medical exams yearly. The ones who didn’t most likely were volunteers or by-standers.
Even if responders went to the clinic for initial treatment why weren’t those records shared with the employers occupational team(s)?
A 72 page screening questionnaire? Holy cow! The baseline records are with the employer occupational doctors?
If they were feeling that overstretched then they should have taken the appropriate responsibility to direct workers to their own doctors or those of their employer treatment. If the records are as sloppy as what is stated, then so was the actual treatment and their ability to follow-up with workers is/was too. They have left themselves open to accustations of malpractice.
I got flamed severely a while back because I wasn’t going along with some poster’s claim that the 9/11 was the equivalent of a Hiroshima type environmental disaster that would have lasting effects for a generation. It sounded just too much over the top to me.
Flame away again if you feel like it.
After Anthrax Diagnosis, Spores Are Found in Connecticut House
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