9/11 Health Inquiry
Seek to Know What City, Feds Knew

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

City and Federal officials were questioned Sept. 8 by members of Congress in a hearing that sought to uncover more details about the health impact of 9/11 and what local and national agencies could have done to better protect the public and first responders.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang 'THERE IS NO DOUBT': Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Thomas Frieden says Sept. 8 the city acknowledges a link between Ground Zero and certain illnesses in responders, despite Mayor Bloomberg's comment two days earlier that there was no clear 'cause-and-effect.'

U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut convened the hearing the day after former Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman told a "60 Minutes" reporter that the city - not the EPA - was responsible for enforcing the use of respirators among workers at the World Trade Center site.

Deceived Public

Ms. Whitman, who resigned as head of the EPA shortly before President Bush began his second term, issued repeated assurances in the days, weeks and months after 9/11 that the air around Ground Zero was safe. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who has been a leading force in Washington D.C. on behalf of first-responders and other sick New York residents along with U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella, said that if persons near the Trade Center site became ill because they didn't take precautions due to Ms. Whitman's remarks five years ago, "this may very well be a criminal act."

She's called for an independent investigation into what knowledge Federal and city officials had of Ground Zero's toxicity as the recovery phase progressed.

It was also announced at the hearing that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt had promised at a meeting the day before to release $75 million in Federal funds for 9/11 health programs in October.

Detective's Dad Testifies

The field hearing, held in District Council 37's lower Manhattan headquarters, was called by the Congressional Committee on Government Reform and Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.

Among the first to speak was Joseph Zadroga, father of Det. James Zadroga, who died at age 34 in January. His was the first public-employee death officially linked to time at Ground Zero.

Mr. Zadroga said his son had received no ongoing medical treatment or care after he fell ill, and couldn't afford his burgeoning medical bills. A one-time payment came from the Victim's Compensation Fund, Mr. Zadroga noted, but that Federal program closed in 2004.

Mayor Bloomberg last week urged the Bush Administration to reopen the fund, and several New York lawmakers have crafted legislation to bring the fund back.

Although Detective Zadroga signed up for the medical monitoring programs available to first-responders, he lacked access to treatment, said his father.

Agony Met By Apathy

"Every few months we'd get a phone call from one of the monitoring programs. They'd say, 'How you feeling Jim?' And he'd say: 'I feel awful, I'm in so much pain, and I want to bite the bullet and end it, my lungs hurt so bad, and the only reason I'm still here is because of my daughter,''' related Mr. Zadroga. "And then the person would say, 'Thank you for the information,' and hang up."

Also testifying at the hearing were Dr. John Howard, Director of the National Institute for Occupational Health and the 9/11 health czar appointed by Mr. Bush, and Dr. Thomas Frieden, the city's Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Dr. Frieden was asked if the city believed there was a link between Ground Zero and the growing health problems of many responders and city residents. The question was spurred by the release Sept. 5 of a Mount Sinai Hospital report saying 70 percent of 9,000 responders surveyed had respiratory problems, and there was "no doubt" they were 9/11-related. Mayor Bloomberg later remarked, however, that there was no scientific evidence establishing a clear cause-and-effect between 9/11 and certain diseases.

'No Doubt About Link'

Dr. Frieden said that some of the Mayor's comments had been misunderstood, and added there was "no doubt about the level of symptomology" among first responders. When pressed further by the committee, he said the city had "no doubt" that many illnesses were linked to 9/11.

The city hadn't listed 9/11 toxins as a cause of death on any Medical Examiner reports of first-responders who have died because there was a lack of uniform guidelines for them to follow, according to Dr. Frieden.

"It's not as simple as it might seem," he stressed.

Transparent guidelines would have to be developed so that Medical Examiners would be able to follow a clear policy in conducting 9/11 autopsies, he said.

Congresswoman Maloney noted that the city had been able to say that 20 people died of weather-related causes within two weeks of the August heat wave, and she didn't understand why it wasn't able to do the same for deaths believed linked to 9/11.

When Did City Know?

She also pressured Dr. Frieden to talk about when the city first knew of possible toxicity problems at Ground Zero, and asked why it had been able to publish and disseminate guidelines to treat people for mental health problems relatively quickly, but only released guidelines for physical care last week. Dr. Frieden, who was not Health Commissioner on 9/11, said the city knew of short-term health problems almost immediately, and cited testimony given by a former official to the City Council in November 2001.

The impact of long-term physical problems wasn't clear until much later, he said, when data from monitoring problems began to come in around 2004. Plus, he added, there was a problem in getting a consensus among various agencies about what the guidelines should suggest. But the city had put out some information on how to treat ill first-responders - it had posted guidelines on the Mount Sinai Hospital Web site.

"I would think that any doctor looking for information on how to treat people would turn to the city for a directive; the city would be the authority," said Congresswoman Maloney. "And I would like it if you could go back and research how Mount Sinai's Web site became more of an authority than the city."

Calls System Stacked

Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of Mount Sinai's World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program along with Dr. Stephen Levin, told the committee she wished there was a way for workers to get help through the city's Workers' Compensation system that wasn't "so heavily tipped against them."

Speaking as a doctor, she said, she hated to see grown men who had worked 40 or 50 years breaking down in Workers' Compensation hearings after being accused of lying about their time at Ground Zero.

Dr. Levin said that thanks to a special program established for volunteers, 9/11 responders who don't work for the city can move through the Workers' Compensation system faster than those who do. He called the system "nightmarish" for employees who applied through regular routes.