midwich cuckoo
31-03-2007, 08:11 PM
BBC News, 26 March 2007
More than five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, thousands of New York's downtown residents are convinced that toxic residues still lurking inside their homes are damaging their health.
And it seems that the city's politicians and health authorities are taking their concerns seriously.
A new health clinic to diagnose and treat those people who live and work around Ground Zero has just opened with more than $17m funding from the city and from private charities.
Native Welshman-turned-New Yorker Craig Hall is president of the World Trade Center Residents' Coalition. "Things will get worse as the years go on - that's our worry," he says, while handing out health-survey leaflets in the lobby of one downtown residential block.
Many of the "first-responders" to the 9/11 attacks - firefighters, medics and police, together with volunteers who sorted through the debris - have suffered from well-publicised respiratory problems. Their medical treatment and assessment has been on-going for several years now.
But Mr Hall believes that ordinary citizens are still at risk and that the legacy of the destruction of the towers is far more active and pernicious than previously thought.
Dust reservoirs
"We lived and worked down here, and the buildings have still not been cleaned properly... We believe there are still dust reservoirs inside the air-conditioning units," Mr Hall says.
"There's all the pulverised glass-fibre, the concrete dust, and when all this stuff's mixed in with the PCBs, the heavy-metals, the mercury, the lead - it's a really toxic soup."
More here -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6474449.stm
More than five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, thousands of New York's downtown residents are convinced that toxic residues still lurking inside their homes are damaging their health.
And it seems that the city's politicians and health authorities are taking their concerns seriously.
A new health clinic to diagnose and treat those people who live and work around Ground Zero has just opened with more than $17m funding from the city and from private charities.
Native Welshman-turned-New Yorker Craig Hall is president of the World Trade Center Residents' Coalition. "Things will get worse as the years go on - that's our worry," he says, while handing out health-survey leaflets in the lobby of one downtown residential block.
Many of the "first-responders" to the 9/11 attacks - firefighters, medics and police, together with volunteers who sorted through the debris - have suffered from well-publicised respiratory problems. Their medical treatment and assessment has been on-going for several years now.
But Mr Hall believes that ordinary citizens are still at risk and that the legacy of the destruction of the towers is far more active and pernicious than previously thought.
Dust reservoirs
"We lived and worked down here, and the buildings have still not been cleaned properly... We believe there are still dust reservoirs inside the air-conditioning units," Mr Hall says.
"There's all the pulverised glass-fibre, the concrete dust, and when all this stuff's mixed in with the PCBs, the heavy-metals, the mercury, the lead - it's a really toxic soup."
More here -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6474449.stm