Home > 9/11 Rescue workers get "WTC Cough" from inhaling pulverized cement

9/11 Rescue workers get "WTC Cough" from inhaling pulverized cement

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 4 December 2004
2 comments

Edito Un/Employment Health USA


Apparently 9/11 is still having it’s very negative effect on people, the damage extends past the lives lost. Rescue workers have come down with what scientists have called, "world trade center cough" from inhaling pulverized cement.

Some rescue workers have asthma type breathing difficulties, others just have a constant cough. The "WTC cough", effects the lungs. Since the particles were so fine, perhaps an investigation as to how so much "pulverized cement" was created, is in order. Was the building regulator aware that in the event of a "pancake" type collapse, it would create such a fine dust? and if not, then perhaps cleaning up the site is negligence on the clean up crew for not addressing this concern.

Didn’t the building desingers know, that if their building collapsed due to structural damage and fires, that it would create a dust so fine, a pulverized cloud of cement, that it might effect anyone around it...Did pulverized cement exist in the 70s?

CT scans explain mysterious 9/11 cough

by Anna Gosline

Inhaling toxic dust from the World Trade Center disaster on 11 September 2001 has damaged some rescue workers? lungs more than years of smoking, US scientists reveal. Using an unconventional chest scan for the circumstances, researchers were able to capture visual signs of the severe respiratory problems that doctors could not otherwise have diagnosed.

Hundreds of people have been tested and treated for respiratory problems - or ?World Trade Center cough? - since New York City?s twin towers fell, most of them suffering from asthma-like breathing difficulties. Some people, however, maintained persistent but unidentifiable coughs that could not be picked up using standard chest computed tomography (CT) scans.

?These people had symptoms that just didn?t fit the typical pattern. They weren?t treated at first because there wasn?t any objective evidence of what was wrong,? says lead author David Mendelson at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, US.

So Mendelson?s team turned to a technique called end-expiratory CT. In a normal chest scan, patients are asked to take a deep breath and hold it. In end-expiratory scans, patients take in a deep breath and release it slowly. In a healthy individual, the entire chest should be seen on the scan as an even grey colour ? the CT representation of moving air.

The doctors scanned 29 rescue and recovery workers with unexplained symptoms. In 25 of these they saw splotchy black patches deep down in the finer, branching tubes of their airways. Black spots mean that air is trapped and stagnating in the lungs, making it difficult for the patients to breathe freely.

Pulverised cement

In order to gauge the severity of the air-trapping pattern, the authors developed a visual scale that ranged from 0 to 24. Mendelson says that smokers would probably fall somewhere between 0 to 4 on his scale. The World Trade Center rescue workers, however, averaged 10.55.

The extent of air trapping was found to reflect the amount of time each worker was exposed to the dust and debris of the buildings? collapse.

The most likely culprit behind this type of airway disease is pulverised alkaline cement, says Mendelson, who presented his findings at the Radiological Society of North America?s meeting in Chicago on Tuesday. All of the subjects are now being treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Richard Russell, of the British Thoracic Society in London, UK, is not surprised by the degree of lung tissue damage caused by exposure to the fine cement dust, which is capable of penetrating deeply into the lungs and damaging the delicate tissues found there.

But he warns that the rescue workers? breathing problems might be permanent: ?This is a physical problem that?s not going to go away with simple anti-inflammatories,? he says. ?We?ll just have to watch and see if the patients get better over time and make sure they?re not smoking.?

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996741

Forum posts

  • See the The New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project at www.nydetox.org for more information on the causes and one possible cure for the WTC Cough.

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    http://www.newyorker.com/forums/discussion/

    Press release in relation with NBCR protection of the populations, from Maurice Eugène ANDRE, former NBCR Officer and instructor in nuclear, biological, chemical and biological matters (Belgian Air Force).
    "Here already several times, after the attacks of the two American towers on September 11 that I disseminated following information without the least reaction of the national and American capacities, nor of the press and the TV’s, nor of whoever specialized in attacks NBCR: "the large planes which transport the passengers contain approximately of 800 kg to 1,5 tons of uranium, this in the leading edges, the gyroscopes and the counterweights various, and this uranium is pyrophoric (it burns).
    Thousands of people of New York thus inevitably breathed of many burned uranium dust, and will be penalized by it in their health by the radioactive effects of internal effects of proximity given bij internal particles alpha of uranium in the lungs ".
    The great media are unable to understand and diffuse this truth since they take part in the crime of silence on the great harmfulness of the American weapons in uranium used in Iraq in the projectiles. In the future of many people will be affected in their capital health (diseases the thyroid one and various cancers) because of this dust of these weapons with uranium injected in great quantities directly in the atmosphere which we all breathe and coming from the explosions of the shells, torpedes and bombs. .American weapons which explode in Iraq, in the projectiles. In the future many people and soldiers will be affected in their capital health (diseases of thyroid and various cancers) because of this dust of these weapons with uranium injected in great quantities directly in the atmosphere which we breathe all and coming from the explosions of the shells, torpedes and bombs which explode in Iraq, producing uranium flaring dust which is so fine (from about 10 angströms till 1 micrometer of diameter ) that they float permanently and behave like invisible gases invisible carried by the weather currents on more than 7000 kilometers, practically reaching all the Northern hemisphere and the lungs of all. Here that I communicate this painful truth once again and that I indicate once again finger those and those which scientific or not, politicians or not, decision makers or not, Master of media or not, prevent the People of the free Nations from having access to these important data of protection for the future of their health ". MEA, specialist in NBCR protection (nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological protection).