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To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (22790)	3/31/2005 9:01:07 AM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81101

Gus > Those firefighters and other people who were around --and running away from-- Ground Zero on 911 are dying from CANCER and other health damages caused by the radioactive blast. Circumstantially, it may be so but we have so little precise information of their illness. There are well-defined diseases which follow radio-active exposure and also dust inhalation (pneumoconiosis) but, from my own limited understanding, it seems the 9/11 workers did not die from either "traditional" radioactivity or "traditional" dust inhalation. landofpuregold.com >>... studies of the debris indicate its toxicity may have actually been higher for some chemicals and asbestos as it crossed the East River, and Brooklyn hospitals report continuing respiratory disease cases. Yet environmental cleanup services and lung exposure studies have focused exclusively on residents of Manhattan and Ground Zero workers. Federal and state-funded services have gone to Manhattan neighborhoods that, according to NASA images, were not directly exposed to the plume. Only recently has the Federal Emergency Management Agency begun offering air filters and air-conditioner cleaning to some Brooklyn residents. The New York Academy of Medicine has sponsored more than a dozen studies of human health and psychosocial reactions to the events, but none has included any of the 2.4 million residents of Brooklyn except for firefighters and police officers who reside in the borough but worked at Ground Zero. Studies under way at Mt. Sinai Medical School and NYU, through the state Department of Health - indeed, all federal- and state-funded Sept. 11 health studies - are limited to Manhattan residents or Ground Zero workers. Well over 95 percent of the debris fell during the first 24 hours. Throughout that period, according to NASA images, the debris blew into Brooklyn. Lioy's team collected dust samples from three lower Manhattan locations on Sept. 12 and submitted them to a battery of costly and tedious analytical tests, ranging from electron microscope scrutiny to gas chromatograph chemical tests. The 110 stories of the Twin Towers featured thousands of plate-glass windows that exploded**** into invisible, microscopic projectiles of lung-piercing silica glass.* Samples collected from all sites contained large amounts of microscopic glass fibers, most of them less than a micron in diameter and more than 75 microns long - precisely in the minuscule size range to wreak havoc with human lungs. "The glass fiber was a surprise to everybody," Lioy said. "It was one of those things that we never anticipated." The variability of the debris with distance was also a surprise. Samples collected just one block from the World Trade Center, on Cortlandt Street, were composed of pulverized concrete, glass, unburned or partially burned jet fuel, and construction materials. The pH of the material was an astonishing 11.5 - far more alkali than anything the human lung, with a normally acidic pH of about 4.0, would naturally be exposed to or is equipped to handle. Samples collected on Market Street, near the East River, were less alkali but still a remarkable pH of 9.3. While the heavy concrete content seems to have decreased with distance, the Market Street sample contained more than three times as much chrysotile asbestos - the form that can produce severe lung disease - as did dust close to the World Trade Center. Heavy metal content - such as zinc, strontium, lead and aluminum - also increased with distance. So did potentially toxic organic chemicals, some of which are considered carcinogens, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). Fire experts speculate that the area immediately around the World Trade Center got hit with the heaviest substances - the pulverized concrete, steel, office equipment, cars and construction material. But the tremendous heat from the jet-fueled inferno created an updraft that lifted small, lighter particulates and gases up, away from Ground Zero and toward the East River.<< *** for the benefit of those who were unaware, the buildings did not simply "pancake" (collapse) as result of the fire. It appears no tests for radio-activity and related disease were done.