People are still dying from the 9/11 attacks 17 years later
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__intro sics-component__story__paragraph">The flood of people coming down with illnesses stemming from the toxic dust kicked up by the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City in 2001 has been so great that the US$7.3 billion (AUD$10.4 billion) dedicated to sufferers could run out before everyone has been helped, the<span> </span><em>Daily News<span> </span></em>has learned.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">The 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund (VCF), which is responsible for providing financial assistance to those suffering from illnesses caused by Ground Zero contaminants, is already showing signs of strain.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"We do periodic assessments of our data," VCF Special Master Rupa Bhattacharyya told the<em><span> </span>Daily News</em>. The assessments, she said, create projections that will determine if the fund will be able to help everyone before it expires on December 18, 2020.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"Looking at the data more recently, I'm starting to get a little concerned," she said.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Bhattacharyya wouldn't say if the fund is running out of money. She said the VCF plans to publish its updated projections in the next few weeks "and maybe seek some public comment on changes that will have to be made regarding our policies and procedures."</p>
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<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Survivor advocates are concerned that, as the money peters out, those who file for compensation from now until the end will get less money than those who filed earlier with the same problems.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"I'm pretty confident that they will run out of money," said 9/11 advocate John Feal. "But I don't think people should be concerned right now. I bet my one kidney that we will get the VCF extended."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Sources with knowledge of the VCF's money woes said that a bill to extend the fund could be brought to Congress as early as next month.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Through August 31, the VCF has reviewed 38,502 compensation claims from 9/11 illness sufferers this year – a nearly 28 per cent jump over the 30,081 claims it took in last year over the same period. Of the 38,502, about 20,000 claims already have been approved with payouts that can range up to US$200,000 AUD$280,660), depending on the illness.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">The VCF has also seen a 94 per cent jump in "deceased claims" – requests for compensation by estates or family members of a 9/11 survivor who has already succumbed to illness. As of the end of August, 720 families have sought some form of financial compensation this year. In 2017, about 371 families did so in the same timeframe.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">And these numbers could continue to rise in the next few years, Bhattacharyya said.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"There are diseases with long latency periods," she said. "Mesothelioma is one that is talked about often, and you won't even see it for 15 or 20 years. We won't see those claims for a while."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">According to the website Asbestos.com, an estimated 400 tonnes of asbestos – the microscopic fibres that cause mesothelioma – was used in the construction of the World Trade Center. All of it was released into the air when the buildings were pulverised into dust.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">A source with knowledge of the assessment procedure said the VCF still has more than US$3b (AUD$4.2b) in funding left to distribute, so any concerns Bhattacharyya might have are not imminent.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"We're required by statute to periodically reassess our policies and procedures to make sure we are prioritising the claimants with the most debilitating conditions," the source said. "Her concerns are part of the periodic reassessment process that was built into the statute. It's part of what the statute requires VCF to do."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Scores of the people inhaled the dust as they sifted through the powder-caked debris looking for survivors and remains, in what is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"It was unprecedented in the US," said Dr John Howard, administrator for the World Trade Center Health. "The acute number of fatalities on that day has not been surpassed, and the chronic health effects have people succumb to illnesses ... it seems incomparable that any other disaster is close.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"We don't want to see another one like this," he said.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph"><img style="width: 500px; height: 284.091px; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="/media/7820766/1-twin-towers.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/a38b355628894a28a3898a2870e444d6" /></p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">As of June, 88,484 first responders and survivors have registered with the World Trade Center Health Program.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Of that number, roughly 10,000 have some form of cancer that has been certified by the program.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"[That's] 10,000 people that were either first responders or were in the trade union, or victims, survivors or volunteers," former<span> </span><em>Daily Show</em><span> </span>host and 9/11-survivor advocate John Stewart told the<em><span> </span>Daily News</em>. "I mean, this is an outrageous number."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Howard said the health program has seen a "growth spurt" within the last year – including a 260 per cent increase in those who either worked or lived at or around the site, which the program categorises as "survivors".</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">So many survivors have been coming through the door that the program has opened a new clinic on Franklin St in Lower Manhattan that will see an estimated 750 patients a month.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">According to the best estimates, 90,000 first responders showed up at the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the attack. An additional 400,000 survivors lived and worked in the area at the time.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Of that number, about 55,000 first responders and fewer than 20,000 survivors have registered with the World Trade Center Health Program – meaning thousands more could be signing up in the next few years.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"The numbers are real," said Feal. "This is not getting better. It's getting worse."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Feal estimates that someone dies of a 9/11-related illness an average of every 2.7 days. Neither the VCF nor the World Trade Center Health Program keeps records on how many people have died of a 9/11-related illness, but Feal says the number is close to 2100. By the 20th anniversary of 9/11, more people will have died of an illness stemming from Ground Zero than the 2700 who died at the Twin Towers that day.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"More people will have cancer," he said. "More people will have died, and that pains me."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">On the weekend, the FealGood Foundation will add 163 new names to its wall of 9/11 heroes in Nesconsent in the US state of New York. They're people who died of 9/11 illnesses – both survivors and first responders – since last September, when 141 names were added to the wall.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"It's the most we've ever put on our wall," said Feal, who in just the last two weeks has collected three more names for next year's ceremony. "The 9/11 fraternity is shrinking."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Feal showed up at Ground Zero a day after the terror attacks. He, too, inhaled the smoke and dust swirling around, but hasn't gotten sick yet.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">But tomorrow is another day.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"We're all looking over our shoulder, asking ourselves, 'When am I next?' That's the most prevalent conversation between survivors."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">And it didn't have to be that way. Advocates say the federal government could have demanded first responders and volunteers wear masks so they didn't have to breathe the toxic stew of death in – but they didn't.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Instead, Christie Todd Whitman – administrator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency at the time – announced a few days after the attacks that the air was safe to breathe.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"Her moral compass was pointed in the wrong direction," Feal said. "Ten thousand people are sick because of her words. If she didn't say it, people wouldn't have gotten sick. We weren't given the respiratory and hazmat gear. Human life took a backseat to the almighty dollar."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">A call to Whitman for comment was not returned.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">Stewart, who fought to get the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act passed – giving coverage to those afflicted with Ground Zero-related health woes for the next 75 years – tends to get indignant when someone mentions how the government said the air was safe to breathe.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"No scientist in their right mind, no environmental-protection person in their right mind [would have thought that]," Stewart said. "I'm not a professional, I just live near there – I knew how dangerous the air was.</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph">"You couldn't not know," he said about the white dust that seemed to be everywhere in the weeks after the attack. "We had it all on our windows and cars. You could smell it for weeks and months. Every material that was at that site was pulverised and then burned, and anybody that was near there was inhaling it as fine atmospheric molecules."</p>
<p class="sics-component__html-injector sics-component__story__paragraph"><em>Written by Noah Goldberg and Thomas Tracy. Republished with permission of <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/106981880/people-are-still-dying-from-the-911-attacks-17-years-later">Stuff.co.nz</a>. </em></p>
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