Even the EPA's own inspector general has criticized the agency's handling of the crisis. A 2003 report found that on the basis of early tests for asbestos, which had been reassuring, the EPA made misleading pronouncements about air quality. And the White House, the report said, removed cautionary language from the agency's press releases.
A further study by the US general accounting office in 2004 found that the federal government had taken no comprehensive actions to study the health effects of 9/11 pollution and "the full health impact of the attack is unknown."
David Worby, who has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on behalf of 6,000 workers, says he has identified 23 deaths among workers exposed to 9/11 contaminants. No official statistics exist to confirm his claims. But last month two New York senators and more than a dozen members of Congress signed a letter calling the deaths of at least three workers "an ominous sign" and demanding a plan for long-term monitoring and care.
A group of ailing emergency workers, Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes, held its first conference last month. One of those who attended was Bill Dahl, a former paramedic.
"I remember the wind kicking up that night," he said in a telephone interview punctuated by his coughing.
"It was like a little hurricane. Your eyes and your nose and your mouth would get caked with debris. Whenever you found water, you tried to wash your eyes out and rinse your mouth out. At one point the officer I was with had to be ordered home because his eyes started to bleed," he said.
In the days that followed he was assigned to a hazardous materials unit. He said he had worked 14 to 16-hour days to decontaminate other workers at the site, but he himself was not issued with an air-purifying respirator.
A week after Sept. 11 Dahl, who had prided himself on jogging 12km a day, began to cough up gray mucus. He would often wake in the night wheezing, unable to breathe. In January 2002 he had his first full-blown asthma attack. He has since developed an extremely rare form of cancer, synovial sarcoma, in his throat.
He said the workers' compensation board had so far denied him benefits, suggesting his pulmonary problems could result from his cancer, or from a recent car accident, not necessarily from exposure to the World Trade Center ruins. He plans to submit that his rare cancer itself resulted from 9/11.
These days he cannot walk or talk much without wheezing. And he can't help but wonder if the next death will be his own.
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