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Air Today . . . Gone Tomorrow Article
Dr. Clinton Versus the
Ground Zero Cough
By Christine Lagorio, The Village Voice, July 27, 2004
Joseph Lebretti and David O'Neal
discovered that they lived on the same Pennsylvania country road while working the night
shift together in the fall of 2001, digging through the wreckage at Ground Zero. Their
lives ran parallel courses for three months with Lebretti, a Local 580 ironworker, and
O'Neal, a day laborer in Local 79, consumed by the toxic life of the pile.
Since then, both men have been diagnosed with chronic lung disease. O'Neal is on the
waiting list at Mount Sinai Medical Center for a lung transplant. Lebretti has visited the
occupational safety specialists at Mount Sinai more than 30 times. He was first sent to
the East Harlem clinic by his union, which encouraged its members to be examined there as
patients of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program. He got
a four-hour exam, consisting of an exposure interview, a psychological examination, and a
comprehensive physical exam including a full chest X-ray, breathing tests, and a
bronchodilator. He was luckier than O'Nealdiagnosed with an upper-respiratory infection,
chronic lung disease, sleep apnea, and metal in his blood. Scottie Hill, Mount Sinai's
social worker, also convinced him to join the program's group therapy sessions for
post-traumatic stress disorder. "The folks up there made all the difference,"
says Lebretti.
Drs. Stephen Levin and Robin Herbert, who run the screening program, help workers like
Lebretti and O'Neal every day. They see ironworkers, transit-union workers, EMTs,
carpenters, and more. The FDNY has its own Clinton-initiated $25 million screening
program, but most other workers, and even volunteers, who labored at Ground Zero may sign
up for screeningan estimated 30,000 people.
More than 9,200 World Trade Center responders have entered the program since it received a
$12 million FEMA grant two years ago. Part of a second $90 million package is arriving at
Mount Sinai this fall, including $21 million for screenings and $16 million for a
comprehensive data analysis of five years of results.
Mount Sinai, in a preliminary analysis, found that more than half of those screenedfirst
responders at the WTC or the Staten Island landfill who reported within three days after
9-11 and spent more than a week therewere diagnosable for a mental health problem.
Eighty-eight percent experienced at least one World Trade Center-related ear, nose, or
throat symptom, and half sustained upper-respiratory symptoms for months. When the
screening program ends in September, Mount Sinai staff will have evaluations from nearly
12,000 laborers, and will be able to calculate the percentage that have symptoms or
illnesses three years later.
Patients like O'Neal and Lebretti thank the doctors. Who do the doctors thank? Who do the
unions thank? Hillary Clinton. She's won the more than $100 million that runs the network
of New York-area responder screenings Mount Sinai leads. The aid originated in two
Clinton-drafted appropriations amendments, the first ($12.4 million) of which breezed
through Congress in a post-9-11 aid package. The second $90 million, however, took eight
months to pass before overcoming a threatened Bush veto. In January 2003, with partisan
tension over the stalled funding rising to a tipping point, Clinton ally Carolyn Maloney,
the Eastside congresswoman, filled congressional guest seats for Bush's State of the Union
speech with NYPD detectives, transit workers, firefighters, and others, even winning over
New York Republicans for the funding. They got Bush to sign off on the appropriation
within weeks.
Police detectives treated at Mount Sinai such as Cecil Martinez are so appreciative they
recently got their union, the Detectives Endowment Association, to organize a huge
thank-you party for clinic staff. At the March ceremony, DEA president Tom Scotto gave the
union's highest award for service to Clinton. Martinez says, "She's been at the point
of all this, I mean, I can say that this program wouldn't be here for the workers without
her fighting for it."
The funding will run out in five years. Dr. Levin, one of the occupational-health
co-directors at Mount Sinai, says that's problematic, because symptoms aren't easing up,
and "this population has been exposed to a real brew of cancer-causing agents"
that could take 15 to 20 years to affect exposed workers. He expects Clinton to follow up
next year and secure a future revenue stream. Martinez is betting on it.
http//www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0430/lagorio.php
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