Health Troubles Persist For 9/11 Rescue Workers

It was late in the night when James Zadroga, sleeping beside his 4-year-old daughter, woke up to fetch her some milk. It was no easy errand: The former New York City police detective's lungs were so scarred that he needed supplemental oxygen to breathe.

In 2001, after the attack on the World Trade Center, he had donned a paper mask and toiled at Ground Zero on rescue and recovery missions. Then he developed a cough and damaged lungs. Four years later, the 34-year-old was dying.

Sometime in that January night, Zadroga fell to the bedroom floor. At dawn, his father came into the room and found him, then gently woke the girl to tell her that Zadroga was dead. Her bottle was still in his hand. "I told her that her daddy has passed and she cried, 'No, no, he's just sleeping, he just got up to get me a bottle,'" says Joseph Zadroga, of Little Egg Harbor Township, N.J., who is now raising his granddaughter, Tyler Ann. Her mother died two years earlier.

An autopsy done by a New Jersey coroner attributed James' death to dust from Ground Zero. He had never been a smoker and had no previous respiratory problems. "No one should have to go through this," his father says.

Nearly five years after the terrorist attack, thousands of workers who toiled at the World Trade Center site continue to experience health problems, according to doctors at Mount Sinai Center for Occupational & Environmental Medicine in New York.

Zadroga's death -- the first death linked by an autopsy to toxins at the site -- has galvanized union leaders and politicians such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to call for more aid and investigation.

Concern over ongoing ailments plaguing World Trade Center workers is also leading to accusations that federal safety oversight at Ground Zero was lax -- a charge that federal officials vigorously deny. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials said in a statement issued to USA TODAY in May that they responded immediately as events unfolded, with the highest priority being to protect the environment and health of the people of New York.

The agency took more than 10,000 samples of air, water and dust, which yielded more than a quarter of a million results, and worked with other federal agencies to caution that workers should wear protective gear. Officials acknowledge that some workers from the site now are ill.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed alleging that the agency made false reassurances about the air quality at the site. No trial date has been set.

"The EPA said there was no danger, but this was the perfect storm of environmental toxins, and now we're paying the price," says Thomas Cahill, an air pollution expert and professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, who studied the air quality around Ground Zero. "It was wildly toxic, and the EPA knew that. Hopefully, this will lead to a renewed effort not to forget these people."

About 40,000 workers toiled at Ground Zero, including immigrant day laborers, contractors, volunteers from other towns, paramedics, firefighters and police officers. They carried out myriad tasks, from digging through rubble in search of survivors to delivering ice and water. It's uncertain how many may now be sick.

A medical screening and monitoring program coordinated by Mount Sinai Center for Occupational & Environmental Medicine in New York indicates that more than half need immediate medical or mental health treatment. The estimate is based on a sample of the 16,000 workers screened to date. In fact, demand is so great that the waiting list for care through an independent treatment program offered by Mount Sinai is 16 weeks. The study looks at those who worked at the site during or shortly after the disaster.

Rare lung diseases emerge