Few Answers for Sick 9/11 Workers

NEW YORK_More than four years have passed since retired fire marshal Joe Sykes walked into an asbestos-choked dust cloud on Sept. 11. His health deteriorated so badly and so fast that he had to retire a year later.

"I started coughing that day, and I haven't stopped yet," said Sykes, 49.

"I think a lot about what was in the air, half of it you don't even know what was there, but everything was pulverized, it's not like you saw computers or anything in the debris. We were breathing everything, animal plant or mineral, you name it," he said.

Government experts are still trying to figure out exactly what that exposure did to Sykes and thousands of others on Sept. 11, but they will not have answers anytime soon.

Health officials say it could take 20 years to find definite links between the toxic cloud and subsequent diseases or deaths, because most cancers take that long or even longer to develop and decades of statistics are needed to prove a relationship.

"It seems like they're trying to do the right thing, and it's good to help people in the future, but they don't have any answers for us now," said Sykes, who worked at the on-site morgue at ground zero until the end of October 2001, when he went on leave. "It's frustrating for me, and frustrating for my family. When they get those answers, are we still going to be alive?"

The issue has taken on greater prominence in recent months amid reports that some Sept. 11 workers are dying of various ailments that their families blame on ground zero exposure.

Spurred by New York lawmakers of both parties, Congress has spent more than $100 million (€82 million) to provide health programs for ground zero workers. Sykes signed up for one of them, a screening program run by Mount Sinai.

"I've done the questionnaires and I've gone for medicals. They send a questionnaire now and then and I fill it out and sometimes they call me and I answer questions."

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In an aging city office building in lower Manhattan, less than a dozen city workers and researchers are working on a project they hope will eventually answer Sykes' questions. The World Trade Center Health Registry has gathered information from 71,437 people who worked at ground zero or were in the area at the time of the attacks.

Described by New York City's deputy health commissioner Lorna Thorpe as "a Rolodex" of those affected by Sept. 11, the registry is the largest such effort in the United States.

However, the registry conducts no medical exams or screening like the program at Mount Sinai. Instead, it uses mailings and phone calls to collect updates from people who signed up for the program.

Mount Sinai's program is designed to track symptoms among rescue workers and construction workers; the city registry is a much broader effort to monitor, over a period of decades, a huge population including everyday residents who happened to be nearby in case they develop health problems.

It costs the city $46 (€37) per person per year to keep in touch with the registrants, who will receive the first follow-up questionnaire this month, a 12- or 16-page form asking for more details of their exposure, and an update on any symptoms.

Thorpe and researchers warn it may take 20 years before doctors can answer what Sept. 11 did - and did not do - to the legions of emergency personnel, civilians, and others engulfed in the airborne remains of two 110-story buildings.

"We're trying to identify as quickly as possible mortality trends, but the challenge is, how quickly can we provide information that's robust?" said Thorpe.

Critics of the health programs say the research is useless if it cannot be used to help those who are suffering now.

"They've done nothing with all that data," said Pat Lynch, president of the city's police union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

"If we're looking 10 or 20 years down the road, then we're talking about a body count. I'm not looking to do a body count, I'm talking about finding out what problems exist and treating them. We're not there to fill someone's filing cabinet," said Lynch.