Thousands More Will Die: The Effects of 9-11 Continue to Take Its Toll

The death toll resulting from the tragedies of September 11, 2001 continue to climb. The thousands of innocent people who died in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and on United Flight # 93 in the Pennsylvania skies were only the beginning of what will be a long, painful knoll... Thousands more will become sick and many will die.

Survivors of 9-11 are now showing up with incurable, and often deadly diseases, as a result of the toxins they inspired when working to save lives in the rubble at the foot of the Twin Towers, and in the surrounding city as they went about their daily lives. Many are now suffering from pulmonary diseases caused by the dust and asbestos that was released into the air when those Towers crumbled. And now the "survivors", too, are dying.

When asbestos fibers fly through the air and they are inhaled, they lodge in the lungs where they drill their way through the tissue of the respiratory system, causing irreparable damage. A single fiber can destroy the lungs, causing calcification and the formation of plaques. Over time, the lungs harden and a condition known as "asbestosis" is created. This condition causes considerable respiratory distress. And if the victim is lucky, that's all it causes. However, that single fiber may not stop at that level. It can irritate the system so severely that it forms a rare form of cancer known as "mesothelioma."

Mesothelioma is invariably lethal. There is no cure. And, it is generally believed that ONLY asbestos exposure can lead to it. Fortunately, under normal conditions, this type of cancer is extremely rare and takes a long time (usually 30 years) to consume the individual. However, in the case of the 9-11 survivors, we are seeing a rapid development of this deadly disease and patients have already died from the condition only 5 years later. The load of asbestos that these survivors were exposed to far exceeded the usual dose found in chronic cases of exposure such as that found in construction workers.

That being said, we can see now at this point that as thousands of 9-11 workers are manifesting pulmonary diseases at varying levels each month, that the "survivors" of this tragedy were not really survivors at all. They were killed with a bomb that exploded slowly in their bodies until their lungs were consumed with inflammation and cancer. Life was snuffed from their lungs slowly as they suffer and die a slow and painful death. We have not yet seen the last of the effects of that black day when a few men from the brinks of hell destroyed the lives of thousands instantly and caused vibrations of hate that continue to kill to this day, five years later.

The men and women who are suffering now and dying from their exposure to massive doses of toxic material during that fateful time have been abandoned by our government. The heroes that put their lives on the line to save the lives of others were told that the air they breathed while working at the Towers was "safe". That's what the mayor said. That's what the EPA said. They were not given protective gear for working in what was literally a toxic dump. They went without masks and breathed in the air that would eventually kill them, too.

Today, when these men and women - these heroes - reach out for help, they are turned away. Scoffed by the government who depended on them to clean up the mess left behind. They are denied medical care. They are ignored for workmen's compensation. They are left to die as the government turns its face away so it doesn't have to see their pain and frustration, not to mention the shock that they feel to discover how their own government abandoned them.

Neither the City of New York nor the federal government acknowledges the fact that the illnesses developed in all these workers has been caused by the effects of breathing the air around Ground Zero. But statistically speaking, it is close to impossible that so many people who shared the same work space would contract these rare diseases if the environmental conditions were not the cause. Those in the government are not stupid. They know that this is just the tip of the iceberg and they don't want to foot the bill.