Lung function still impaired by dust from World Trade Center
Emergency workers continue to have breathing problems years after the 2001 attack
By Nathan Seppa
Many rescue workers who responded to the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York continue to show breathing difficulties that haven’t improved in the years since the dust cleared, researchers report in the April 8 New England Journal of Medicine.
The effects go beyond what was first dubbed “World Trade Center cough,” although that symptom has lingered in some emergency workers, says study coauthor Thomas Aldrich, a pulmonologist at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City. Inhalation of the thick dust has caused bronchitis, asthma and symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease such as being short of breath, he says. Passersby have also shown increased asthma rates (SN: 8/29/09, p. 11).
To test lung function in rescue workers, Aldrich and his colleagues analyzed test results of 10,870 firefighters and 1,911 emergency medical service workers that had been recorded in 2000 or 2001 before the attack, and at least three follow-up breathing tests recorded between 2002 and 2008. The sample included 92 percent of all rescue workers who arrived at ground zero between September 11 and September 24.