September 11: fallout from toxic World Trade Centre dust cloud grows
- More than 111,000 people have signed up for World Trade Centre Health Programme
- Scheme gives free medical care to people with medical problems potentially linked to the dust
Two decades after the collapse of the World Trade Centre, people are still coming forward to report illnesses that might be related to dust that billowed over the city after the terror attack.
To date, the US has spent US$11.7 billion on care and compensation for those exposed to the toxic dust and fires that burned at ground zero for weeks after the attacks. More than 40,000 people have got payments from a government fund for people with illnesses potentially linked to the attacks.
More than 111,000 people have signed up for the World Trade Centre Health Programme, which gives free medical care to people with medical problems potentially linked to the dust.
Enrollees include people like Barbara Burnette, a retired police detective still suffering from severe respiratory problems two decades after she spat soot from her mouth for weeks as she worked on the burning rubble pile without a protective mask. She credits the intensive health monitoring she got through the health programme with helping to spot lung cancer.
“Had I not been in the programme … I don’t know that they would have found it,” Burnette says. Since then she has had two rounds of chemotherapy to keep the cancer at bay.
