Researchers can’t explain differences among responders
By DELTHIA RICKS
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Scientific analyses have told a complex saga about the health outcomes for thousands of first responders and virtually anyone near Ground Zero when the plume of debris engulfed lower Manhattan five years ago.
Asbestos fibers, crushed glass, pulverized concrete, granulated metals and residues of jet fuel permeated the air - and invaded the lungs of thousands.
But a half decade after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, there remains an evolving story about the health of people and the canine rescue teams who worked the site. While human illnesses continue to emerge, the dogs, surprisingly - curiously - have escaped the same fate.
Forever changed
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, battalion chief Richard Picciotto was in the North Tower, shouting orders to the dozens of firefighters who had ascended the dark stairwells. He was ordering his teams to leave the tower, whose twin had already collapsed.
“I had left my mask on the 35th floor,” Picciotto recalled in a recent interview. “But I had my bullhorn, my flashlight and my radio. I was trying to get everyone out.”
Picciotto reached a fifth-floor stairwell when an indescribable noise, matched only by overwhelming seismic activity, consumed the stairs. It felt as if Earth itself was splitting.
When it stopped, Picciotto was stunned to still be alive but his life and health were forever transformed.
“Both of my eyes were scratched and burned,” said the battalion chief, 55, who has since retired. His ears were plugged with dust. His shoulder and other joints were injured. The air was acrid and thick.
“I was trapped along with 13 other people,” Picciotto said. “We were trapped in a cavelike area. It was like a vertical cave. You could see a couple of people, but could only hear the others. We did a roll call. There were people who were trapped below us. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them.
Above, rescuers with sophisticated sound-detection systems were combing the debris. Search and rescue dogs outfitted in paw-protecting booties sniffed through the smoldering, fuel-soaked mound.
“We couldn’t hear a thing, neither the dogs nor the people. Without a doubt, it was claustrophobic. I didn’t think we’d ever get out.”
Miraculously, after five hours, Picciotto and his fellow survivors were pulled to safety. At that point his fears of being buried alive ended and his medical odyssey began.
Nearly seven out of every 10 World Trade Center responders suffered lung problems during or after their work at Ground Zero, according to a Mount Sinai Medical Center study issued Tuesday, the largest study on 9/11-related health effects.
In lung-function tests, responders had abnormalities at a rate double that expected in the general population and those abnormalities persisted for months and even years. The data showed illnesses tended to be the worst among those who arrived first on the scene. Nevertheless, many rescuers who were less acutely exposed than Picciotto, doctors say, experienced far more worrisome effects.
Unique circumstances
Picciotto joined a scientific studied conducted by investigators at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, which has shown that exposure to World Trade Center debris dramatically aged the lungs of those exposed. Although some medical experts have disagreed with the findings, virtually all believe the attack produced a unique set of medical circumstances that are difficult to understand.
Most emblematic among the respiratory illnesses, doctors say, is World Trade Center cough.
“I think it will take decades to understand the full impact of the exposure,” to World Trade Center dust, said Dr. Ben Luft, program director at Stony Brook University for Long Island’s World Trade Center Monitoring Program.
Five years after his month-long stint at Ground Zero, Valley Stream veterinarian Dr. John Charos, 44, said he is still affected by World Trade Center cough. Charos helped organize the M.A.S.H unit for injured canine rescuers.
“Basically, this started as a bit of a cough, but it seems to have gotten worse,” said Charos, who adds that now, any exposure to airborne irritants produces coughing spasms. “I just don’t have the endurance I used to have.
“Most of the people down there,” he said of his fellow vets who performed an array of medical and surgical procedures on the dogs, “realized that it wasn’t safe breathing there.”
But research veterinarians who have been tracking the health of the dogs who sniffed through the debris for weeks have found that canines do not have a single pulmonary problem.
“We do general health surveys each year and chest X-rays to see if there is anything that we can associate with their response, and so far nothing,” said Dr. Phil Fox, of Manhattan’s Animal Medical Center, who has been monitoring the health of 30 New York City police dogs.
“We’ve heard all kinds of rumors,” Fox added. “One was that all of the dogs were dead, the result of 9/11 exposures. That’s not true.”
Dr. Cindy Otto, a critical care specialist and veterinary researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, is studying 97 dogs that worked at the World Trade Center and Pentagon recovery sites. She also has found no adverse pulmonary disorders.
“It may sound too simple to say that people and dogs are different, but that’s the case,” Otto said.
The sharp difference between humans and canines is underscored by a new round of illnesses emerging in people.
“We’ve seen the initial reaction, the respiratory disorders, but now we’re seeing patients with intermediate onset issues, especially gastrointestinal problems,” added Luft, who is following about 1,800 responders who live in Nassau and Suffolk.
Picciotto, a resident of Chester, N.Y., was treated for scratches on both corneas, which healed in a couple of months. He also had hearing problems caused by dust that was impacted in each ear canal. He said it took about a year for the debris to exit through his sinuses.
Like Charos and others, Picciotto developed the dry, hacking cough, though he has weaned himself from his respiratory medications.
Picciotto is taking things in stride. “I tore my rotator cuff in my shoulder. But without a doubt this was a miracle,” he said of his survival.