Panel agenda for Air Quality After 9/11 conference, March 2004

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

The following excerpt from the March 13, 2004 edition of Newsweek gives a further

indication of how residents living near the World Trade Center have been affected by the

air quality following 9/11:

“And recently, a study published in this months Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that children with asthma who lived within five miles of the World Trade Center site saw a substantial increase in the severity of their symptoms in the year following the attacks. The retrospective study of Chinese-American children who received medical care at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown, located about one-and-a-half miles from the World Trade Center, found that in the year before the September 11 attacks, 306 pediatric asthma patients made 1,044 visits to the health clinic. In the year after, 510 pediatric patients made 1,554 asthma-related visits. The researchers noted a similar increase among adult asthmatics.”

In the two and one-half years since 9/11 we have become increasingly familiar with many of the

short-term effects of the air quality produced by the collapse of the World Trade center. As yet,

however, we have no way of projecting what the long-term effects will be. Asbestos, for

example, can take up to thirty years to bring about mesothelioma, and other cancer causing

agents released during the collapse may take decades to evolve into a crippling disease. In 2002

Doctor Robert Brook of the University of Michigan reported that particulate matter in air

pollution can cause constriction of blood vessels leading to heart attacks (Newsday - October 1,

2002). Will this lead to future heart attacks for those who were exposed after 9/11? To monitor

the long-term effects of this unprecedented event, the National Institute for Occupational Safety

and Health (NIOSH) was instrumental in creating the World Trade Center Health Registry. On

October 28, 2003, Diane Porter, Deputy Director of NIOSH described the Registry to the

Congressional Subcommittee as follows:

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