Basically ever since I stopped working next door to Ground Zero.
Oh... and the ass glue didn't do a damn bit of good.
Dr. Prezant’s patients nicknamed the most prevalent effect on firefighters and paramedics the “WTC cough”: “It’s a persistent cough, … a sore throat, and interestingly enough, … an accompanying GI irritation,” he said. The reflux-like symptoms, which may worsen cough, might have been triggered by swallowed particulates, Dr. Prezant speculated. Roughly two thirds of the group with cough had a dry cough and some degree of GI irritation.
I don't have the sore throat, but other than that, yup.
I didn't work inside Ground Zero, but from the first day when they let business back down to Lower Manhattan, I was down there, and I was taking cigarette breaks all the time, standing out on the sidewalk smelling Ground Zero for two years from that point forward.
2 comments:
Many of these folks are starting to develop cancer and are dying.
May want to really get your mongering in , while your little head still works
I never really "got a lung-full" like when the buildings collapsed, or like the people working directly on the pile. I basically just breathed in smelly air for about 90 minutse a day for 3 months while the fires burned and then breathed "perfectly clean" (what we thought at the time) air for the next 21 months for about 90 minutes a day.
According to the studies, what is causing the cough is microscopic bits of glass in my lungs, which are not carcinogenic. Most of the carinogens were out of the air after the first few weeks, and those that were left were "at acceptable levels" according to the health department. (As I said, they weren't monitoring for "glass particles" unfortunately.)
Cancer? Maybe. But I certainly would be surprised if it was me ahead of tens of thousands of other people who got a lot more crud in their lungs than I did.
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