The city is denying that they are dying because of the toxic dust. Amazing. They are doing nothing for those who tried to rescue people.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/toxiclegacy/index.html
Toxic Legacy: A CLOUD of dust
On a sunny morning in September 2001, more than twenty seven hundred people died violently in events of unimaginable horror.
Another killer was unleashed that day. A slow silent poison that now threatens thousands of lives? the toxic dust and gases created by the disintegrating towers. An enormous compression wave pushed through the streets and into buildings with the force of a hurricane.
Dr. David Prezant, the deputy medical officer of the New York City Fire Department remembers, "This sunny morning was pitch black. The ability to see in front of you was impossible. The ability to breathe was impossible and yet there was complete total silence." The dust swallowed lower Manhattan and spread outward in a giant cloud. As everyone fled, rescue workers raced into the toxic brew.
"Detective James Zadroga was one of the first responders and worked close to five hundred hours at the site protected only by a paper mask. Although he quickly became very ill, the police department applied standard sick leave procedures to his case. His father Joe Zadroga remembers just how ill his son became. "If you'd looked at him you knew he was sick, anybody that looked at him knew he was sick but he would go report to the sick desk, they would say you're not sick go back to work tomorrow. And at first he'd go back to work. But then he got so sick he couldn't walk up the flight of stairs to get into work. He had to take the elevator up to go one flight of stairs."
James Zadroga is one of few workers whose death has been linked to working on 9/11.
James Zadroga couldn't work. He couldn't play with his baby daughter. He couldn't breathe, and it only got worse. In a letter to his father, he revealed that he knew he was dying. "The dead, their deaths were quick and painless, and mine has just begun. I can't breath, my throat is constantly sore, I'm always coughing and headaches and sleepless nights, nightmares, anxiety and visions haunt me everyday. And I'm all alone except for my dearest loved ones. No one cares on the job, they tell me I'm fine, go back to work, but truthfully I haven't felt this bad in my life." James Zadroga died on January 5, 2006, four and half years after he raced into the cloud of dust.
Pathologist Dr. Gerard Breton did the autopsy, "I was immediately struck by the enormous size of his lungs. Zadroga's lungs were three times the normal weight." When Breton looked at the slides of the lung tissue he found out why. The lungs were full of debris. The autopsy slides revealed he had almost no functioning lung tissue. At least eight percent of his lungs were filled with granulomas ? giant cells that form around foreign objects. "So that the person is actually being asphyxiated with his own lung because his lung was being replaced by these foreign body granulomas. When you tell me that the person was helping and cleaning Ground Zero he was exposed to all kind of foreign debris. And I find this in his lung, I have to put them together," says Dr. Breton. "