Report: Death Toll Among WTC Rescue Workers Soars

Asbestos dust is a killer. In Australia a whole town of asbestos miners and their families were moved from Whittenoom when people began to get Asbestosis. The place is a ghost town now and so many people have died from the disease. Any removal of asbestos here in Australia from any building requires stringent safety measures and fully suited up workers with breathing aps.

In this day and age, with all the safety crap we all have to go through in our jobs etc how could those rescue workers have been allowed on-site without AT LEAST the correct breathing apparatus?? When I saw the footage of the dust on TV at the time all I could think was, "I wouldn't want to be breathing that in!"

I know people were keen to help rescue others at the time - and that is an amazing human quality - but it was taken for granted and those workers now deserve all the support they can get for their sacrifice.

reply to post by swinggal
Hi Swingga,
You are absolutely correct, Asbestos is the supreme insideous killer. In WW2 my mother worked for the war effort in a munitions factory where Asbestos was used, she died in 1975 from Asbestosis aged 59. She did not smoke and only took an occasional drink of Cyder.That is how long it can be for Asbestosis to take effect. Grady Philpott is talking through his hewee about not closing down Manhattan, it should have been no-man's land for a very long time just because of Asbestos contamination alone. The rescue workers and presumably clean-up workers who have died to date would not in the main have died from Asbestosis, but possibly from other causes from heavy metal combinations perhaps along with Asbestos. One thing is for sure, it was/and probably still is, a dangerous place to be in because of Asbestos dust alone.You can see many pics of the clean-up workers (not first responders) not even wearing something as simple as a Martindale.The builders of WTC were morally bankrupt anyway, the dangers of the material were well known when it was built, but they were able to use it because there was no legislation in place at the time.
In regard to the actual numbers of people who have died, it is very high in any respect if you place all these people in one location over a relatively short period...that is about as far as I would go statistically, since statistics really count for naught in that situation.
Edit to add, I also looked at the pictures then as i do now and have the same thoughts as you,(I was a NIPSA health and safety branch officer in the Civil Service for a good while) and that was in Admin!








[edit on 7-9-2009 by smurfy]