Immigrant workers facing WTC illnesses

BY LUIS PEREZ | Newsday Staff Writer

September 7, 2006

A New York City firefighter walks past people on a viewing platform while wearing a protective air mask, as he leaves leaves the wreckage site of the World Trade Center in New York. The Environmental Protection Agency held hearing in New York about air quality around the site of the trade center disaster. (AP Photo)

They swept up toxic dust from offices and sidewalks along Ground Zero, or simply remained in their lower Manhattan neighborhoods, living and working as life came back to normal.

They are residents, undocumented immigrant workers and others who for years have said they too are sick -- but are now bolstered by a conclusive medical study linking World Trade Center dust clouds to debilitating health problems.

Scores of those workers and residents rallied across the street from Ground Zero Wednesday, demanding that the state and federal government document their illnesses and provide them with long-term medical treatment.

"In five years, we haven't seen one dollar," said Ines Belaez, 62, of Jackson Heights, who said she worked seven days a week cleaning offices along Church Street for a month after 9/11, and now has severe bronchitis, neurological dysfunctions and depression. "Why did they lie to us and tell us that the air was clean?"

Advocates say that the plight of low-income people and the uninsured has been overlooked as Gov. George Pataki and the federal government have focused on police officers, firefighters and construction workers when creating 9/11 health services.

Instead, Belaez and those like her are relying on a network of community groups that received an American Red Cross grant to provide rudimentary health care services at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. Some 1,200 people have been treated through the 9/11 Community Health Initiative, and 800 more are on a waiting list, advocates said.

"We have so far failed in our moral responsibility," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), said at the rally, where he was joined by Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-Manhattan) and the activist group Beyond Ground Zero. Nadler announced a bill that would spur 9/11 health benefits through the federal government.

Doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital this week announced the findings of a comprehensive study of 10,000 Ground Zero first responders, showing that 7 out of 10 suffer from chronic lung illness that will last their lifetimes.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week that a World Trade Center clinic available to thousands of undocumented workers and the uninsured will open in January at Bellevue. Nadler said the new city 9/11 clinic is "a good start, but limited in time, scope and resources."

Also, on the heels of the Mount Sinai study, Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) and Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island) unveiled federal legislation to reopen the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund to provide financial assistance to those who worked at Ground Zero.