9/11, 25 Years Later: The Far-Reaching Health Effects of 9/11

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC with our special coverage today of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. We've been talking about the political and legal battle to get those air toxicity documents released. So let's talk now about the far reaching health effects of the events of that day and specifically the aftermath. My guest now is Dr. Rebecca Florsheim, an environmental health physician at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. She also treats members of the World Trade Center Survivors Health Program.

We'll ask, among other things, what was actually in the dust? Dr. Florsheim, welcome back to WNYC.

Rebecca Florsheim (0:49)

Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me back.

Brian Lehrer (0:51)

And listeners, we're going to open the phones in this segment. Were you downtown in the aftermath of September 11th? Did you work yourself in the pile, as they call it, of dust and debris or clean an office or move back into an apartment near ground zero or go to school, as our previous guest was saying, at Stuyvesant or Berghardt Manhattan Community College or anywhere else down there? Pretty quickly thereafter, are you enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program? Or wonder if you should be? Dr. Florsheim is here to answer your questions. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

You can call or you can text. Dr. Florsheim, let me start this way. If you could break down a sample of World Trade Center dust in a lab, what would you actually find in it?

Rebecca Florsheim (1:46)

That's a great question. A number of groups actually did do that. There's a number of characteristics of the World Trade Center dust that actually made it quite dangerous for people that were exposed. First of all, depending on the area that you'd be sampling, you would find that the dust was very caustic. It had a pH essentially between 9 or 12.5. The outdoor dust was closer to 9 The indoor dust that they recovered later was closer to 12.5, which is pretty similar to what you would find in a drain cleaner, so very basic.

The dust was also very water-soluble. When you think about the types of complaints that you heard from people that were exposed, a lot of sinus issues, lung issues, at least acutely right after their exposure, issues with their digestive tract, that all makes sense because those are all very wet surfaces, that the dust was exposed to, and so the dust tended to dissolve more on those aqueous surfaces, and it was also very reactive. So researchers found that when they added water to the World Trade Center dust, they would see reactions, some bubbling, some chemical activity that was happening.

So that's the immediate effects that you would be most concerned about when you see that type of chemical characteristic in a laboratory.

Brian Lehrer (3:23)

Yeah. So what happens inside a person's body, in their sinuses, throat and lungs, anywhere else when they inhale dust like this?

Rebecca Florsheim (3:31)

Exactly. So another characteristic of the dust, there were a lot of components in it that were really concerning in terms of the chronic effects, but acutely there were also very small lacerating fibers. And if you think about everything that was in the tower, you have the insulation, which was made up of small fibers, broken glass, all of that got broken down mechanically from the collapse, but also from the combustion and the high heat. And so in addition to the chemical irritation that you got because of the high pH and the reactive effects of it, you also had microscopic lacerations that were happening for any surface in the body that was exposed. You can imagine if you're inhaling this dust in through your nose, you can immediately get on that aqueous surface, essentially what would be a type of a burn and also mechanical damage from the lacerating fibers that were inside of it.

Brian Lehrer (4:32)

Wasn't it obvious that there would be health effects like these? Because there were short-term effects, right? People were immediately having a World Trade Center cough. People were immediately having respiratory problems of other kinds as they were working on the pile. So, why wasn't this obvious?

Rebecca Florsheim (4:52)

Well, I think to a lot of the people that were being exposed, it was obvious to them. I know within 24 hours, there were several hundred firefighters that were presenting to the emergency room with the complaints, the general complaint that they couldn't breathe, whether that was due to extreme symptoms in the nasal passages and the sinuses or because of the lung, and it was probably a mixture of both, you know, is fodder for additional conversation. So, I think to the people that were exposed, they certainly knew pretty quickly that something was wrong.