Monday, October 02, 2006

More young people whose well-being Republicans didn't give a damn about:

In addition to the emotional trauma they faced after the World Trade Center attacks, students who went to schools in Lower Manhattan say they are also facing respiratory problems, and now they also want the federal government's help.

Current and former students were told it was safe to return to class after September 11th, and they did, exposing themselves to the same toxic air inhaled by first responders.

"They were minors during 9/11; they had no options. They were ordered back to school because the EPA said that the air was safe, and they had no ability to say yes or no," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. "And now we're finding out that it may be that some of these children are going to come down with very serious illnesses."

"A major driver of lymphoma is being exposed to excessive amounts of toxins pollutants, which is exactly what we inhaled when we were down here after September 11," said former Stuyvesant High School student Amit Friedlander, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. "So I think, whether or not my cancer came from September 11, there definitely will be a lot of people who will be getting sick."...

"Eventually we learned that the school building had not even been cleaned thoroughly as promised," said Lila Nordstrom, a former Stuyvesant High School student. "Yet to date, no monitoring of out health from 9/11 has ever been done."...


You think these kids might have been put at a bit of excess risk just so a Republican administration in Washington and a Republican mayor and governor could say all was well? Er, yeah:

The Board of Education spent $1 million to rehabilitate Stuyvesant in the weeks following September 11. During the 2001-02 academic year, however, toxic waste was transported by trucks up West Street past the school from ground zero 24 hours a day. Cranes would then transfer the material to barges anchored in the Hudson River on the north side of the school. "Every time the crane took up a load of debris, they would drop it in the barge and a huge dust cloud would be kicked up," Ms. Nordstrom said.

Good grief.

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