U.S. to Grant $30 Million for Civilians’ 9/11 Ailments

JAMES BARRON
NY Times
Friday, July 25, 2008

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce on Thursday that it plans to award $30 million to hospitals and clinics that monitor and treat residents, students and other so-called nonresponders who were exposed to dust and smoke at ground zero.

These nonresponders were not among the rescue and recovery workers sent to the World Trade Center site after the twin towers were destroyed on 9/11. Some of those workers have complained of respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. Thousands of firefighters, for example, developed what has become known as the World Trade Center cough.

Christine Branche, the acting director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said in an interview on Wednesday that the money was set aside in an appropriations bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed in December. She said it would be given as grants in three installments of $10 million, and would go to as many as three hospitals or clinics.

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Those institutions will have to apply for the grants. Dr. Branche said she did not know how many might apply.

A spokesman for one place that has treated people exposed to the dust and smoke from the trade center site, the W.T.C. Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital Center, said he had not heard about the grants until a reporter called. But he said he hoped there would be “funding for support services for area residents, cleanup workers and others served by our program.”

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which runs a center that has examined more than 15,000 ground zero workers and volunteers, said the center would decide whether to apply once details about the grants were formally announced.

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