60 minutes overtime on september 11 2001 thousands of altruistic men and women
rushed to downtown manhattan carrying little more than a sense of duty
they departed the toxic rubble as heroes but valor came to cost i will encounter people
i have worked with former colleagues in the police department and when they
mention mentioned so-and-so passed away from such cancer you stop and think and you remember and um
come way on your mind any pain today nurse practitioner bruno valenti and
registered nurse stephen langell treat those who responded to the terrorist attack
twenty years ago the now retired new york police sergeants stood beside them any allergies to
medication no no well the patients that come a lot of police officers a lot of construction workers i
understand kind of what they're going through some of them at roughly 9 a.m on the day of the attack
stephen langell recalled being in a patrol van 12 miles north of the world trade center
as we were talking looking out the window we noticed another explosion
they instructed us to get as close as we can to trade center and set up a command post and
wait there until the rest of the unit arrives and we geared up and we started walking towards the
world trade center and that's when the first tower fell
when the smoke cleared a little bit we started to walk towards the debris and we set up a security
perimeter i think we were there for probably the next month and a half two months on 9 11 bruno
valenti said his commanding officer placed the unit on standby held back in case of more attacks
three days later he saw ground zero i remember when we arrived it was dark as we came out of
the battery tunnel looking to see all the smoke and then arriving at the side of the collapse
it was a surreal experience you know you looked at it and you thought this can't be happening
we were assigned to the bucket brigade on top of the pile and we were designated to start a
chain collecting evidence and passing it back i think that once you begin to take care of
a remarkable group of people it becomes part of you i saw that report from at stony brook medicine
dr benjamin luft sees it every day since we met him a decade ago the number of patients that pass
through his world trade center health and wellness program is still increasing some diseases are just
progressions but there are other diseases that begin to develop because those toxins that they
had inhaled 20 years ago affected their bodies i have a rhinitis cyanide i have squamous basal cell
cancer you know i had several surgeries already is it related to 9 11 could be it happened you
know started up right after that we knew what carcinogens they were exposed to and so there was
the rational belief that well if you're exposed to something that's going to cause you cancer
it's most likely to cause cancer into the future even though you might not have it at that moment
now we're starting to see the manifestations of that the same thing with cognitive issues
so then we can do some very sophisticated testing a stony brook study found nearly 15 percent of 9
11 survivors and first responders show early signs of cognitive decline a rate three times
higher than expected when compared to similarly aged patients from the general population
compensation for non-physical injuries is not covered by the zadroga act the federal law
that aids 9 11 survivors and first responders in order for it to be covered it needs to go through
a process through the national institute of occupational safety and health our data is
very strong that the cognitive dysfunction that we're seeing in our patients is related to 9 11.
and i believe after appropriate consideration by niosh that it will ultimately be certifiable and
that these patients will get the care that they deserve there are people that are still sick and
there are people dying from the exposure related to the world trade center attacks but also know
there are programs such as this one out here helping the responders and to always support
efforts in regards to continuing providing benefits to all those that responded to be heroic
is not for free there's a piece of them that they left behind at 9 11.
and this is something that they live with