On September 11, 2001, an act of terrorism took place in New York City on the World Trade Center. As a result of this, many lives were lost and many people were injured. This is completely at fault of the US government. Not only were the people that were inside the World Trade Center affected, but bystanders, and even the first responders were killed, injured, or got sick. The federal government should definitely compensate the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One reason is because healthcare usage rose above expected levels in months following the attacks. Another reason is that there were a high amount of deaths by many different ways of first responders. A third reason is that it t wasn’t until June 2002 that the air quality around the site returned to normal, so many normal people just going about their day have experienced health problems since the attacks.
A study in the September issue of the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism provided a picture to date of healthcare usage in the New York City region in the months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While it decreased in the first three weeks after the attacks, health care usage increased a significant amount during the following months. Following the declines of health care usage in September, there was a huge increase in healthcare claims in the remaining months of 2001. The increase was greatest among those living within 10 miles of the World Trade Center. A doctor (Dr. Buehler) had an explanation for this: “The particular cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and skin diseases we examined are known to have a link to stress.” This shows that victims of the 9/11 attacks are now hurt, and paying extra for health care.
According to the World Trade Center Responder Fatality Investigation Program, there were 614 deaths to first responders. These deaths ranged from both traumatic deaths to death caused by illness. Of the 614 deaths, 146 were traumatic, 454 were caused by illness, and 2 were undetermined. The traumatic deaths were caused by exposure to harmful substances or environments, transportation incidents, fires and explosions, and assaults and other violent acts. There was a much longer list of what the deaths by illness were caused by. Some examples are neoplasms, illness in the nervous system, the circulatory system, and the respiratory system. None of these deaths were at the fault of the first responders.
When the Twin Towers collapsed, thousands of tons of toxic debris containing known carcinogens were released into the air of New York City. It wasn’t until June 2002 that the air quality near the site returned to the level it was at prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not only were first responders victims of the terrible air quality, but normal people that live, work, or go to school around the site were victims too. A study in April 2010 from the New England Journal of Medicine found that residents, students, and office workers in Lower Manhattan and nearby Chinatown have experienced health problems since the attacks. Several deaths have also been linked to the toxic dust. Once again, none of this is at fault of the citizens.
Supposedly, two “major” medical studies have failed to find significant increases in deaths or cancer among people exposed to dust from the World Trade Center according to the Associated Press. Throughout the article, the only type of people mentioned in these studies was firefighters. Firefighters were definitely not the only victims to these 9/11 attacks. Also, the results of the studies were inconclusive, there were not clear results that there was not a big jump in cancer or deaths. Not only that, but also stated in the article was a quote by Dr. James M. Mellus, which proved a very good point. “Are we going to wait until we have definitive evidence, which could be 20 or 30 years? Are we going to say, decades from now, ‘Yeah, you did get cancer from the World...