America
9/11 rescue workers face chronic illnesses
New York, April 18
The 9/11 attacks on the
World Trade Center in New York City in 2001 have left a legacy of
chronic ill health among emergency medical services workers, who came to
the rescue of the victims, says a new research.
Those who arrived in the immediate aftermath of the attacks are more prone to physical and mental ailments, the findings showed.
“Compared
with the workers who did not attend the aftermath of the World Trade
Center attacks, those who arrived earliest on the scene were at greatest
risk for nearly all the health conditions analysed,†the study
observed.
The health of 2,281 New York City Fire Department
emergency medical services workers deployed to the scene of the World
Trade Center attacks was tracked over a period of 12 years, from the
date of the attack on September 11, 2001, to the end of December 2013.
They
were almost four times as likely to have acid reflux and
rhinosinusitis, seven times as likely to have probable PTSD, and twice
as likely to have probable depression.
“And the more intense the
experience was at the time, the greater was the risk of a diagnosis of
acid reflux, obstructive airways disease, or rhinosinusitis and of
testing positive for PTSD, depression and harmful drinking,†the
researchers noted.
“The degree of ill health among workers
attending the scene was generally lower than that of a demographically
similar group of New York City fire-fighters, probably because of the
differences in tasks performed at the World Trade Center site,†the
authors said.
The findings were published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.