Occupational Diseases: Dust and Debris at World Trade Center Site to Blame for Illnesses?

A Mt. Sinai School of Medicine report found that 60% of the first responders to the World Trade Center scene and breathed contaminated dust and smoke at the site now suffer from respiratory problems. Attorney David Worby has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of about 9,000 Ground Zero rescue workers. To win the lawsuit, he will have to prove that the illnesses sustained by his clients were the consequence of their having breathed poisonous dust.

Dust, Debris at World Trade Center Site May Have Made Workers Sick

Worby says that he has "80 clients who have died, some from heart attacks, from pulmonary collapse, some from leukemia, some from cancers that are carcinogenically related." The lawsuit has been filed against the city of New York and its contractors. Time is of the essence in these lawsuits; exposed people are dying rapidly as a result of the illnesses from which they now suffer.