Marcos Segura is apparent in his Queens apartment. Segura formed at the WTC armpit for three canicule afterwards the attacks on 9/11 allowance with asbestos removal. He now suffers with breath problems. (Nov. 26, 2013) Photo Credit: Newsday / Alejandra Villa
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A few canicule afterwards the Twin Towers fell, Marcos Segura was at Ground Zero -- one of added than 2,300 asbestos workers alleged in to abolish the baneful dust absolute into surrounding buildings.
The Queens man put on a careful clothing and breathed through a appropriate mask, but it wasn't enough.
Despite their assurance accessory and training, Segura and added asbestos workers anguish up accepting apparent to a host of poisons afterwards 9/11. Abounding accept developed bloom problems, aloof like less-protected firefighters, badge and ironworkers, according to medical surveys.
And while Ground Zero asbestos-removal crews are now at blow of developing mesothelioma and added cancers, there's no agreement they'll accept their approaching medical bills covered.
Assured by federal admiral that the alfresco air was safe to breathe, Segura, now 61, said he and co-workers removed their masks during meal break or aback they absolved about the charcoal of the World Trade Center.
After work, he'd change into artery clothes, blind that they'd become contaminated. Volunteers and restaurants brought in chargeless food, and that, too, angry into a hazard, he said.
"They gave us food, sandwiches, craven -- aggregate in artificial bags, but you had to booty it out to eat it. And we alike ate it with bedraggled easily and all," Segura, a built-in of Ecuador, said through a translator. "We were burning dust in a way that scares me."
Dr. Jacqueline Moline of the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine interviewed asbestos workers while allowance advance Mount Sinai Hospital's World Trade Center bloom program. In abounding cases, she said, workers toiled afterwards able assurance gear, "or were not accomplished to use it properly."
"Personal careful accessories is acceptable but not perfect," she said.
Segura said he anon developed asthma symptoms. Today, he has astringent breath problems that accomplish sleeping difficult.
"There are moments aback I attempt to breathe," said Segura, who lives in Elmhurst with his wife and has two developed daughters. "I get bottleneck in my throat and nose, and I get a lot of headaches at night."
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'Forgotten ones'
Another above Ground Zero asbestos worker, Stalin Barcco Wong, 50, of Brooklyn, said asbestos was so blubbery in the air in the canicule afterwards 9/11 it was arresting to the naked eye.
"Usually asbestos is encapsulated in something; it's not aloof in the air," said Wong, additionally a built-in Ecuadorean.
Wong, who formed at Ground Zero for two months afterwards 9/11, accomplished affection that progressed from a adventurous to centralized bleeding. These illnesses, accompanying with a aback injury, accept kept him from alive aback 2003, he said.
Wong's breath is now broken by abiding atrium altitude and his assimilation -- like Segura's -- is busted by acerbic abatement -- ailments accepted amid aboriginal responders.
Far worse, bloom experts say the asbestos crews face a acute blow of cancer. Mesothelioma, about acquired by asbestos exposure, could bang continued afterwards the free, federally adjourned WTC bloom affairs runs out of money in 2016.
Two years ago, the September 11 Victim Compensation Armamentarium was reactivated to advice awning bread-and-butter losses and abroad medical costs incurred by workers, survivors and victims' relatives. But that armamentarium charge pay out all of its about $2.8 billion by 2017, admiral said. Afterwards then, it's ambiguous whether Congress will renew allotment for either program.
That troubles above asbestos workers, whose medical needs are covered for now.
"We are the best abandoned ones," Segura said. "Those who formed and bankrupt there."
"We accept to be taken affliction of, maybe alike like the badge and firefighters, because we were alive and apparent to the contagion aloof like those who were out to accompany adjustment or advice people."
Dangerous shortcuts
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The dangers of asbestos were well-documented continued afore terrorists addled on Sept. 11, 2001.
But anon afterward, a cardinal of federal and accompaniment safeguards for charwoman up chancy abstracts were waived due to the advancing accompaniment of emergency. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, backed by borough and business leaders, fatigued the imperatives of restarting Wall Artery and accepting the burghal aback to normal.
During that anarchic time, a abutment baton said he did his best to assure asbestos workers, but some, beneath burden to assignment swiftly, took assurance shortcuts.
"People initially were application asbestos masks, but they got chock-full so fast," said Francisco "Paco" Vega, business administrator of Heat & Frost Insulators Asbestos Workers Local 12A.
Unlike emergency responders, some asbestos crews spent years alive in the area, Vega noted. The best acknowledgment agitated the bloom risks.
"If accepted procedures had been acclimated rather than abeyant or disregarded, abounding of the workers would accept beat claimed careful accessories and been contrarily adequate from exposure," said Columbia University law assistant Michael Gerrard, an ecology law expert.
Interviews with about 2,000 out of the 2,332 accepted Ground Zero asbestos workers accept appear that hundreds weren't appropriately equipped, said Dr. Michael Crane, medical administrator of the WTC bloom affairs at Mount Sinai.
Crane estimates that at atomic 20 percent either didn't accept respirators or didn't abrasion them in the aboriginal few canicule afterwards 9/11, aback the bloom risks were highest.
Some administration additionally cut costs by hiring workers who were neither accomplished nor licensed, as is required, Crane said.
For abounding asbestos workers, accent barriers were addition problem.
They were either contempo immigrants or undocumented and had bound English accent skills, which would accept fabricated it difficult to accept assurance rules or admonition from supervisors. Surveys showed that about bisected of the asbestos workers batten Spanish as a aboriginal language; addition division Polish, Crane said.
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The U.S. Occupational Assurance and Bloom Administration, the advance bureau administering artisan assurance at Ground Zero, denies that asbestos workers were ignored.
"OSHA disputes any assuming that it alone any accumulation of workers, including non-English-speaking workers, during 9/11 accretion operations or at any added time," Edmund Fitzgerald, an OSHA spokesman, said in a statement.
The city's Department of Ecology Protection said the bureau has continued appropriate asbestos admonishing signs to be translated into a cardinal of languages, said Chris Gilbride, an bureau spokesman. Gilbride said the bureau additionally opened a hotline and set up a Ground Zero advice desk, forth with added agencies.
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'Want to break healthy'
Segura said the aggregate of anguish and dust that authentic Ground Zero were boxy to booty in the after-effects of the attacks.
He larboard afterwards a few days, alone to acknowledgment about six months after to apple-pie windows and roofs.
"That dust was still there, and as we formed to apple-pie it, it didn't amount how abundant baptize we put on it," he recalled. "You are consistently appropriation the dust and accepting splashed and wet with that water."
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Segura, who has not been able to assignment aback a 2003 architecture accident, worries that his chargeless medical affliction will end aback he needs it most.
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"I feel that as canicule canyon I accept added agitation breathing," he said. "All of us who formed there . . . we apperceive that we accept to die some day, but we appetite to break healthy."
With Víctor Manuel Ramos
Asbestos Half Mask
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