9/11 Health Watch

There are many numbers inextricably linked with the morning of September 11th. There are the 2,977 people who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There are the 343 FDNY members, 23 NYPD members, and 37 Port Authority police officers who died trying to save lives. There are the 100 days that the stubborn fires burned beneath the rubble at Ground Zero. The enormity of these numbers is still hard to grasp, writes Lukas Alpert, but they remain fixed. One measure continues to grow: the number of people getting sick. In the 25 years that have passed since that day, 154,700 people have entered the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides care and health monitoring to people who were exposed to toxic air after 9/11, many of whom have come down with illnesses linked to the attack. Of those, 9,224 have died. Every year, the number of sick people rises. “After the attack, government officials were eager to get the city back to work,” writes Alpert. But today, so many years later, “it is clear that the decisions to return the city to normal as quickly as possible have had the opposite impact, prolonging the tragedy of September 11 for many of us.” Read Lukas Alpert on the ongoing health crisis born from the aftermath of 9/11: nymag.visitlink.me/qOVL-f