June 24, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Am I dying?
I will now scuttle any chance at a lucrative legal settlement by announcing that, just like everyone else who worked at Ground Zero, I didn't wear a mask. I mean, I did, sometimes. But the respirators they gave us were cumbersome, hard to use, obstructed your vision, had a tendency to slip off, and gave me rashes where they touched my skin. I wore a mask only when I went onto The Pile, and not then once the rubble had been cleared. And frankly, I was unusual in wearing one on the site; I did so only because I'm asthmatic.
So it's very possible I'll die of asbestosis, especially since I was an intermittently heavy smoker from 1990-1999. It's not really worth thinking about, as I can't do anything about it. Nonetheless, I occasionally have uncomfortable visions of myself in forty years, playing the Supporting Old Person in someone's movie as I slowly waste away from mesothelioma.
I ought, therefore, to be sympathetic to complaints that The Gummit Lied to Us. And I would, if they weren't so hysterical. Asbestosis and mesothelioma are associated with years of exposure, most often along with heavy smoking. There is little known risk from transient exposure, like having some asbestos dust, along with 80 zillion other pieces of pulverised concrete, in your house for a few days. The government imposes stringent standards on asbestos removal because construction workers do it over and over, not because a single strand can kill you.
Similarly, I find the claims of elevated disease from people who were blocks and blocks from the site completely unbelievable. I'm an asthmatic who worked on the site for a year. They were exposed to dust for a couple of hours. I'm sure they coughed a lot in the days that followed. But I doubt they're now substantially impaired.
The difference is, I know my lung capacity readings, because the nice doctors do them every few years. I also have my weekly peak flow meter readings (yes, Dr. Raskin, I know I should be doing them every day). So I have scientific proof that after a year on the site, I'm--exactly as unhealthy as I was before.
I'm not surprised that among all the non-asthmatics who are suddenly being asked for subjective recollections of their previous lung health, and being shown respirometer readings showing that their upper lung function is only 93% of normal!, we're suddenly discovering a lot of new respiratory disease. Mild asthma is surprisingly unnoticeable. If I hadn't smoked like a fiend in college, I probably never would have been diagnosed.
Posted by Jane Galt at June 24, 2007 3:34 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksone thing you see over and over again when ever there is a possible legal settlement is the overshot. It's like selling a chair at a garage sale... you want $10 so you ask for $20 and then haggle. The catch with health is that it doesn't really go back to original. It may get close... but then we are going from the general to the individual here aren't we? Bronkaid Mist and Primatene Mist are what everyone used to use over the counter, but after 25 years of use? Yeah, my doc tells me my lungs are scarred, and my capacity doesn't go up much even with more modern precriptions. On a good day I can punch 600, but mostly 450-500. I am just one of those people that in a clinical trial are an exception, a statistical improbability. So too for the person who was 3 blks. away but is having significant problems from a short term dosage of whatever-in-hell that dust was. The toxicity of the mix probably could be studied, but you can't really begin to correlate the problems until a significant number die, and you can do a post- on their lungs. Each individual will have their own reaction, so saying it takes years? perhaps for some and not others. My doc once had the oxcimiter on my finger and his assistant came in with heavy perfume. The oxy dropped like a rock, and he had never seen that before, but that didn't make it impossible.
So the catch in all this is trying to figure out as a group or class what is the threshold of damage to accept. Im my mind, I think the class should be status, but then damage should be figured out on the individual basis, and assessed. That may not be legally possible, but that is the only way to know if a person some blocks away who was in the dust for a day, should be compensated much or little, compared to someon closer, who already was suseptible to lung damage... IMHO...
Hope you're not a g-zero poster child in 40 years... I hope no-one is. But sometimes even when you do everything according to plan and recommendation... it turns out everyone is wrong.
You'd be surprized at how many people die from mild asthma every year. They certainly are.
I hope you have as healthy a life as your genes and lifestyle allow you to. It was presumptuous of the powers that be to try and tell folks that working in an environment with the very small particle size is anything but terrible for lungs.
Asbestosis is one potential result in breathing in 1 micron-sized particles. However, if very fine dust includes significant (greater than 30%) silica, then silicosis is another potential result down the road. Both are particularly gruesome results. I hope your early heavy-smoking does not trigger the latent potential of lung tissue to become cement and inflexible - a feeling of continually being unable to catch your breath...an extremely scary situation, as asthma sufferers know.
You have my best wishes, and hope your body moves are more Matrix-like, than target-like, dear lady.
You're lucky; at least they gave you a mask. Pentagon employees (myself included) went right back to work on the 12th and never altered their routines subsequently. Up on the D and E rings of the 5th floor, the corridors ran all the way around to the points where they had collapsed, with only police line tape and jersey barriers to keep the interested out. The place burned for several days and you could smell the jet fuel and heaven only knows what else until you got used to it and stopped noticing.
Yes, you are dying and so is everyone else. Healthy people are just dying slower than others.
Why would smoking increase your chance of getting asbestosis?
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