By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK- Two city lawmakers called on the federal government to appoint a health czar to oversee treatment and testing for workers and residents suffering from the effects of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
“As we speak, there is not one individual who is charged with coordinating the screening and the monitoring and the treatment of the thousands of people who’ve been affected adversely from Sept. 11,” said Congressman Vito Fossella, who joined Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and ground zero recovery workers at the trade center site on Wednesday.
“The 9/11 health czar would be directly responsible and accountable for the full range of the federal government’s response,” he said.
Maloney, a Manhattan Democrat, and Fossella, a Staten Island Republican, said thousands of ground zero workers are still sick more than four years after the terrorist attack.
“They worked on this pile behind us, and they were exposed to a cocktail of poisonous gases, toxins, pulverized cement and glass, and these particles are still in their bodies, still in their lungs, and many of them are becoming sick,” Maloney said.
They cited the recent deaths of three trade center recovery workers _ police Detective James Zadroga and emergency medical technicians Timothy Keller and Felix Hernandez _ as evidence of an ongoing crisis.
“Their deaths should be a clarion call to the entire Congress and the entire country to once and for all put somebody in charge to help those who need our help,” Fossella said.
In a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt signed by a bipartisan group of Congress members, they called the deaths “an ominous sign” and demanded to know the Bush administration’s plan for long-term monitoring and treatment of ground zero respondents and area residents.
A spokesman for HHS did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Wednesday.
Keller, who was 41, died on June 23 of heart disease complicated by bronchitis and emphysema, the Nassau County medical examiner’s office said.
Keller’s 19-year-old son, David Keller, said his father “shouldn’t have died.”
“He was absolutely perfectly healthy before 9/11 and after that, it just went downhill,” he said.
Hernandez, 31, died Oct. 23 of respiratory ailments, and Zadroga, 34, died Jan. 5. Family members and co-workers said he had contracted black lung disease and had high levels of mercury in his brain. Results of an autopsy aren’t available yet.