May 24, 2007 7:34 pm US/Eastern
Health-Related 9/11 Death Raises Questions
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
Family members of ground zero workers who died after they breathed in the toxic dust from the collapsed World Trade Center pushed Thursday to have their names included on the list of official victims that grew by one this week with the first post-Sept. 11, health-related death.
A New York attorney who died months after the terrorist attack of lung disease was declared a homicide victim and added to the death toll Wednesday, prompting confusion among Sept. 11 family members about what distinguished this death from the scores of others attributed to the aftermath of the attack.
The city medical examiner's office said Thursday that Felicia Dunn-Jones' death was the only Sept. 11-related fatality it has been asked to review and definitively link to the twin towers' collapse. In the future, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said the medical examiner will review any case if a family makes such a request.
"We certainly never turn anybody down," she said. That raises the prospect of an ever-increasing death toll nearly six years after the attacks, although it's up to Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch to decide whether to reclassify any deaths. .
"It's his definition that we will follow in this city," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
A police union leader said first responders who became ill and died after working at ground zero should also be added to the city's official victim list.
"First responders who expired as a result of their 9/11-related injuries should in fact be given that same honor," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
Those responders would include 34-year-old James Zadroga, a police detective who became sick and died of respiratory disease after working hundreds of hours in the ground zero cleanup. A New Jersey medical examiner has ruled his 2006 death to be "directly related" to his work at ground zero and exposure to trade center dust.
Zadroga's father said he wanted the city to review his son's case.
"I'm going to go through the process, definitely," said Zadroga. "All these guys were heroes there. They're all dying."
David Reeve, whose wife, Deborah, died last year of an asbestos-related cancer after working for months around ground zero and at the morgue, said he would like her to be recognized as an attack victim.
Attorneys wondered whether the official listing of Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old civil rights attorney who fled the collapsing towers from her office a block away, would make a difference in lawsuits accusing the city of negligence for failing to protect workers and residents from toxic air at the site.
"I have clients who are starting to call saying, should we dig up the bodies and have autopsies and have tissue samples," said David Worby, who represents 10,000 plaintiffs in a negligence lawsuit against the city. He said at least five of his clients have recently died of sarcoidosis, the same disease that killed Dunn-Jones.
Bloomberg said that Dunn-Jones' case is different than those of workers who toiled for months at the site.
"This one case ... the woman was killed as a result of being there at the time of the attack," he said. "Think of it as though somebody had gotten—had a beam fall on them and it just took a little while for them to succumb to their injury. Not somebody who was injured the next day if a beam fell on them during the cleanup. That's a very different situation."
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
