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9/11 Museum Downplays Link Between 9/11 and First Responders’ Health Issues


August 11, 2014 | Sophie Weiner

More complaints have emerged about the 9/11 Museum at Ground Zero reports the Daily News. First responders and their families were outraged to discover several explanatory panels in the museum that cast doubt on the connection between air quality at Ground Zero following the attacks and the first responders’ subsequent health issues.

Kimberly Flynn and James Melius — chairpeople of committees formed after the Zadroga Act was passed in 2011 to ensure health coverage for victims of the toxicities — wrote the museum head last week: “It is inexcusable that the museum would project skepticism about the link between health impacts and WTC exposures, despite overwhelming medical evidence.”

The upsetting wording of the panel stated that the Zadroga Act provides medical treatment “for those with health conditions claimed to be related to the World Trade Center Disaster.”

“The word ‘claimed’ implies doubt on causation and contradicts the well-established fact that severe widespread health impacts have resulted from exposures to 9/11 smoke and dust,” Flynn and Melius write. They note federal programs are offering care to 67,000 people, including 2,800 cancer victims, whose illnesses are certified as tied to the attacks.

Another panel refers to dust from the site as “hazardous” in quotation marks. Melius and Flynn are demanding that the panels be rewritten. Flynn wrote that survivors “have to read on a museum wall that they only claim they are sick from breathing 9/11 toxins. That is just completely unacceptable. It’s an insult. It’s a lie. And the museum has to fix it now.” (Photo: @kellyhafermann)