9/11 Environmental Concerns Lead to Student Health Advocacy

FIRST PERSON | My yearbook picture was taken on Sept. 10, 2001, and I rejected it immediately. It was only a couple of days into the school year at my downtown Manhattan high school, so I hadn’t assembled the “look” I was hoping to be remembered by. When I looked at the picture that would identify me for posterity, I looked goofy. Young. Naive. Also, perhaps because of the former, I looked fat. I didn’t want to be remembered as young and fat. I wanted to be remembered as a mature, sophisticated and a latent genius.

We weren’t supposed to have pictures taken twice unless something went drastically wrong on our first try, but nonetheless I stealthily began preparations to get my picture retaken the next day. That night, I set out my clothing options. That morning, Sept. 11, 2001, I obsessed over my hair, wore more makeup than usual and brought extra blush and lip gloss just in case. I wore new shoes (in case we needed to do a wide shot, of course) and a carefully picked out a shirt.

As it turned out, there were no pictures taken on the 11th. My high school, just three blocks from the World Trade Center, was evacuated before the photo company even arrived. That day, instead of showing off my new shoes, I walked 10 miles in them. I didn’t get stuck in the dust cloud, but the terrorists did give me blisters.

The rest of my health was not assigned a fate by Osama bin Laden — as much as it was by a panicking U.S. government that was eager to get business back to lower Manhattan and show how normal everything was. On Oct. 9, 2001, the powers that be sent Stuyvesant High School back to a contaminated school building next to the World Trade Center’s garbage barge, the floating transportation for debris from ground zero to the landfill in Staten Island.

That first day back, I walked toward school with the usual hoard of high-school students — some in dust masks, others shielding their mouths and noses with scarves. But most were just breathing in the crisp morning air as if they couldn’t smell the smoke. Bottlenecking began about 100 feet before Greenwich Street, usually an unremarkable stoplight. The view on Oct. 9 was different. To our left, two metal girders smoked atop a pile of rubble, perfectly framed by the buildings on either side — a show-stopping disaster-footage moment perfectly timed to remind us all what we were in for and what we had seen.

By that day in October, the excessive television coverage of the towers falling had interfered with much of my actual memory of the day. I did not just identify with running from the towers’ collapse, as I had in real life; I also pictured myself in the dust cloud and, somehow, simultaneously filming from a nearby roof and casually commenting on how “big” this event was. It allowed my own experience to drift into the realm of television, as if it were a distant action sequence, a memory that that I needn’t be trapped by.

Greenwich Street was unquestionably real, however. It reminded me that my memory of the actual day the towers fell wasn’t the only thing tying me to it. You can compartmentalize the past and remember it in whatever way makes it possible to go on. But the present is unquestionably yours. It can’t be mixed up with television and dismissed.

It took me several years to face the issues surrounding our return to the WTC site. But since 2006 I have tried to turn my lingering anxiety about nearly everything — including random violent acts, airplanes, terrorists, the moral certitude of U.S. government policy, and the ways in which my health was and will be impacted by the events of 9/11 — into political action. It has been the only way for me to use my fear productively.

I began to advocate for my fellow students, founding an organization called StuyHealth in 2006, right after James Zadroga, an NYPD responder, died of 9/11-related respiratory disease, the first of a long line to do so. StuyHealth focuses primarily on securing health monitoring and treatment for 9/11 survivors, specifically student 9/11 victims.

There are times that I feel silly advocating for alumni of the most prestigious public school in New York City, as if having the possibility of successful futures makes us invincible to poor health at the hands of terrorism and awful government policies. Nonetheless, the initial reason I got involved was that, because of a variety of factors, Stuyvesant needed a dedicated student advocate. We returned to lower Manhattan early — months earlier, in fact, than other schools from the area. Additionally, Stuyvesant alumni, as well as other high-school students from lower Manhattan, are now dispersed, with most of us now living outside of New York City. We are one of the only groups from the community for whom that is the case.

Most concerning, we are a population at a uniquely vulnerable age during which health insurance is not an assured thing. Meanwhile, the possibility that we will get sick (or already are sick, in some cases) from our exposure to months and months of smoke, debris, and contaminated airshafts will linger over us for decades to come.

StuyHealth began with a simple petition, requesting medical monitoring and treatment for student 9/11 victims. When my friends agreed to sign it, I passed it on to friends of friends and eventually acquaintances. Today, StuyHealth is a network of more than 400 people, most of whom are organized through Facebook and other social media outlets. Through it, we disseminate information about health-treatment options for young adults and the state of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (Zadroga Bill). We also advocate for former students when federal, state or local legislation, as well as the administering of any resources for 9/11 victims, allows for community input.

There are a lot of things we learned as a society on and after 9/11 about how to cope with major disasters. Many have been put to the test since with varied results. A major lesson, one that I fear was not widely received, was not to use public-school children in acts of political symbolism.

I now realize Stuyvesant students were far from invincible. Being such a visible school put us in a very vulnerable position after 9/11 because our return to lower Manhattan had symbolic value and, as a result, was rushed. Political expediency should never be enough when making a policy that impacts children. It should never be enough when dealing with disaster victims of any age. Really, it should never be enough. I hope that we learned that much.

I did, by the way, end up getting my yearbook photo retaken later in my senior year of high school. By then, there was no strategy for sneaking into the line. We all silently agreed that nobody would speak of the first session — that, in some way, we were all different people then anyway. And my new “look” for the year? A gaze comprised almost entirely of nervous expectancy. I don’t remember what I wore.


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