There are a few pieces of ground zero news today, so we're just going to resort to that old school blog fallback, the roundup:
The Air Back There
And the discussion of what exactly was in the air after 9/11 continues. Today the Times tackles the topic:
After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase in diseases that scar the lungs and reduce their capacity to take in and let out air.
The Fire Department tracked a startling increase in cases of a particular lung scarring disease, known as sarcoidosis, among firefighters, which rose to five times the expected rate in the two years after Sept. 11. Though that rate has declined, doctors worry that the disease may be lurking in other firefighters. Experts who regularly see workers who were at ground zero in the 48 hours after the towers' collapse expect monitoring to show many more cases of lung- scarring disorders among that group.
Slowing Down The Deutsche Deconstruction
The planned deconstruction of the former Deutsche Bank Building next month hit some bumps yesterday after an EPA official noticed that the debris from the building was not being properly cleaned before it was being removed from the site. Not a good idea since the building is apparently lousy with asbestos and other not fun things.
"This was certainly not the first time," a spokesman told the Times. "Now that it appears to be a pattern, we feel compelled to ask them to stop work until we can fix the problem in general."
There will be a meeting on Monday with workers to try to better explain proper cleaning procedure so that the deconstruction can continue again.
Cross Finds Home
Though initially headed for an unheralded existence in an airport hangar the steel beam cross at Ground Zero seems to have been saved. The Daily News is reporting that the icon will "most likely end up in the World Trade Center Memorial Museum."
Of course, it still needs to move off the site if anything is ever going to get built there. So instead of being shipped off to a hanger in JFK, the rumor now is that the cross will move one block north to rest in front of St. Peter's Church until the new Museum opens - supposedly on September 11, 2009.
Photograph of the cross in question from Farl's flickr stream.
