0:00

So on the morning of September

0:04

11th, 2001, I was going through my normal day—I

0:05

was sleeping.

0:07

I was stuck in traffic. I was stuck in

0:09

traffic. I was on the Long Island Expressway.

0:11

And then the plane went by, and

0:13

my windows shook—buh, buh, buh, buh—and I

0:16

was pissed. I was like, 'Why are these planes

0:18

flying so low and fast?'

0:19

And everything just stopped. Traffic just

0:21

stopped. And initially I said, 'Oh my God, what a terrible

0:23

accident. Let's get back in our cars and

0:25

get going again.'

0:26

Then the phone calls started, and the plane

0:28

had gone in, and then another plane. I actually went

0:31

up to my roof because I didn't quite believe

0:33

this. And I saw Tower

0:36

One, and I saw a lot of smoke.

0:37

I broke the law at that point and I

0:39

backed off the entrance ramp. Because

0:42

my employer had a training

0:46

center right there. Literally

0:49

within minutes of getting

0:51

there, the second tower imploded

0:53

and collapsed, and I saw it

0:56

fall. And I prayed.

0:58

I prayed. I said, 'If you

1:00

let me do something about this, I promise I'll do

1:02

it.'

1:03

My first opportunity I got myself down

1:05

there to 14th Street. When

1:07

they said, 'Go away. No

1:10

volunteers 'til Tuesday.' I was like, 'Nope, you

1:12

need me now. But you just don't know it yet.' So

1:15

that's how it began.

1:17

You're listening to Road to Resilience. I'm Jon

1:19

Earle. Today on the podcast you're going to hear from

1:21

two native New Yorkers who responded

1:24

to the attacks of 9/11 with amazing

1:26

dedication and grace. Bianca

1:28

Bob Miller is a writer, filmmaker

1:30

and musician who volunteered at Ground Zero for

1:33

nine months after the attacks. In

1:35

our interview, she talks about what it was like

1:37

to work down there, and she also goes

1:39

through some of the resilience strategies that workers

1:41

used to keep going, even as

1:43

they suffered from the toxic air and

1:45

the psychological trauma. Next

1:48

we'll hear from Dr. Michael Crane. He's

1:50

medical director of Mount Sinai's World

1:53

Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence. The

1:55

clinic provides healthcare to thousands of

1:57

9/11 responders. Dr. Crane told

1:59

me about what we know and, critically,

2:01

what we don't know, about 9/11-related illnesses.

2:05

And he reflected on what he's learned from

2:07

the brave women and men he's worked

2:09

with over the years. Here we go.

2:11

Howdy. My name is Bianca Bob. People

2:13

call me BBob, or Bianca, or

2:15

Bob. I'm a writer, filmmaker,

2:18

musician and I also teach a lot

2:20

of that stuff. And I'm a native New Yorker as well.

2:23

After she watched the towers fall from her rooftop,

2:26

Bianca went to Mount Sinai Hospital to visit her father.

2:28

He was recovering from surgery, completely unrelated.

2:31

Mount Sinai was bracing itself for a massive

2:34

influx of patients—an influx that never came,

2:36

by the way—from the Trade Center. And like

2:38

so many that day, Bianca wondered

2:40

how she could help.

2:41

So I asked a doctor, who was my dad's doctor,

2:43

if there was anything I could do to volunteer?

2:46

And she looked at me and said, 'There's not one

2:48

thing you can do.' And so I kind of

2:50

took that as a challenge, and I think that was the

2:52

beginning of me thinking I want to get down there.

2:55

But there was such an outpouring of support in the aftermath

2:57

of the attacks that aid organizations

3:00

completely stopped accepting volunteers.

3:02

That didn't stop Bianca, though.

3:03

So when I saw this sign outside of Salvation

3:06

Army and it said, 'No volunteers. Come

3:08

back Tuesday.' And I thought,

3:10

'Well no, I'm not coming back Tuesday.'

3:12

Tonight's the night!

3:14

I don't know why I thought that or why I thought

3:16

I'm the badass that you need. But I

3:18

just started picking up water

3:21

gallons that were on the street that they were loading

3:23

into a truck to bring downtown

3:25

. And then I rearranged all the sandwiches and I

3:27

went upstairs and made coffee for the sleeping

3:29

iron workers. So it was basically 18

3:31

hours later, I think they

3:33

realized that they weren't going to get rid of me, and it'd be

3:36

best if they let me have a

3:38

red badge and be part of this thing.

3:41

Tell us about the first time you were on the site.

3:44

Sure. The first night that I actually

3:46

got down to the site, I think it was Saturday.

3:48

And we get down there and everything is basically

3:51

sepia. There's no color.

3:53

It's very dusty. It's very—at one

3:56

time, it's like dark, but it's extremely bright

3:59

because New York filmmakers have

4:01

brought these gigantic lights to light

4:03

up everything. And everything was

4:05

on fire. And I'm looking at

4:07

this thinking, 'Oh my God, this is just hell.

4:10

This is unbelievable that this is in my town.'

4:12

I had no idea what was north or south at that point.

4:15

And up to my truck comes this little tiny Italian

4:17

fire guy, a "volley," a volunteer

4:19

firefighter, with a big tray of lasagna.

4:22

And he shoves it up in my face and says, "Hey, you hungry?

4:24

Come on, let's eat!" I'm like, 'Only the

4:27

Italians would want to eat in the middle of

4:29

hell, and bring lasagna to

4:31

the World Trade Center. But it made

4:33

me laugh, and that was like the first time I had laughed in like

4:35

a week. And so

4:38

it felt weirdly like home,

4:41

that there was some

4:43

hope in the middle of

4:45

chaos.

4:45

Sounds like there were a lot of things that were

4:47

surreal.

4:47

The whole thing was surreal. Definitely. And

4:49

it's like—even driving through it and standing right

4:51

on top of what used to be Tower One, you still don't

4:54

get it.

4:56

Say more.

4:56

The scale of it and the physics of

4:58

what happened in the

5:00

such a short time. The buildings came down in

5:02

like 10 and 11 seconds.

5:05

And what was found, what we found, in

5:08

the months that followed, like intact

5:11

soda bottles in the basement and

5:14

gigantic steel beams that were compressed

5:17

into things you can hold in your hands. Just tiny

5:20

remnants. So the physics of it

5:22

was very bizarre and the suddenness. Like

5:25

there was no going back. This thing

5:28

had happen and maybe the doctor was right.

5:30

There wasn't much you could do in

5:32

that moment. But in the nine months that followed there,

5:34

I felt there was a lot that could be

5:37

done.

5:37

Tell us more about your work, your day-to-day work

5:39

on the site. What did a

5:41

typical day look like?

5:43

The first couple months, I think the first

5:45

two months, we were out in the middle of the highway

5:48

at like a MASH tent giving out

5:50

candy and food and supplies and

5:52

boots and socks. And then we

5:54

moved into the big, what they called the "Taj

5:56

Mahal" tent. And at that

5:59

point , we had Gators, which again are the

6:01

John Deere little 4x4s as they call them, kind

6:03

of a pickup truck but squat. So

6:06

that was my job to go around, bring coffee, bring

6:08

supplies and drop off and pick up people.

6:11

You were on the site for about nine months.

6:13

What motivated you and other volunteers

6:15

and first responders to keep coming back and work so

6:17

hard?

6:19

I think the goal was we wanted to

6:21

make as many recoveries of people and

6:23

remains possible. And I think

6:25

we also felt, and we were part

6:27

of a gigantic community and a big team.

6:30

Because it was a lot of moving parts. It wasn't just firefighters,

6:33

it wasn't just cops, it was

6:35

iron workers and sanitation people and volunteers

6:38

from Canada and people

6:40

from all over the world. So it was community

6:43

spirit, and we felt like we were doing some

6:45

good in the face of horribleness.

6:48

So that's what

6:50

kept me going. There were times when I was like, 'Okay, I cannot

6:52

do this anymore because it's just

6:55

too hard.' And it's emotionally hard.

6:57

I think part of being on the site

7:00

as a driver, I got to see a lot of stuff

7:02

that I had to protect myself from, and

7:05

I made a conscious choice to do that

7:07

because I knew if I kept seeing recoveries

7:10

that I would not be able personally

7:13

to stay as long as I did.

7:15

You're talking about recovery of remains.

7:15

Yes, recovery of

7:18

remains. We always

7:21

kind of knew when this was happening a lot

7:24

of times. And I would go on the honor guard,

7:26

but if I knew that they were doing a recovery,

7:29

like, say, over there, I would make

7:31

it my business to turn my back

7:33

and not witness that because that's

7:35

how I needed to

7:38

protect myself.

7:38

What were some of the other strategies that you employed

7:40

or saw other people using?

7:42

I think comedy, definitely

7:45

comedy and humor. There was a lot of dark

7:47

humor on the site because it was a dark

7:49

place to be. There was

7:51

that and I did a lot of writing

7:54

when I was on the site. Every time I went down on

7:56

the subway with my little hard hat I

7:58

would write.

7:59

What sort of things would you write?

8:00

Just a kind of an account of what I saw

8:03

and what happened and names. Because

8:05

I know that I was watching

8:07

history unfolding here, and I didn't

8:09

want to forget it. And I didn't want

8:12

to forget the actually good moments

8:14

that happened down there, and the

8:17

beautiful moments between people.

8:19

So that's what I would write about.

8:20

Is there one that comes to mind, a beautiful moment?

8:22

Hmm, there's so many. It's really hard.

8:26

It's kind of like, I just can get glimpses

8:28

right now. Like I love the grandmother

8:31

from Florida who drove up in her little Winnebago

8:33

and somehow got past the National Guard

8:35

and like parked her gear

8:39

and made cookies for us and soups. And

8:41

then the awesome New

8:43

Orleans people who came up with their gumbo and their jambalaya

8:46

in the truck and just fed us and loved

8:48

us and beaded us. They made

8:50

it like Mardi Gras. Because, you know,

8:53

let me reframe this. In the

8:55

middle of winter, we had a mild winter, but it kinda sucked

8:57

to be down there when it was all—everything was wet,

9:00

everything was cold. You didn't know what you're covered

9:02

in, and it could get very weird and lonely.

9:05

And you don't know what you're driving over either. You

9:07

really don't, because the roads keep changing. It's

9:10

either really blindingly bright or

9:12

really dark, and so it's

9:15

disorienting. But when the

9:17

jambalaya truck pulls up, it's

9:19

a reminder of life. It's like here

9:21

comes some life into the tent where everybody

9:23

is just trying

9:26

to get by.

9:27

This is a big one.

9:28

Go for it.

9:30

How do you feel that working down there changed

9:33

you as a person?

9:34

Hm. I think it made

9:36

me more compassionate and

9:39

empathetic on one level towards

9:41

people. And also

9:44

lowered my tolerance for BS.

9:48

Say more.

9:48

All that

9:51

stuff in the same cup, right? I

9:54

can be much more patient and think

9:56

about people in a more rounded

9:58

way. And think about—Elaine Stritch

10:01

says it best. Elaine Stritch said, 'Everybody's

10:03

got a sack of rocks.' Right?

10:05

Yeah. It's like, everybody's got baggage.

10:06

Exactly. So

10:10

maybe the goal is, find

10:12

out what the sack of rocks is. Listen to what

10:14

they say about it and help people.

10:17

You know, there's a lot of people who helped

10:19

people down there. And that's all we could

10:21

do. So back to the original doctor

10:23

who, I think, was trying to protect me by saying,

10:25

'There's nothing you can do.' Well,

10:28

she was wrong. There's plenty that we did

10:30

and that could be done, and that everybody has

10:32

something to offer. So

10:35

I think that was amplified for

10:37

me by 9/11. And

10:41

also much less tolerance for people

10:43

who don't treat each other

10:47

correctly. For people who lie

10:49

, people who don't add to

10:51

the good. I tend

10:54

to not identify them as food. I

10:56

just keep walking. And I think

10:58

I would have given them more truck before

11:00

9/11.

11:02

So what are the ways that you integrate those lessons

11:05

into your everyday life?

11:07

Well, I've continued volunteering

11:09

since then. I got the bug, right?

11:11

And so that's part of my life. I

11:14

took the FEMA training to be

11:16

a CERT member, which is community emergency

11:18

response team. I also

11:20

joined the Medical Reserve Corps as one of

11:22

the non-medical people, because

11:24

someone's gotta hold the clipboard while they're doing CPR.

11:27

That would be me. So volunteering

11:31

that way has been really helpful and

11:34

fulfilling to me. And it's

11:36

definitely a big part of my life. I still do

11:38

a lot of things with my 9/11 people, my

11:42

9/11 community. I

11:45

try to help people get into the health program

11:47

who maybe didn't get checked and

11:50

maybe should , and that's not just people who

11:52

were down there but people who lived there, like

11:54

residents and students.

11:56

It's important that everybody gets checked. That's why

11:59

we went for years

12:01

to Congress to make sure that this was

12:03

a reality and a safe, legal

12:06

and guaranteed thing

12:08

for all of us. So I'm big

12:11

advocate for that.

12:12

I want to back up to

12:16

the initial days afterwards. When did you first realize

12:19

that the site was dangerous?

12:19

The minute I got

12:22

there. It just wasn't right.

12:26

I think we all knew this. We wanted

12:28

to believe that it was going to be okay because we kept on

12:31

being told that it was.

12:33

But the smell, the stuff in the

12:35

air. You would see the little maps they

12:37

did of , 'Oh the air is good

12:39

today! Look at this little map we did! And look at

12:42

these air filters that we've got over

12:44

here! Pay mo attention to the man behind the

12:46

curtain.'.

12:49

What did it smell like?

12:49

It smelled like Band-Aids. A lot

12:52

of times it smelled like

12:54

Band-Aids. Cement-y, dusty,

12:56

and like burning plastic. So

12:59

it was a big mélange of stuff. And, yeah, I think

13:02

we wanted to believe it was safe, but

13:04

I think in our guts we knew it wasn't. But what are you

13:07

going to do? You

13:09

know? Are we going to walk away from it?

13:11

Did you see people exhibiting

13:13

symptoms? You know, coughing and other things?

13:14

Oh my God, yes. People were

13:16

coughing and clearing their throats and the

13:19

eye problems and the nose problems and the

13:21

stress problems. 'Cause there's a lot of

13:23

stress.

13:23

You wanted to be careful about what you say about your

13:27

own health. Is there anything that you could share with

13:29

us about what you experienced

13:31

then or since then?

13:32

I struggle sometimes with throat

13:34

clearing and some breathing issues and some

13:37

sinus stuff. But in the big picture,

13:39

I think I'm actually healthier now

13:41

than I maybe was back in

13:43

the day when it happened .

13:45

How's that?

13:46

I think because I'm managing the

13:49

sometimes and I'm being more

13:52

mindful about how I live

13:54

and my choices. So

13:58

I'm also actively of

14:00

fan of stress management.

14:02

What are some of your techniques for managing stress?

14:04

Mindfulness, meditation, definitely a

14:07

breathwork. And, yeah, It's

14:09

been helpful. And so has dancing.

14:12

I think it's the best stress-reducer. Even

14:14

if it's stupid dancing, like

14:16

stupid wedding dancing. I'll take it. I'll

14:18

take it. It works!

14:21

Bianca Bob Miller is a writer, filmmaker

14:24

and musician here in New York. Next

14:26

we'll hear from another New Yorker, Dr.

14:28

Michael Crane. As you may recall, Dr.

14:31

Crane is medical director at Mount Sinai's World

14:34

Trade Center Health Program Clinic. The clinic provides free medical monitoring,

14:37

treatment, mental health services, and

14:39

benefits counseling to about 22,000 9/11

14:42

responders. It's the largest of its

14:44

kind. When we last heard from

14:46

Dr. Crane at the very top of the episode,

14:48

he was standing on a rooftop in Long Island City

14:50

watching the second tower collapse in the distance.

14:53

Back then, Dr. Crane was chief medical

14:55

officer at a major utility company in

14:57

the area. He and other occupational

15:00

health specialists recognized immediately

15:02

that the air at Ground Zero was potentially

15:05

dangerous. Here's Dr.

15:07

Crane .

15:07

Looking at it come down, you

15:09

first figured that it's all gonna be metal

15:11

fragments and fiberglass and probably asbestos

15:13

and other stuff.

15:16

The first thing that happened, though, is we

15:18

realized it was still on fire.

15:20

So that is a whole different kettle of

15:22

fish. You have not only the particles,

15:24

but you have gases and

15:26

vapors and new combustion

15:29

products which are known to be very, very

15:32

dangerous as well. Polycyclic aromatic

15:34

hydrocarbons, for example. I mean, just

15:37

to be clear about this, nobody knows

15:39

what was in that dust cloud to this day. Nobody.

15:42

Because nobody has a measurement of it. And

15:44

so when you see those pictures of those people

15:46

wandering through what

15:49

looks like the thickest fog that London ever

15:51

had or any city ever had—which is really the dust

15:53

particles—covered in that stuff, that

15:55

is an unknown exposure. We

15:59

don't know what got into those people that day or what they breathed or what

16:03

they swallowed, even with our responders and

16:05

especially not the people who were just

16:07

walking along. So it's a scary thought

16:10

and it remains scary. And

16:12

it's the reason why we at

16:14

the programs are really pushing

16:16

for as complete an

16:19

ascertainment of this population as we

16:21

possibly can get.

16:23

When did the first symptoms

16:26

appear?

16:26

Oh, the symptoms were

16:29

immediate. People choked on that dust. They

16:31

were coughing and hacking. But the first guy

16:33

I saw, roughly

16:36

two weeks into the response, was

16:39

a young utility worker.

16:41

He had been working down there pretty much the

16:43

whole time. He had started to get this cough.

16:46

And I think I gave him some medication

16:49

and he responded to it, and I said, 'I think you're getting asthma.

16:51

Let me get to the pulmonary doctor tomorrow.

16:53

I think you're going to be fine.' I'm doing my doctor stuff. And

16:57

he said, "You know what, doc? Thanks,

17:02

but no thanks. I'm going back to work." And I said, "You're not going back to work." "Doc. Doc, let me

17:07

tell you something. Some

17:09

of them are family's in there ." You know, it wasn't—this was

17:12

not business with him. This was not job

17:14

with him. This was a personal thing to him, and I

17:17

wasn't going to get in

17:19

his way.

17:19

Is there a person, when you think

17:21

about the heroism of that effort that their story

17:23

jumps to mind that you could

17:27

share with us?

17:28

My personal hero. My personal

17:30

hero is Dr. Dave Prezant, medical

17:32

director of the fire department. He raced

17:34

down there with all those guys. He was

17:36

buried when the towers collapse.

17:38

He was pulled out and

17:41

he immediately went to work

17:43

establishing superb healthcare and evaluation

17:45

for his troops, for

17:47

all those firemen. He wrote

17:49

up the experience of the treatment of those

17:51

guys, the welfare of those guys, the healthcare of

17:55

those guys, and published an

17:58

incredible paper in the New England Journal of Medicine

18:00

, which basically created the structure

18:03

and framework for everything to come in the World Trade Center

18:05

Health Program. Dave

18:07

is just a hell of a man and another one of

18:10

those heroes working, working,

18:13

working without regard for himself for

18:16

others.

18:16

We know

18:18

a lot more now than we did

18:21

in the months and even the first few

18:23

years after the attacks. What

18:26

can we say about where we sit now in 2019.

18:28

What percentage of the 95,000

18:32

have an illness related to their work there?

18:34

That's a

18:36

great question. So if you don't mind, I'll

18:38

answer in slightly different way just because I

18:40

know probably more about the

18:43

Sinai population. So here with

18:46

our roughly 20,000

18:48

people , I believe we have something

18:51

like, I guess at this point

18:53

it's between like 9,000 and 10,000

18:55

of them who have

18:58

some World Trade Center-related condition.

19:01

So that's what

19:03

say 45, 40,

19:04

50 percent, something like

19:06

that.

19:07

I've read about some

19:09

of the most common illnesses.

19:11

There's GERD, there's sinusitis.

19:14

Can you explain to me what it means to live

19:17

with, say, GERD? What does that

19:19

feel like?

19:20

It ain't so

19:22

nice. So a lot of times

19:25

heartburn is actually

19:28

a much more pronounced condition

19:31

called reflux, which occurs to you

19:33

at night. And you're lying there

19:35

sound asleep, and the stuff,

19:37

acid, refluxes

19:39

up from your stomach into your

19:42

airways and passages, and you wake up feeling like

19:44

you can't breathe. It's terrifying.

19:47

Yeah. What do we know about the

19:49

connection between working at Ground Zero

19:51

and cancer right now?

19:53

It's a

19:56

mixed picture right now. We

19:59

know that certain

20:01

of the cancers are significantly increased

20:04

in some of our populations. Those increases

20:06

tend to be small, but

20:09

definitely you see some spikes in some of

20:11

the cancers in a variety of the

20:13

papers you see a spike in prostate here, you see

20:16

a spike in one of the survivor groups

20:18

in brain cancers. So you

20:20

will see a variety

20:23

of responses that suggest strongly

20:25

that something's going on. Dave Prezant's

20:27

fire department paper showed an increase

20:29

in all cancers

20:31

across the fire department when you looked

20:34

at—.

20:34

A dramatic increase?

20:35

No, it's low. They're all low.

20:37

And that's the difference between

20:39

what we see in the media and what

20:41

we deal with here. So

20:44

the headline in The Post is cancer,

20:46

you know, and there's the picture , the terrible,

20:49

terrible picture of that heroic police

20:53

officer sitting there with Jon Stewart, and

20:56

it is heartrending to see

20:58

that. And it's real, and he's really

21:01

dying, and likely that is due

21:03

to World Trade. But that

21:07

doesn't seem to be happening, yet.

21:11

It may be in a statistically significant

21:14

amount in some of the population

21:16

for some of the cancers, but it's

21:18

not a huge increase

21:21

in cause of death. When you look

21:23

at how we're doing our across

21:25

the board as far as living and dying,

21:28

the responders are still doing a little bit better

21:30

than the normal population. They're still

21:32

healthy workers and they're carrying that

21:35

effect forward .

21:36

Does that surprise you?

21:37

No, no. It is the paradox

21:39

of most occupational

21:41

medicine studies that healthy workers

21:43

are healthy and look healthy even

21:46

after the exposure.

21:47

But even that this group that from the very beginning

21:49

was exposed something very dangerous, that almost 20

21:51

years later, they're still doing

21:53

pretty good.

21:55

Relatively speaking. I

21:58

think in all of this, we—officially,

22:03

I—have to be cautious, and I have

22:05

to stick with what I know from the

22:07

science. And if it's not significantly

22:09

elevated, I have to live with that.

22:13

However , I also know as

22:15

a person who's looked at a

22:17

lot of studies and a

22:19

lot of exposures that this will

22:21

start to be magnified

22:24

the further out we go. And just the

22:26

example that always comes up is asbestos.

22:29

Asbestos just sits there and it's in

22:31

your lungs and you don't even

22:33

know from it. And then 25,

22:36

30 years later you

22:38

are there with a lung cancer, and people are like, 'What? That

22:40

guy never smoked. Why did that happen?' Now

22:43

again, it doesn't happen in great numbers.

22:46

Even lung cancer, and you think

22:48

about it compared to heart disease and

22:50

other things that kill us, is a relatively

22:53

rare disease. But

22:56

in a population like this of

22:58

healthy workers we're

23:00

going to see it at a higher rate than

23:02

we would have seen it without World Trade. Unfortunately, I know

23:06

that in my bones.

23:08

Yeah. When are you

23:10

expecting that? How many years from now do

23:12

you think we might start to see that?

23:14

The number for me has always been past

23:16

20.

23:17

So is we're creeping up on 20 now—.

23:19

Yes, we'll start seeing it now.

23:21

I mean , again, it's not going to be all of

23:24

a sudden we're seeing all these positive X-rays, but it's

23:26

certainly going to become a more significant

23:30

morbidity for our population. By

23:32

the way, I think we can cure a

23:34

lot of those. I think we've

23:36

improved with our screening. I think

23:39

if we stay on our program,

23:41

if we use our technology,

23:43

if we use our new drugs,

23:46

if we use our new diagnostic techniques,

23:48

I think we may be able to lick this a lot. But

23:51

we really have to be on our toes

23:53

now and going forward for that one. We

23:59

have the ability to beat it. We

24:01

just got to have the opportunity. I'm jumping

24:04

around the topics now, but we know

24:06

roughly the number

24:09

of responders, we know—.

24:10

About 100,000.

24:10

We know pretty well who was there when.

24:15

And the thing

24:17

that's a concern is the folks

24:19

who were living there. To me

24:22

from my side of this desk,

24:25

that's a completely unknown variable. They estimate about the

24:27

total size of population that was

24:30

exposed is about 400,000 living there , working there

24:32

, going to school

24:34

there, et cetera

24:37

. And I'm still not sure about the

24:39

number of people who were

24:41

really dramatically exposed, like in that dust cloud, in

24:44

that group on that day. And I think

24:46

we're just learning about that now. Just

24:48

to go again on another tangent.

24:50

It's just today, recently—where are

24:53

we, 2019?—that

24:57

there's a study where they're

24:59

really looking in detail about the kids who were in school,

25:01

and about what's happening with them. And

25:05

that is really critical. These are young

25:07

people now who are having their careers,

25:10

having their own children. We really need to

25:13

know more.

25:13

So I want to turn now to

25:16

your experience of working with this population that I know you have

25:18

a ton of—.

25:20

I don't like them. [laughs] Jesus, these people.

25:20

Bunch of jerks. Bunch of self-centered jerks. [laughs]

25:20

My God

25:29

! I've been working

25:31

here—.

25:31

And you've been here now for

25:33

—.

25:33

So I've been here at Mount

25:36

Sinai since 2006, so I'm

25:39

in year 14. Which is amazing 'cause

25:42

I'm only 32 years old.

25:43

And getting younger.

25:44

Thank you. Thank you. You're beginning to understand

25:47

me. This is the greatest

25:49

honor of my life. There is not a day

25:52

when I come in here and I don't

25:54

either experience something or meet

25:57

someone who makes

26:00

me feel that everything

26:02

I do is worthwhile. And

26:05

that's no joke. It's

26:08

no exaggeration. It's true for so many

26:10

of the

26:12

people. They are responders.

26:15

They are this altruistic

26:17

bunch of people. It is

26:22

a remarkable population and it's a

26:25

joy. It

26:27

truly is.

26:27

What have you learned

26:31

from them?

26:31

Ah, what have I not learned from

26:34

them? I've learned that generosity is a

26:37

virtue. I've learned

26:40

that selflessness is often hiding

26:43

in big, burly, scary looking people

26:45

who are really tough, but

26:47

very, very, very

26:50

altruistic. And I know I've learned

26:53

what courage is. I've learned what a hero

26:56

is. And it's a

26:58

lesson I get every day .

27:02

Sounds like you'll be doing this work for

27:05

the rest of your career.

27:08

So the health program

27:10

was renewed for 75

27:15

years about a couple of years ago. I calculated that when

27:17

it ran out, I would be 138 years

27:19

old. That'll be roughly the time I retire.

27:22

Thanks again

27:24

to Bianca and Dr. Crane and to

27:26

everybody out there who lives by the

27:28

words, "never forget." In

27:30

the show description, you'll find a link to Mount

27:33

Sinai's World Trade Center Health Program Clinical

27:35

Center of Excellence. We'll also include links to

27:37

some resources for responders that Bianca

27:39

recommended to us. That's all

27:41

for this episode of Road to Resilience. We're

27:43

a production of the Icahn School of Medicine

27:46

at Mount Sinai. This episode was produced by Katie

27:48

Ullman and me, Jon Earle. Justin

27:50

Gunn and Matt Kozar produced video for the episode.

27:53

Our executive producers are Dorie

27:55

Klissas and Lucia Lee. Help

27:57

us bring you more great stories by filling

27:59

out the listener survey in the show notes.

28:01

And if you enjoyed the podcast, please rate

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wherever you're listening. From all of us here,

28:08

thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time.