The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 179

Steve Cuozzo points out something that should have been obvious. The only reason that these new remains were discovered was because of rebuilding at Ground Zero required excavation and clearing of the section where remains are now being discovered.

Victims' families have every right to be appalled that their loved ones' remains somehow went undiscovered for five years. But to try holding up reconstruction in favor of an ill-defined search by under- equipped city agencies is ignorant and illogical.

There's good reason to ask how the Fire Department missed the remains under the manholes years ago.

But if the PA tunnel job had started sooner, the mistake would have been caught - a fact that should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with recent local history.

We have two major construction projects to thank for uncovering precious remains that otherwise would have remained secrets of the Manhattan schist.

In the 1990s, contractors for a new federal courthouse found a forgotten, 18th-century African-American burial ground near City Hall. Last year, MTA work crews stumbled on a Revolutionary-era stone wall while digging a new subway tunnel under Battery Park.

Fears have been raised that there might be more human remains in two ruined nearby buildings - 130 Cedar St. and CUNY's Fiterman Hall.

Of course, if all parties involved had not twiddled their thumbs for five years, but rather made honest attempts to take the eyesores down, there would not still be any question about it.

There are also renewed questions over the pace of the initial cleanup.

There are still ongoing serious questions about the health condition of thousands affected directly by the collapsed towers and the cleanup. Some of the questions will be litigated in court following the decision last week to allow those cases to proceed.

The question that arises in all these cases is straightforward: Can a link between the dust and disease be proved with scientific certainty? The answer is anything but simple.

“Certainty is a word we always dance around,” said Joseph Graziano, associate dean for research at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. For him, searching for the cause of disease is like developing film. “At first you see a faint image of what the real picture is,” Dr. Graziano said, “and then, over time, you see it with much more clarity. In these relatively early times, the image is still faint.”

It can take decades to approach any degree of certainty. For instance, only after years of observation did doctors agree that there was a strong link between asbestos and diseases like asbestosis and mesothelioma.

In legal cases, “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” is considered the gold standard in making a causal connection. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for thousands of workers’ lawsuits to go to trial. When the cases are heard, any proof that does not meet that legal standard is likely to be challenged.

But outside the courtroom, scientists say, even a less rigorous link could be sufficient to warrant expanding the range of illnesses covered by treatment programs, and to serve as the basis for issuing cautions to people in high-risk groups. When the health effects are too new or the evidence is too vague for a strong link, lesser indicators like the concurrence of different studies have to be relied on.

UPDATE:
Still more remains have been found at Ground Zero, and Take Back the Memorial is not happy about that. Ladi_pooh notes that 36 fragments were recovered today. I expect that dozens, if not hundreds more will be found in the vicinity of the area where the access road is situated - because that area was not searched before the road was built in order to clear the rest of the site.

Meanwhile, art from children of 9/11 victims will be donated to the 9/11 museum.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein, mount sinai, respiratory ailment, wtc cough, bloomberg.