ROD DREHER
NY Post Online
October 29, 2001 -- Had difficulty breathing since Sept. 11? You are not alone.
Emergency workers and others caught in the choking dust cloud resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center are coming down with a series of respiratory illnesses, doctors say.
Dubbed "World Trade Center Syndrome," the maladies include chronic coughs, sinus infections, acute lung trauma and severe asthma requiring mechanical respiration, Newsweek reports in this week's edition.
It appears to have hit firefighters the hardest.
Some 40 percent of the 11,000 Bravest who worked round the clock in the days following the attack are still coughing so severely they are under medical care, said Dr. David Prezant, the chief lung specialist for the FDNY.
Almost 4,000 firefighters are under treatment with steroid inhalants, and at least one is suffering from a rare lung inflammation called allergic alveolitis.
And a Wall Street Journal editor was fighting for his life last week after being diagnosed with vasculitis, an autoimmune disorder. It may have been triggered by inhaling dust from the Twin Towers, near his evacuated workplace.
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