The World Trade Center worker/volunteer mental health screening program

Details

• Personal Author:
  Gross R ; Herbert R ; Katz CL ; Levin SM ; Smith RP
• Description:
  The dramatic effect of the pictures notwithstanding, the physical and mental effects of being at "Ground Zero" were described by many "Ground Zero workers" as only able to be understood through direct experience of it. The site occupied 16 acres in lower Manhattan, with buildings grouped around a 5-acre central plaza. The site is bounded by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west, about three blocks north of the New York Stock Exchange. The Twin Towers were 110 stories, 1353 fee t (412 meters) tall. In total, there were about 10,000,000 square feet of rentable space. About 50,000 people occupied the buildings. There were 43,200 square feet (4020 square meters) - about an acre of rentable space - on each floor. The seven buildings were made up of 95% air by volume, and contained 15 million square feet of space. Commercially, the seven-story mall beneath the World Trade Center (WTC) was America's third most heavily trafficked mall (Tomasky, 2003). In the aftermath of 9/11, the site continues to be an object of much interest, discussion and meaning for droves of visitors. Whatever else "Ground Zero" may have been, it was also the workplace for a large number of workers and volunteers. In addition to the firemen and policemen whose volunteer, rescue, and recovery efforts have been chronicled in the media, "Ground Zero" also provided employment for at least 50 other professions, as well as a host of volunteers. Estimates of the number of people involved in the volunteer, rescue, recovery, and salvage effort at "Ground Zero" range from 18,000 to 35,000 (CNN.com. january 28, 2002; Herman et al., 2002), of which firemen and policemen comprised a minority. In addition to the 343 lives lost from the New York City Fire Department, and the 37 and 23 lives lost from the Port Authority and New York City Police Departments (NYPD), respectively, there were 152 members of the building trades unions who were killed when the WTC collapsed. The New York Medical Examiner reported that in the recovery effort, "Ground Zero workers" found more than 18,000 body parts, and had issued 1932 death certificates. The protracted nature of the recovery effort is illustrated by the fact that in the month of March 2002 as many as 3000 body parts were discovered (Kugler, 2002). By the completion of the salvage, recovery, and cleanup process on May 30, 2002, 1.8 million tons of debris had been removed from the disaster site (WTC web site). The scale of contributions made by building tradesmen and women and construction workers was clearly enormous from a physical as well as a political and social perspective. Estimates of the short-term psychiatric consequences of 911 I have been described previously in local and national subsets of the general population (Schuster et al., 2001; Ahern et al., 2002; Galea et al., 2002a, b). Additionally, increases in tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana consumption were reported in the general population in New York and surrounding states (Melnik et al., 2001; Vlahov et al., 2002). In Galea et al. (2002a) among 1008 individuals contacted through random digit dialing, III of 877 interviewed stated they had been involved in the WTC rescue efforts. Their rates of probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression were 16.2% and 14.1 %, respectively, compared to average prevalence rates in this group of7.5% and 9.7%. While the association between involvement in rescue effort and depression did not attain statistical significance, the association with PTSD was significant at p <0.03. Ahern et al. (2002) did not report results in this subgroup about whether reported exposure to TV images of 911 I was associated with increased risk of PTSD or MDD (major depressive disorder) symptoms in this group. In a needs assessmen t conducted by the Department of Epidemiology of the Mailman School of Public Health at the request of the New York State Office of Mental Health in October 2001, the potentially affected population from the attacks on the WTC was divided in to four groups: 10 surrounding counties of NY; New York City; Manhattan below 110 street; and the WTC population (Herman et al., 2002). The category of "rescue workers" comprised one of four sub-categories of a larger "WTC population." The number of rescue workers was estimated at 17,859. The authors focused on PTSD because they hypothesized that the effect on PTSD had generally been greater than on other measured disorders. Because of a dearth of data on the exposures of the rescue workers, the risk of PTSD was estimated as 24%, which represented an average of 34% for those who were extremely exposed and the rate of 14% reported for Oklahoma City rescue workers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Emergency Responders Firefighters Law Enforcement Men Mental Disorders Mental Health Occupational Health Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety Stress, Psychological Tobacco Products Women

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• Keywords:
  Alcohols Emergency-responders Exposure-levels Fire-fighters Force Humans Law-enforcement-workers Mental-health Mental-stress Physical-stress Physiological-stress Police-officers Psychological-disorders Psychological-effects Psychological-reactions Psychological-stress Psychology Rescue-workers Risk-factors Statistical-analysis Tobacco Workers

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• ISBN:
  9780521831918
• Publisher:
  Cambridge University Press
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  New York ; OSHA Region 2
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  355-377
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20046057
• Citation:
  9/11: mental health in the wake of terrorist attacks. Neria Y, Gross R, Marshall RD, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 Jan; :355-377
• Editor(s):
  Neria Y; Gross R; Marshall RD
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2006
• Performing Organization:
  Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20040601
• Source Full Name:
  9/11: mental health in the wake of terrorist attacks
• End Date:
  20100531
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0e96abf41c97c9b3a92c6ae13421f84a71987443a5b2b08662213a09a93dcb325fc39aa4b61901299dae495d5c7f52785bf147a6de8e6d8b87fbada9b3f78f1f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/201238/cdc_201238_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 7.39 MB ]