World Trade Center Health Program Outreach and Education Plan

Details

• Personal Author:
  Mejia G
• Description:
  A. Organization description: District Council 37 (DC 37) of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO is a public-sector union that represents over 110,000 employees of the City of New York, numerous authorities, cultural institutions, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, as well as several state agencies. For almost 70 years, DC 37 has represented a wide range of city employees in every New York City agency. DC 37 members include accountants, nurses, social workers, highway repairers, school aides, sewer workers, secretaries, emergency medical technicians, chaplains, computer programmers, custodians, motor vehicle operators, mortuary technicians, sanitarians, parks enforcement officers, crossing guards, architects, engineers, epidemiologists, traffic device maintainers, and many other job titles. Thousands of these workers were either directly involved in World Trade Center rescue, recovery and clean-up efforts, or worked in the areas most directly affected by contaminants emitted during the buildings' collapse and subsequent fires at the site. B. Target populations: Under the DC 37 umbrella are 52 locals representing employees within hundreds of different job titles at numerous city and state agencies as well as cultural institutions. On September 11, 2001 and the days and months that followed, thousands of DC 37 members acted in different capacities in the city's efforts to rescue and recover victims, and in the clean-up and restoration of the site where the World Trade Center Towers and surrounding buildings once stood. These individuals would be considered "general responders" in the WTC Health Program. Examples of DC 37 members involved in this work were: School Aides in the neighborhood schools who took care of the children on September 11, 2001, assisted in their evacuation, and then stayed on to assist the rescue and recovery workers utilizing the school buildings for staging areas; Public Health Nurses who provided daily medical assistance to the injured on 9/11/01 and days afterwards; Industrial Hygienists and Chemists who monitored the environment and kept vigilance on worksite conditions; City Chaplains who comforted distraught workers as they dealt with the death and destruction surrounding them; Morgue Technicians and Criminalists who had to remove the bodies and assisted in their identification; Engineers who had to determine the structural integrities of the buildings in and around Ground Zero; Custodial Assistants who maintained the contaminated buildings temporarily used by law enforcement communities; Water System Workers who labored to restore water supply to the area; Traffic Enforcement Agents who secured access to the site and surrounding streets; Transportation Workers and Motor Vehicle Operators who carted off the debris as workers desperately worked to dig out and recover bodies. Since the WTC complex is situated in the financial center of NYC and in the heart of city governance, public sector workers, many of whom are or were DC 37 members, were dispatched to their office buildings to recover necessary business documents and equipment to keep city government running. Some returned to these office buildings within days only to find out the buildings were not properly decontaminated. Others lived in the affected area and they also returned to buildings that were in some stage of disrepair exposing them to the same types of contaminants that responders, clean-up and restoration workers were exposed to as they attempted to reestablish their lives. These workers more than likely fall within the category of "survivors" in the WTC Health Program. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Emergency Responders Occupational Health Safety September 11 Terrorist Attacks
• Keywords:
  Disaster Clean-up Disaster Recovery First Responders Information Dissemination World Trade Center WTC
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  New York ; OSHA Region 2
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-48
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20054828
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2019-100571
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, E11-OH-010452, 2015 Mar; :1-48
• Contact Point Address:
  District Council 37, AFSCME, Guille Mejia, Director of Safety and Health (Principal Investigator), 125 Barclay Street, Room 815, New York, NY 10007
• Email:
  GMejia@dc37.net
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2015
• Performing Organization:
  District Council 37, AFSCME, New York
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20120901
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20150228
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:07bdd73bc6a333cff2e661603fb0907f930aec89ceeab017ac2e5956e52f29f000bbd94e746af585a7fa35e898e1afe7a9f3aa3b95646613827315510ed55255
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/218826/cdc_218826_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 289.94 KB ]