Asbestos exposure is a risk for numerous professionals, including emergency response workers. Asbestos is often released into the air after a building is destroyed by fire, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, or other natural disaster, and these are events that typically warrant the need for emergency response workers. Unfortunately, Americans can now count terrorist attacks as another potential need for emergency response workers, who risk asbestos exposure every time they help at locations that have damaged buildings.

First Responders Are at Risk

More than 4,000 "first responders" (emergency response workers) were at the World Trade Center (WTC) towers within hours of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The same is true of the Pentagon attack the same day, and of other disasters such as:

• the hurricanes that destroyed thousands of buildings in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005
• the 1994 Southern California ("Northridge") earthquake
• the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995

Hundreds of other lesser-known and smaller-scale disasters have been followed by the heroic actions of emergency response workers, and they too may have been exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos .

Asbestos Released into the Air

When a building is damaged by a bomb, fire, flooding, earthquake, etc., the building components that contain asbestos may be disturbed, releasing significant amounts of asbestos fibers into the air. Most of the Sept. 11 first responders weren't wearing protective respiratory gear when they worked at the site that later came to be called Ground Zero. There were toxic levels of asbestos and other contaminants in the air, such as benzene, lead, and dioxin.

9/11 Emergency Response Workers

It was eventually confirmed that about three-quarters of the WTC emergency response workers developed respiratory problems — no doubt from the asbestos and other toxins they had been exposed to at the site. In fact, an emergency response worker with the New York Fire Department who worked at the WTC site died of mesothelioma in 2006.

The only confirmed cause of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure. Asbestos fibers, once inhaled, lodge themselves in the lungs and other organs and lead to serious, potentially fatal illnesses like mesothelioma. Asbestos-related diseases may take decades to manifest themselves after the asbestos exposure.

Learn More about Asbestos Exposure

If you're an emergency response worker, or if a member of your family has done such work, find out more about the risks of asbestos exposure by contacting us online today.