EmergencyTech.org

After 9/11 workers were exposed to all manner of toxins. During the recovery even those well away from Ground Zero, those who were working on mortuary details for example, were exposed to unsafe levels of Asbestos.

In March of last year, New York City paramedic Deborah Reeve died of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related form of cancer. There is little doubt she was first exposed to asbestos on Sept. 11, 2001, when she responded to the scene at Ground Zero.

There is equally little doubt that she continued to be assaulted by the substance sometime during the next eight months when she was assigned to the morgue, where she helped medical examiners do body-part identification.

Dr. Emily Craig, Kentucky’s forensic anthropologist, had already given a lot of thought to the problem of contaminated corpses before the World Trade Center was attacked. But she stood endless days in the same morgue as Deborah Reeve. She breathed the same air while combing bags of rubble for slivers of bones so that DNA could name what remained.

“Ziplock-like” body bag technology developed by Dr. Craig attempts to address the issue of cross contamination from handling remains.