After years of legal battles between the city of New York, the construction companies and more than 10,000 ground zero rescue and recovery workers, the parties have agreed to a settlement that could pay up to $657.5 million to responders sickened by high levels of toxic dust created by the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Many of these workers became ill after inhaling toxic-contaminated dust while working at the site and are seeking damages for various ailments, including cancer. The toxic dusts present in the ground zero rubble included: asbestos, heavy metals and various chemicals such as benzene from burning jet fuel, dioxins and PCBs. Exposure to such toxins can result in numerous respiratory diseases as well as cancer such as mesothelioma and other reproductive and neurological disorders.
The settlement was announced Thursday evening by the WTC Captive Insurance Co., a special entity established to indemnify the city and its contractors against potential legal action as they moved to clean up the site after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The settlement must still be approved by approved by a judge and the workers themselves and would make the city and other companies represented by the insurer liable for a minimum of $575 million with up to $657.5 million available if 100 percent of the claimants agree to the settlement. At least 95 percent of the claimants must agree to the plan for the settlement to go into effect.
Most of the existing claimants complain of asthma and other respiratory illnesses as a result of their work at ground zero in the months following the Sept. 11th attacks. However, some of the cases that fall under the settlement involve plaintiffs who are not ill now but fear they will develop illnesses like cancer which can take years to manifest themselves – a period of time known as the latency period.
Dallas mesothelioma attorney Ben DuBose, who also represented a victim of terror attacks before the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund, says that “unfortunately, because of the long latency period for some cancers, it will be decades before we know the full impact on human health from the destruction of the twin towers.” The proposed settlement establishes an insurance policy of over $23 million to cover such future claims.