THE CHIEF-LEADER

9/11 Bill Wants Medical Examiner To Specify Cause Of Death

Dec. 14, 2007

By ARI PAUL

State Senator Eric Adams announced Dec. 2 that he will propose legislation that would require the Chief Medical Examiner to clearly specify the cause on death certificates for any 9/11 first-responders who die of Ground Zero-related ailments.

He made the announcement during a rally outside CME Charles Hirsch's headquarters in Manhattan. Ground Zero worker advocates have blasted Dr. Hirsch for asserting that rescue worker and NYPD Detective James Zadroga died not from his work on the site but from abusing intravenous drugs.

Families Need Facts

"This would allow their offspring to have documentation on how their loved ones died," Senator Adams, a former Police Captain, said in a phone interview Dec. 4. "Some of it is symbolic. It shows that this first-responder responded heroically."

One problem he pointed to was that Dr. Hirsch currently believed that only responders who arrived at the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11, 2001 who later became sick were actually victims of the toxic elements at the site.

"To state that the person is no longer a hero because he died on the 12th or the third day doesn't follow any logic at all," he said.

Senator Adams also sent a letter to State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines asking that he reject any death certificate of a 9/11 first-responder with a Ground Zero-related ailment that does not specify the cause of death.

Wants January Vote

"Right now he can do that without any legislative change at all," he said. Senator Adams vowed that the bill would appear before a Senate committee this month and would come to a full vote by January. He was confident that it would enjoy public support.

"I think that other New Yorkers will believe that it's the right thing to do," he said. "I think it's going to pick up steam and momentum."

District Council 37 Local 3621 President Thomas Eppinger, who represents Emergency Medical Service officers, hailed Senator Adams's proposal, as 69 of his members who worked at Ground Zero have reported some kind of ailment, and one Lieutenant who worked 100 hours at the site after 9/11, Brian Ellicott, died Nov. 26 of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"I think it's excellent," Mr. Eppinger said. "Being a law-enforcement officer, he knows what happened on Sept. 11, and I think he's using his legislative ability to protect our members."