New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project - Outcomes

Outcomes

It was reported in October 2007 that 838 people had completed the program. The clinic displayed towels with colored stains, as evidence that toxic material had been sweated out in the saunas. According to its Director, Jim Woodworth, during the Purification Rundown firefighters had passed odd-colored bowel movements and sweated out mercury, aluminium and magnesium. The Fire Department's chief medical officer, Dr. Kerry Kelly, criticized the lack of objective evidence, saying, "I have trouble believing in these purple-stained towels."

An investigation by the New York Press asked a number of independent doctors about the evidence for the Purification Rundown. None of them endorsed the program's effectiveness and some explicitly described it as dangerous. Several said that no peer-reviewed research on the rundown had been published in any medical journal. Some apparently supportive studies have been published, but these lack control groups and have other scientific failings. According to Deputy Fire Commissioner Frank Gribbon, doctors investigating the program on behalf of the Fire Department concluded that it was not detoxifying. University of Georgia bioterrorism expert Cham Dallas also denied that the procedure could detoxify, saying "It sounds great and they mean well, but it just doesn't work."

In 2007, James Dahlgren and colleagues published a small-sample pilot study assessing the project. Dahlgren is a doctor who promotes the Purification Rundown as a method of detoxification. The study claimed to find evidence both of elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) in the rescue workers and improvement during the regime. Two scientists from Cambridge Environmental, Inc. published a thorough critique of the study. They questioned the premise that WTC rescue workers needed detoxification, citing studies that had found that their blood concentration of toxins was no greater than normal.

"ith few exceptions, people’s body burdens of PCBs and other 'dioxin-like compounds' are determined almost exclusively by the food we eat, not by the air we breathe. Firefighters may occasionally receive on-the-job exposures to PCBs and PCDFs, but these would be from having fought PCB-containing electrical transformer fires, not from 9/11."

The paper argues that the project never properly tested its outcomes and concludes that application of the "potentially dangerous" Purification Rundown to the health problems of 9/11 workers is "unconscionable".

Many of the participants spoke favorably of the program and reported improved physical and mental health. Others said they were just taking advantage of the free saunas. One Fire Department lieutenant was quoted describing colleagues as desperate for help with the distress they felt in the aftermath of the attacks, to the point that they would try anything. Fire Department officials raised concerns about the project, saying that firefighters were being required to give up inhalers, pills and other orthodox medication. Two weeks into the program, one firefighter passed out and was taken to an emergency room with severe asthma, later saying that he had been asked to stop using his inhaler. According to the clinic's associate medical director, Dr. Kawabena Nyamekye, participants were being helped off medication at their own insistence, not at the request of Downtown Medical. A former worker at Downtown Medical told reporters that staff were discouraged from calling for an ambulance even in an emergency, and that one of them had been required to break off contact with her boyfriend because he had left Scientology. A spokesman responded that the clinic had "a clear policy of calling 911 when needed."