美国将为9/11灾难暴露的儿童提供首个重大卫生协调

缺少的团体进入研究计划

美国正在准备一项重大长期的健康研究,专注于当他们是儿童或仍然在腹部时暴露于世界贸易中心灾难的人。 路透社9月10日报道,联邦卫生当局正在寻求研究人员建立世界贸易中心青年研究协调中心,并确定继续研究的协调机构。 该项目解决了一个持续的差距:大多数由政府资助的跟踪工作集中在第一个受访者和居住或工作在低曼哈顿的成年人。

About 25,000 children lived or attended school near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, with thousands more in surrounding neighbourhoods. They encountered the enormous dust cloud and residue generated by the towers’ collapse. Reuters identified pulverised concrete, glass fibres, asbestos and other pollutants among the exposure concerns. Yet relatively few young people entered the early survivor studies, leaving researchers without a sufficiently large, organised group to follow across decades.

為什麼時間有關

这些孩子现在大多是他们的三十年代和早四十年代,一个年龄,某些慢性疾病可能开始出现。 研究人员希望研究涉及癌症、心血管疾病和生殖健康的潜在模式,而不提前假设任何诊断都是由灾难引起的。 需要精心设计的协调,包括适当的未暴露的比较组,以区分可能的暴露影响与普通健康风险和其他环境或社会经济因素。

计划的联盟将包括那些在袭击当天未满21岁或在子宫内的人,并生活在14街以下的低曼哈顿或布鲁克林。 25年后招募参与者将是困难的:家庭移动,记录分散,许多潜在参与者可能不会认为自己是灾难幸存者。 协调中心旨在建立一个可持续的识别、登记和一致的研究方法结构。

从纪念到证据

The initiative arrives during the 25th anniversary of the attacks. A White House proclamation dated September 9 records 2,977 deaths on the day and acknowledges the enduring health burden among people who responded to the disaster. The youth study is not a finding that particular illnesses were caused by World Trade Center exposure; it is the infrastructure required to answer that question more reliably. The next milestones will be the selection of the coordinating centre, the recruitment strategy and the final scientific protocols used to protect participants while producing comparable long-term data.