"They were waiting us out." The 9/11 kids Washington forgot. 50,000 students in the exposure zone.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the country still tells the story like it ended at ground zero. It didn't. Roughly 50,000 students and young people were in the exposure zone, sent back into classrooms three blocks from a still-burning pile on October 9, 2001 — so Wall Street could reopen and the economy could feel normal again. Lila Nordstrom was one of them. She has spent her entire adult life fighting a system built to wait survivors out.
Twenty-five years on, Washington still frames 9/11 as a story of heroes and villains — and quietly counts on the rest of us to forget the…
The Brief
→ Four things from today’s episodeWhy roughly 50,000 students and young people were in the 9/11 exposure zone. and why most Americans have never heard their story
October 9, 2001. sent back to a school three blocks from a still-burning pile, through five police checkpoints, so Wall Street could reopen
The two-tier trap inside the Zadroga Act. proactive screening for responders, "get sick first" for survivors
Why uterine cancer is the only major reproductive cancer sti. Why uterine cancer is the only major reproductive cancer still excluded from the World Trade Center Health Program — and has been rejected six times
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