pennetta, who saw off simona halep there's more real news from al jazeera and sport. along with analysis, comment and plenty of video along with links to some of our programs. you'll find it all at aljazeera.com.

we have a closer look at the health effects of the terrorist

attack and its long aftermath. >> we're here for the ptsd but i put some of the heart ones here. >> ken george spends hours every day organizing and taking dozens of medications. before 9/11 he was a healthy nonspoking road worker for the new york city department of transportation. but hours after the twin towers collapsed, he was sent to work on the pile. >> when i first got down there and i started walking towards the pile, it looked like the gates of hell opened up. the flames . i didn't find anybody alive. there was body parts like you place. >>reporter: george worked on the pile for months and what he saw there haunted his mind and ravaged his body. >> i started feeling sick the

first night and i had this cough that never went away. >>reporter: george is one of the 33,000 first responders and survivors stricken with injuries or illnesses related to 9/11. >> i have 9/11 cough. i got ptsd. a heart attack. i have restricted airway disease. night terrors. >> in 2011, president obama signed the james zdroga 9/11 health and compensation act into law which covers medical expenses for people like zdroga. he died in 2006 of respiratory failure at the age of 34. it's set to expire next month. the $2.78 billion september 11th victim's compensation fund ends october 2016. >> in the history of an

occupational exposure or environmental exposure and a cancer we're still very early. >> dr. michael crane says that as time goes on the number of cases of deadly diseases like cancer will rise and that this act should be permanently fund. >> at this very time is when sort of the calendar begins to turn and these events will become more frequent related to that initial exposure 14 to 15 years ago. >>reporter: another worry the estimated 30,000 additional responders who have not come forward for help yet. >> i don't know what they were exposed to. population. >> a moment of silence, please. >>reporter: last week -- >> if those politicians, the representatives down in d.c.

wants to know what it's like to go through five years of hell without medical back up or proper medical care and proper medical treatment medication i can go down there and tell you what it's like to watch your son die. >> it's amazing that a 9/11 responder has to worry now that the bill is going to get passed. if it doesn't get passed, they're going to die. i'm one of them. you got to die. in the days then weeks after the attack, almost everyone i spoke with near the site covered coughs in their conversations. trade center cough. tc cough many called it. people who couldn't get straight answers from the city or the u.s. environmental protection agency worried about the air.

many moved away from lower manhattan and now we're counting the human costs in terrible illness and premature death. i began by asking her whether simply put the federal government had taken the necessary steps to protect the people of lower manhattan both the residents and the enormous daytime workforce. >> there's no question that 9/11 was a terrible terrorist attack on our people. and the toxins that became part of the air was probably the worst anyone has ever breathed. it was pulverized glass, cement, very toxic. in fact, there are over 3,700 known people with cancers

now. they need specialized healthcare. you knew the next day that it was toxic. it smelled. it was burning. there was almost a thin mist in the air filled with particles. yet, the government was saying that it was safe. any sane person knew that it was not safe and many of the people who went in and worked including the press and the residents with lived there are now sick and dying. we lost 3,000 people on 9/11 but since then, thousands more have become sick and are dying or need specialized care because of the toxins that they were exposed to. the government sodium unfairly and unjustly that it was safe to

work there but believe me, i was there. i was walking through the debris. it was an air that you could literally chew. a sickening smell of death and destruction and any person knew that just commonsense that it was not a safe place to work. following up on the congresswoman's proposal to continue to provide health support for people with exposure related illness, i wondered if we could really pinpoint a link between exposure and cancer, for example, when so many people developed cancer later in life anyway. would she support a tight screen on participation or a loose one? >> the 9/11 health and compensation program has a series of standards that people need to meet. you have to prove that you were working or living in that site. and also there is a medical -- a

panel of experts based on scientific data, they know what illnesses, mainly cancers and respiratory diseases. it's called the world trade center cough. we're learning how to treat these very specific illnesses related to being exposed to these deadly toxins. i feel that it's a program that's well thought out based on scientific data. we have a scientific board that reviews any applicant for it. and there's a whole review process to make sure that it's honest and fair. >> to close, i asked representative maloney if 14

years after that terrible day new york city was back. >> new yorkers are back stronger than ever. and you saw that new york spirit on 9/11 when so many people were running away, new yorkers were running to the site to help and i left washington and went back on 9/11 and after a while there were road blocks but the only people going in were police and fire construction workers from around the country all coming in to help, to help their neighbors, friends, help neighboring cities, neighboring states. we know from our research on the bill that well over 430 congressal districts were represented by workers at 9/11 so there was a national response to help and to rebuild. and that american spirit, that can do spirit was there alive and well on 9/11 and since then in trying to rebuild and trying

to help the people that were hurt on that day and to build security measures to protect our citizens and our allies and terrorists. >> representative carolyn maloney joined me from capitol hill. what's in a broken building that's bad for human health? can you draw a straight line from the exposures of emergency workers and residents in the days after the terrorist attacks to the illnesses of today and guardianship the time some illnesses take to develop, are there more on the way? stay with us. it's inside story. >> every saturday night. >> i lived that character. >> go one on one with america's movers and shakers. >> we will be able to see change. >> gripping... inspiring... entertaining. no topic off limits. >> 'cause i'm like, "dad, there are hookers in this house". >> exclusive conversations you won't find anywhere else.

>> these are very vivid, human stories. >> if you have an agenda with people, you sometimes don't see the truth. >> "talk to al jazeera". saturday, 6:00 eastern. only on al jazeera america.

you're watching inside story. i'm ray suarez. think about what makes a modern building. insulation, plaster board, paint, electrics, glass, metal. then think about all those things beaten into powder and burned.

would you want to breathe it in, have it on your skin or clothing? the federal government reassured people who lived and worked around the 9/11 site. dr. roger flores joins us now, the chairman of the department of thoracic surgery in new york. welcome to the program. what was in those piles of dust and plumes of smoke that if we were to analyze it and break it apart that we already knew was injurious to human health? >> well, it was just a ton of carsinogenic material. asbestos, glass, lead, steel, anything else that you can think of in a building. all that was being inhaled during that time downtown. a lot of people describe it as being

-- it was fine. it was a mixture of small particles. i was breathing the stuff in but it was fine stuff. it could get very distant into your airways. so the bigger particles get caught. people -- too quickly in that part of time. is there still a lot of dirt in the air and on the ground that maybe they should not have been exposing hundreds of thousands people to.

knowing that you have asbestos fibers, lead dust. glass dust. all that being breathed from the air down there. we would have taken more precautions but i think given the enormity of the situation, the leadership just wanted things to get back to normal to keep calm throughout the city. >> was there sort of phased development after the afteraffect diseases. of burning material of a large amount of dust that causes that world trade center cough.

that was predominant throughout downtown. people who lived there had that. people who worked there had that. and people thought it was just a cough from inhaling that dust which is true but what they didn't take into account was that dust would trickle down to the ends of their wareways call alveoli and remain there so now those particles are sitting there years down the line. we have done studies to look at the affects of this and over eight or nine years we found a higher insurancedness of as hah, sinu sin sinusitis and other problems. now take into account 15, 20, more like 30 years later the latency period for many cancers such

as lung cancer but can we with any certainty -- cancers already there are preliminary studies that show that there is a slightly higher risk when you look at the firefighter studies that have compared nighermen exposed to 9/1 exposed -- those that were not. we're just scratching the surface for

cancers to develop. cause and effect down the line. it will take time. they'll have to be sick people toe be sick people to screen these cancers and identify them early. higher incident cancers. dr. flores, thank you for joining us. and people who lived and worked nearby and never consented to place themselves in harm's way. we talk to a first responder who may be paying the price long term for the work he did in

those days.

welcome back. the danger in the dust is our focus on this 9/11 anniversary. we found in the years after the september 11th attacks just how dangerous the by-products of the attack could be, the fires, smoke, debris, and the risks involved in long term exposure. david howly is a retired new york city police officer who responded to the attacks and the building collapse and he's been plagued by several different cancers in the years since. how long afterward did you start to feel badly? >> thank you for having me. i appreciate you taking the time greatly to do this. and to bring this to everybody's attention. i wanted to first say thank you for that. i was sick that day. to tell you the truth.

i could feel it in my sinuses that very afternoon and evening. you just knew that what you were breathing wasn't right and you could feel it in your body. >> were you properly equipped and masked up the whole time you were working on the pile? >> no. no. we weren't. nobody really was. nobody had the equipment for that for what we were dealing with. >> i used toe tease guys doing that work on the pile because the most common place they wore their mask was around their neck. they would pull it off the front of their face and wear it hanging by their neck but that wasn't helping them much. >> no, it wasn't helping but the mask really didn't help much either. it would get dirty or filthy in a couple of minutes and then, you know, it really wasn't effective if you had one at all. it was pretty much useless. >> you've been treated nor several cancers in the years since.

do you have any doubt that they -- that you can draw a straight line from those days to your subsequent illnesses? >> oh, no, there's not any question in my mind the type of cancer that i've been -- that's reoccurred in me, you know, four times already. it's mainly a type of cancer that occurs in people who smoke excessively, drink, and chew tobacco. it's like over-98% of the cases are due to that and the other cases are environmental. and toxins and that's where mine obviously came from and the only kind of toxic soup i was ever around was there. >> do you expect that you will have a reoccurrence of your disease and are you getting the kind of help you need? >> i'm absolutely getting the help i need

with the help of my team of doctors that i have around me now which is the process to do. i'm in very good hands whether -- i don't believe, knock on wood as they say, that the cancer will return a fifth time. i had a pretty extensive operation last march. i have another one coming up in a couple of weeks and hopefully that will turn up well also. >> fingers crossed, i hope it stays that way. some of the guys that you worked with in those days sick as well. are you aware of other people who did that kind of work who got unusual illnesses ?

yes. no one came out of there unscatheded. if you don't have a cancer, you have the cough. if you don't have the cough, you have diminished lung capacity. if you don't have that, maybe you have somebody's blood diseases that are occurring. no one got out of there and if you did, god love you. >> well, thank you very much for your service on that day and in the days after. david howly is a retired member of the new york police department. he was a 9/11 first responder. he joined us from philadelphia. i'll be back in a minute with a final thought about dust, death, and doubt. stay with us. it's inside story.

at one point i did an interview with an engineer about the recovery work at the the world trade center site. we stood at the edge of the pile and we framed the shot so the viewer could see the smoke that continued to rise from the soil for weeks after the attack over his shoulder. he coughed. i coughed. we laughed. maybe a little ruefully. it was part of life dloun. during those same -- down there. during those same weeks i sat in a living room with a worried couple getting ready to leave the neighborhood they loved because they could not be sure they could continue to raise their toddler across the street from the attack site with all the unknown junk in the air on their window sills and settled on their sidewalks. a woman who lived across the street from the south tower whose apartment was a hazmat site talked with frustration of

the difficulty she had in getting a straight answer about whether the stuff that covered everything she owned in a layer of dust inches thick would ever allow her to safely live in her home again. if i had to wear a mask just to be in these places, why was it such a question. the wars that began with four jets in a clear blue sky will be claiming new victims long after the shooting on the battle field has ended. i'm ray suarez and that's the inside story. >> "inside story" takes you beyond the headlines, beyond the quick cuts, beyond the soundbites. we're giving you a deeper dive into the stories that are making our world what it is.

announcer: this is al jazeera. hello. welcome to another newshour from al jazeera. in doha, i'm adrian finegan. coming occupy on the program - a crane collapses at mecca's grand mosque, killing more than 100 people. >> my friend die, my teacher die. that's not very good. that's very bad forced to leave their homes, we meet the young children seeking refuge in europe relief