Surveillance for World Trade Center Disaster Health Effects Among Survivors of Collapsed a

The World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR) monitors the health of 71,437 enrollees for 20 years. This analysis focuses on 8,418 adult survivors of collapsed or damaged buildings, with health outcome data collected via interviews from September 5, 2003, to November 20, 2004. The dataset was produced by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Use Cases

• Modeling the association between dust cloud exposure and physical injuries based on reported adjusted odds ratios.
• Analyzing the prevalence of serious psychological distress (SPD) among disaster survivors using K6 screening instrument results.
• Investigating the relationship between building type (collapsed vs. damaged) and reported mental distress or physical symptoms.
• Studying the co-occurrence of respiratory symptoms, heartburn, and severe headaches in a population exposed to a major particulate event.

Strengths

• Includes a clearly defined cohort of 8,418 adult survivors from a specific disaster event.
• Reports specific prevalence statistics for health outcomes, such as 62.4% caught in the dust cloud and 10.7% screening positive for serious psychological distress.
• Provides adjusted odds ratios (AORs) for multiple health outcomes associated with dust cloud exposure, offering quantitative measures of association.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the specific analysis subset is known, but the total dataset structure and other variables are not described.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Collection Method

Health outcomes collected during interviews with enrollees of the World Trade Center Health Registry.

Time Range

Data collection from September 5, 2003, to November 20, 2004.

Geography

Primarily related to the World Trade Center attack in New York, USA.