September 11 and the History of Hazard

Health professionals carved up the postdisaster world of Manhattanites in contrasting ways, describing its new contours in expert terms of toxins, populations and pathology. Among their discoveries were a "World Trade Center cough" and a dramatic increase in psychological ailments. But precisely their focus on the body or the psyche, along with specific, measurable bits of the urban environment known to have disease links, such as asbestos or anthrax, meant that health professionals themselves had little to say about other senses of hazard stirred up by the disaster.