Groundbreaking new diagnostic technique used on firefighters at Ground Zero identifies dangerous particles inhaled by firefighters, factory workers, dental technicians,and kids with asthma. Microscopic foreign particles in the lungs of firefighters, welders, industrial workers and children cause respiratory problems of great concern to Prof. Elizabeth Fireman of the Institute for Pulmonary and Allergic Diseases at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. She has developed a bio-monitoring technique that’s proven its value from Ground Zero to the playground.

Back in 1999, Fireman published her first paper showing how her revolutionary induced sputum (IS) and analysis techniques worked better than the more invasive bronchial lavage method in obtaining and studying mucus of Israeli factory workers to test for hazardous particles from inhaled dust. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center terror attack on September 11, 2001, she flew to New York to bio-monitor 39 New York City firefighters who’d inhaled toxic substances at the disaster site, and compared results against a control group of Israeli firefighters. She identified toxic metals such as mercury in the rescue workers’ lungs. “When the Twin Towers collapsed, I realized my method could be used for the firefighters. At the beginning, they didn’t understand how a woman in Israel could help, but I met Dr. Dave Prezant, the chief physician of the New York Fire Department 10 months later at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society, and offered him the technology. I said I was sure even at this point I would find particles, because they accumulate and remain in the body.”

In a new study soon to be published, Fireman and a team of researchers compared the IS technique to environmental monitoring in mapping air pollution. They examined 136 urban children evaluated for asthmatic symptoms at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, which is affiliated with the School of Public Health at Tel Aviv University. “Rooftop pollution monitoring stations measure larger particulate matter, which is mostly expelled by the lungs,” explains Fireman, who also is on Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine. “I wanted to know what happened to the small particle matter capable of evading the body’s immunological mechanisms. And I wanted to know how they affected asthmatic kids.” (via Israel21c)

[Photo: U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons]