Bountiful's Nancy Hachmeister could have told them as much. A search and rescue dog handler, she spent more than a week at the scene, where thick smoke and dust filled every breath taken by the 40,000 who came to help.

Hachmeister had a deep, nagging hack by the second day she and her German shepherd, Ivey, scoured the rubble for human remains. It got so bad that, by her fifth and last night on the scene, the dust-thick air made her vomit and cough continuously.

Five years, a surgery and countless ineffective drugs later, she still has fits of deep coughing and many infections.

"At every briefing they said the air quality was fine," she said, shaking her head. "Hey, it wasn't fine."

Hachmeister can be counted among the living victims of 9/11.

Responders like her complain that the government has been slow to recognize their plight and that its assistance has been feeble. Even five years after responders recovered the dead and sorted through the debris for clues, their 9/11-related illnesses are often denied and treatment remains a puzzle.

The journal Environmental Health Perspectives last week published the findings of researchers at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine who found that nearly seven of every 10 volunteers reported respiratory symptoms, including the persistent and bronchitis-style cough now dubbed the "Trade Center cough."

The researchers also report in their study of 9,442 that symptoms persisted for more than two years for nearly six of every 10 Ground Zero volunteers.

"The workers and volunteers who served New York City and the nation through their heroic service in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 need continuing medical surveillance and follow-up, especially since some diseases like cancer are of long latency," the study concludes.

Ken Olson, president and chief executive officer of DataChem Laboratories in Salt Lake City, had teams collecting air samples at the World Trade Center site within days after 9/11, and he confirms the government's assertions that the concentrations of hazardous substances - including asbestos, organic chemicals, heavy metals and silica - were not dangerously high.

DataChem used high-tech tools to analyze about 1,000 samples at the World Trade Center for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health over six weeks.

And what did impress the Utah-based scientists was the tiny size of all the dust particles, not just the hazardous substances. Glass, concrete, asbestos - it was all pulverized and more likely to get deeply embedded in the throat and lungs.

"We were more concerned about the volume of particulate matter," he said. "Our bodies aren't really good at dealing with that."

Ivey, a participant in a 9/11 dog-health study, lost a leg to bone cancer in 2004 and succumbed last year at age 9. Hachmeister is convinced that exposure to 9/11 pollution is behind Ivey's untimely demise.

"How can you definitively say it wasn't because of all that" pollution? she asked.

Hachmeister still trains dogs for search and rescue while working a state technology services job. She's putting together the "Ivey Fund" to cover veterinary expenses for service dogs.

Hachmeister is contemplating a workers' compensation claim, even though it threatens her continued work with the Utah's Urban Search and Rescue. She doesn't like to cry, but the tears come as she talks about what 9/11 has cost her already. For responders like Hachmeister, the costs continue to add.

"They just need to admit it."

fahys@sltrib.com

WTC volunteer health effects study's findings

The Mount Sinai Medical School research team began studying health impacts about six months after 9/11. They reported Thursday:

l The air contained so much pulverized cement, it made the dust "highly caustic."

l "Enormous dust clouds" contained tons of microscopic particles containing glass, lead, asbestos, cement, hydrochloric acid, polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorine pesticides, dioxins and furans.

l Once exposed to the polluted air, workers and volunteers began to complain of coughs, asthma, wheezing, sore throats, pneumonia and bronchitis.