To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

Former New York City Police Officer Thomas Kwasnaza was part of the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site for 12 hours a day.

"You kind of knew it was bad but it was your job. Your friends were there. I lost friends there," says Kwasnaza. "There were people there, everyone had a job to do and we were focused on it and we did it."

"The federal and city governments were lying and they were telling people, 'Return to work, go back to school, it's safe,' when it wasn't safe," says Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who co-sponsored the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. "They were permitting workers to work on the pile without proper respiratory protection."

Kwasnaza and his doctors believe that made him sick.

"I went from 40 to 70 years old in one shot," says Kwasnaza. "I was diagnosed with a very rare autoimmune neurological disease called 'stiff limb syndrome.' It affects one in a million people. There’s no genetic predisposition for it. I’ve been healthy all my life. I lost two-thirds of my kidney function, my lungs are scarred and I have emphysema. And I’ve never smoked."

The condition put Kwasnaza in a wheelchair and forced him to retire in 2006.

Kwasnaza now lives upstate and collects Social Security, his pension and health insurance. Because his condition is not primarily respiratory, he does not qualify for a lot of the benefits given to those with 9/11-related benefits.

"Basically you feel like a tissue, that you were taken, you cleaned up the mess and you were thrown away," says Kwasnaza.

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Kwasnaza says the disaster continues for many.

"There is a tremendous amount of people who are still sick, that keep getting sick, that keep dying, basically just to go to work to do their job. And people have kind of forgotten about them," says Kwasnaza.