News release: “Nearly 10 years after the greatest human-made disaster in U.S. history– the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers — there has been little research documenting the attacks’ consequences among those most directly affected — the survivors who escaped the World Trade Center towers. In a study just released by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, in conjunction with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR), researchers found that of the 3,271 civilians who evacuated the Twin Towers, 95.6% of survivors reported at least one current posttraumatic stress symptom and 15% screened positive for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), two to three years after the disaster. While past studies have examined PTSD prevalence among rescue and recovery workers, Lower Manhattan residents, other downtown building occupants, and passersby, this is the first study to focus specifically on people who were inside the towers when they were struck. The full study findings are currently online in the American Journal of Epidemiology.”