Cancer Risk High For 9/11 Heroes

Since September 11, 2001, 283 World Trade Center first responders have been diagnosed with cancer and thirty-three have died. Now doctors are unsure how many more might be claimed by the aftereffects of their time at Ground Zero.

(PRWEB) May 8, 2009 -- Since September 11, 2001, 283 World Trade Center first responders have been diagnosed with cancer and thirty-three have died. Now doctors are unsure how many more might be claimed by the aftereffects of their time at Ground Zero.

"We'll never know the full range of what the WTC responders were exposed to," said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, in an interview for The New England Journal of Medicine. But what is clear is that the air at the site was laden with a potent mixture of cancer-causing agents and an "unbelievable range" of other chemicals--all of which may now be slowly poisoning the 9/11 first responders.

"Seventy-five first responders have had blood cell cancers that doctors say were in fact caused by exposure to the dust," says Steve Centore, a federal first responder, nuclear physicist, a Navy veteran and author of the new book One of Them: A First Responder's Story. "How many more of us are harboring this insidious disease without knowing it--and all because we just wanted to help?"

Dr. Herbert noted that when it comes to first responders, doctors are seeing cancers of the hematologic and lymphatic systems such as leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkins lymphoma--which can take two to ten years to develop.

"This 'third wave' of effects from ground zero exposure may just be beginning," says Mr. Centore. "Who knows what sort of horrors the next few years may bring as these chemicals come to maturity in our bodies?"

One of the Them is a searing account of Mr. Centore's months spent at ground zero and the years he has since spent fighting a litany of serious health problems that put him among:

###