9/11’s heartbreaking cancer toll after 20 years: 24K cases, over 1,500 deaths
With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 weeks away, the number of cancers among Ground Zero responders and others who lived, worked or went to school near the World Trade Center has risen to 23,710, including 1,510 people who died, health officials say.
Experts are not shocked at the rising toll, saying more cancers would normally be expected in the aging group. But they cite ongoing studies that raise red flags, and warn of a “third wave of disease.”
Ongoing studies show several cancers have hit those exposed to toxic chemicals around Ground Zero at higher rates than the general population: thyroid, prostate and blood cancers such as leukemia.
“It is a warning sign that we can expect other cancers to be showing up at significant rates in the future,” Dr. Michael Crane, medical director of the WTC clinical center at Mount Sinai Medical Center, told The Post, ”We can’t let our guard
About 400,000 first responders and others breathed in toxic dust and air pollutants released by the destroyed Twin Towers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
The federally funded WTC Health Program has 112,042 enrolled responders and “survivors.” Of them, 65,037 have certified WTC-related illnesses as of June 30. Another 4,627, including those with cancer, have died, but the program does not track the cause of death.
One of the first afflicted was retired NYPD Detective John Walcott, who worked months at Ground Zero and at Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, sifting debris for human remains. Stricken with acute myeloid leukemia in 2003 at age 38, doctors suspected the trigger was benzene, a cancer-causing chemical that permeated the WTC site from burning jet fuel.
Now 57, Walcott survived the disease thanks to a petty officer in the German Navy, Olaf Gierszewski, a registered donor whose bone marrow matched Walcott’s. An extraction jetted to New York was given to Walcott in a blood transfusion.
“I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m still here,” said Walcott, a married dad. Still, chemotherapy damaged his heart and nerves in his hands and feet. “You live in constant pain, but it’s a billion times better than leukemia.”
Reggie Hilaire also calls himself lucky. Then a 35-year-old NYPD cop who tallied 850 hours at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills, he came down with thyroid cancer in 2005 and multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, in 2006.
“My doctor said, ‘You’re too young to have multiple myeloma,’” which usually strikes people in their 60s or 70s. “‘It has to be a mistake’” But it wasn’t.
Hilaire’s thyroid — with a golf-ball sized tumor — was removed. The blood cancer has remained dormant so far. He needs a check-up every six months at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
“Like a volcano, it could come up at any time,” he said.
Hilaire, a father of two, has befriended several fellow cops with 9/11-linked cancer, some who died. Ronald Richards, an NYPD bomb-squad detective and 9/11 responder, succumbed to multiple myeloma in 2015 at age 45, leaving his wife and four daughters.
Doctors predict more cancers ahead.
Dr. Jacqueline Moline, director of the Northwell Health WTC Health Program in Queens, told The Post she expects more lung and colon cancers, as well as mesothelioma. That deadly lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos, which was found in abundance at Ground Zero, takes 20 years or longer to emerge.
“I think we are already in the third wave of diseases – which is cancers and diseases of latency,” Moline said in an email. “And the cancers will continue to accumulate as time passes, in a steady fashion.”
https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/as-20th-anniversary-of-9-11-nears-23000-ground-zero-cancer-cases-reported-and-1510-deaths/