9/11 Rescue Workers' Cancer Link Probed

(CBS/AP)  Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.

The numbers are tiny, and experts don't know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.

But doctors who coordinated the study, published Monday in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.

"What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert," said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

The researchers looked at 28,252 emergency responders who spent time amid ground zero dust and found eight cases of multiple myeloma.

Those findings were no surprise. Multiple myeloma is the second most common hematological cancer in the U.S. after non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Normally, researchers would expect to find about seven cases in a group as large as the one examined in the study.

However, four of the people who fell ill were under age 45, and multiple myeloma is thought to be more rare among people of that age. Under normal circumstances, researchers would have expected to find only one case of the disease in that age group.

Those four young multiple myeloma patients included one officer who was caught in the dust cloud on 9/11 and then spent months working long hours at the site. Another spent 111 days at the Staten Island landfill where the rubble was sifted. Two others had less exposure, working 12 and 14 days each in the pit and rubble pile.

The study said it is possible the monitoring program was simply more effective at finding the illness among people who wouldn't ordinarily be subjected to intense medical tracking.

Nevertheless, Moline said, "You shouldn't be seeing so many cases of myeloma in younger folks." The median age of diagnosis for that cancer in the general public is 71.

Several groups are studying New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust when the skyscrapers collapsed.

To date, no study, including the one published Monday, has established a link between that dust and cancer, said Lorna Thorpe, a deputy commissioner and epidemiologist at New York City's health department.

The timing of the four cases examined by the team at Mount Sinai also raised questions about whether they are related to their work at ground zero, she said.

Most research on multiple myeloma indicates that it usually takes 10 to 20 years for someone to develop that cancer after an environmental exposure to a carcinogen.

In these cases, the cancers were diagnosed in as little as three to four years after the attacks, suggesting that something else caused the disease.

[Keith Geddes]

AT LAST an admission there were toxins at Ground Zero. OF COURSE there were.. WTC was reduced to DUST.. hoewever it was done.. and SOMEONE has to be affected.. incredibly not more people. I kept reading the thing had to come down by 2010 because of asbestos?? Now come on... clear thought required.. OF COURSE the powers that be know more. WHY do you think many dont believe a word..
Planes, passengers.. everything is still in question, and NO ENQUIRY.
Same as over here in the UK.. our 7/7.. STILL being questioned.

[gracey71]

you are all morons. you cannot be serious!!!! republicans vs. democrats. red vs blue. white vs black. liberals vs... it's all just insane!!

this is what is wrong with this country. this is why this country is in the shape that it is in. too much xx vs yy. 9/11 happened, katrina happened, more will happen. politics is just the wool pulled over everyone eyes. divide the people by these lines, let them fight, and keep them destracted so they will not band together to fight the main problem, the main issues.

blame who you want to blame for 9/11. it is just as insane to lay blame on the actual people in the planes. why didn't they rise up and overtake the terrorist before the planes flew into the towers? they could have saved thousands. believe that our government knew about it/could have prevented it. hold onto that belief. blame the "other" side. it is all just insane.

when america was sold to the world for the cheapest labor for goods that we consume, when we opened our doors wide for the world to explore the opportunites of this country, we invited hate in. americans are hated everywhere for many different reasons. and just as there are reasons to hate us, there are ways to destroy us. what better way to destroy than from within. keep putting blame on the "other side" for everything. it will never change the fact that we are hated by millions of others that are not american.

the true blame for what happend on 9/11 is to be placed on those that commited the crime. to belive anything less is a disrespect to those that died. don't think the government will protect you. don't believe the government will save you. americans will save americans. americans had better protect americans. the govenment has more important things to do.

[guyfrompa46]

So the effects of 9/11 continuye to linger and will for years to come.
However according to you moronic liberals it's time to close gitmo and let everyone go so they can continue their quest.

[fred-mertz]

This story has NOTHING to do with gitmo. And closing it absolutely will NOT "let everyone go so they can continue their quest".

You are an idiot.

[cameraphone]

Ditto. Evidence of cancer among those who worked clearing the debris from 9/11 has nothing to do with closing Gitmo.

And leave it to conservatives to send off shore the responsibilities of Americans of incarcerating terrorists.