jennifer brown/special to the record Mike Megna, a father of three, wants compensation for his rare kidney disease before he loses his home. In his frustration, Megna has taken out two billboards – one on Route 3 across from MetLife Stadium, the other on an approach to the Holland Tunnel – to plead his case. There is a fund to help 9/11 workers who developed health problems as a result of their work at the site, but Megna's kidney ailment isn't on its list of covered illnesses. "A health condition can be added to the list, only after published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence in 9/11-exposed populations provides substantial support for a causal relationship between the 9/11 exposures and the health condition," said Christina Spring, a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which administers the program. Megna, 44, has been told he needs to wait until medical researchers can prove a link between 9/11 exposure and his illness. As his condition worsened, he became chronically anemic from the blood loss. Mike Megna can't afford to wait for science. Since chemotherapy might do more harm than good, Erickson recommended more waiting – in this case, waiting until a better treatment comes along. The World Trade Center Health Program funds some of the research projects aimed at establishing a connection between 9/11 exposure and illnesses. "That should be the end of my story, but in 2007, I started urinating blood," he said during an interview in the ranch house he and his three children will have to vacate because of the foreclosure. He was in denial for months, but after rounds and rounds of tests, he finally received a definitive diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic. Only 20 people in the world have been diagnosed with atypical anti-glomerular basement membrane nephritis, his Mayo doctors told him. For those afflicted, the antibodies produced by bone marrow are not filtered by the kidneys; instead they destroy the filters in the kidneys, leading to blood in the urine. After countless rounds of testing, his bewildered doctors could determine only that his bone marrow was producing some substance that was slowly attacking his kidneys. He used part of that money to pay for the billboard, which ran for a month until mid-July, and website development. "The [fund] will review the new information and determine if it provides the basis for a revised decision.'' Megna was a Marine vet working as a Pompton Lakes police officer on the day of the terrorist attacks. (He'd resigned as a police officer after being indicted for failing to report a co-worker had leaked information to other members of the force about an undercover drug investigation. He was eventually sentenced in 2008 to probation for one count of hindering prosecution.)
– A 9/11 first responder with kidney disease close to losing his New Jersey home is taking his plight public in a big way: through his website and a series of tri-state area billboards, the Record reports. "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs outside MetLife Stadium and the Holland Tunnel and on NYC buses read, referring to the illness 44-year-old Mike Megna says he came down with due to dust at the decimated World Trade Center, where he toiled for three weeks after the attacks. Megna started seeing smaller symptoms, like a constantly runny nose and digestive issues, early on, but in 2006 blood began showing in his urine, and a diagnosis delivered heart-sinking news: He had a "super-rare" form of kidney disease that only 20 people in the world have. And while Megna, who's been disabled since 2011, has applied for compensation cash from the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010, there's a complication: Kidney disease isn't one of the recognized illnesses covered by the fund. That means the divorced dad of three isn't eligible for any money—even though Mary Ann McLaughlin, a Mount Sinai Medical Center researcher who petitioned the fund two years ago to add the disease based on initial research, has examined Megna's records and believes the WTC toxins "may more likely than not" be tied to his sickness. However, a rep for the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which runs the program, says a disease can be added to the list—and compensation issued—only after "published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence" shows "substantial support" for a direct link between the WTC fallout and the disease. Megna will have to hold tight, per the rep, who says once McLaughlin publishes her study, kidney disease eligibility will be considered. But that's time Megna—$120,000 behind on his mortgage and anticipating dialysis down the road (his kidneys are now functioning at 45%, per the Star-Ledger)—says he doesn't have. "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait," he tells the paper.