Published in the Sept. 3 issue of the Lancet, the research led by Dr. David Prezant, the head doctor for the New York Fire Department, concludes that an association between World Trade Center exposure and cancer is "biologically plausible'' due to findings of "a modest excess of cancer in exposed firefighters.'' After adjusting for the fact that doctors spent more time examining the health of rescue workers after 9/11 , researchers still found that firefighters who worked at the trade center site were 19% more likely than their counterparts to develop any kind of cancer.The most common type of cancer found in ground zero firefighters was prostate cancer , followed by melanoma , colon cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thyroid cancer. According to the research, published Thursday in the Lancet medical journal, the increase occurred during the first seven years after 9/11. It is an unexpected finding considering that for most cancers, the latency period -- the time between exposure to a carcinogen and expression of disease -- tends to span decades. The research marks the first substantive findings on the difficult question of whether working at the World Trade Center site increased cancer risk. Perhaps most surprising about the new cancer research, though, is the finding that lung cancer has actually appeared less often than expected among the Ground Zero firefighters: Their lung cancer rates are 58% lower than in the general population.
– A major study seems to confirm anecdotal evidence about the firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attack: They are more likely to get cancer. The study in the Lancet finds that firefighters exposed to the toxic stew of dust in the air were 19% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than their fellow firefighters who were not at the site, reports CNN. The findings come with the usual caveats about drawing specific cause-and-effect conclusions, but they still could make it easier for firefighters to win compensation from the government, notes the Wall Street Journal. "We've just begun to understand what's happening after the World Trade Center," says lead author David Prezant, chief medical officer of the city Fire Department. "We may find that some of our conclusions change over time, get stronger or change entirely." Prostate cancer was the most common type found, followed by melanoma, colon cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and thyroid cancer, notes the LA Times. Notably absent is lung cancer, though the disease can take 20 years to develop. "It is a major study, but it is not definitive,'' says the head of the state's Laborers' Health Fund. Still, it makes little sense to wait decades to make decisions on compensation, he adds. "We ought to give responders the benefit of the doubt."