Doctor sees blood cancers in WTC program

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Doctor sees blood cancers in WTC program

_http://news.http://newhttp://news.http:/_

(http://news./s/ap/attacks_health)

 

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer Thu May 31, 9:23 PM ET

 

NEW YORK - The head of the largest program tracking the health of World

Trade Center site workers said several have developed rare blood cell cancers,

raising fears that cancer will become a " third wave " of illnesses among those

exposed to toxic dust after Sept. 11.

 

Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring

Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said researchers who have screened

20,000 of the estimated 40,000 ground zero workers are " most concerned " about

lymphatic and blood cancer cases.

 

" We're worried about a third wave, which is the possibility of cancer down

the road, " Herbert said in an audiotaped interview posted on the New England

Journal of Medicine's Web site.

 

" The kind of thing that worries us is that we know we have a handful of

cases of multiple myeloma in very young individuals, and multiple myeloma is a

condition that ... almost always presents later in life, " she added. " That's

the kind of odd, unusual and troubling finding that we're seeing already. "

 

The city's health commissioner said Thursday there was no evidence of a link

to cancers and trade center dust exposure.

 

" While we are concerned about the possibility " of cancer cases in people

exposed to trade center dust, cancer cases haven't increased, Commissioner

Thomas Frieden said. State data show no changes in leukemia and myeloma cases

in

New York City as of 2004, the latest data available, he said.

 

Mount Sinai published research last year that said about 70 percent of the

workers they screened had developed various respiratory illnesses.

 

An article published Thursday with Herbert's interview in the New England

Journal of Medicine said that while workers did inhale cancer-causing

chemicals, " an associated increased risk for respiratory tract cancer and most

other

types of cancer will not be apparent for decades. "

The researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of

Rochester suggested tracking diseases for at least two decades through a New

York

City-based health registry that plans to monitor residents' and workers' health

for 20 years.

 

Herbert, who was not available for further comment Thursday, didn't say in

her audiotaped interview how many blood cell cancer cases the Mount Sinai

program was tracking. She said researchers are verifying all the cases that

have

been reported by members of the monitoring program.

 

An attorney representing thousands of workers and residents said that more

than 100 of his clients have blood cell cancers. About eight have multiple

myeloma, David Worby said. Most of his clients are in their 30s or 40s, and the

youngest is 29, he said.

 

More than half of all cases of multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer that

spreads throughout bone marrow, occur in people over 70, and about 1 percent

of cases occur in people under 40, according to the Multiple Myeloma Research

Foundation in Norwalk, Conn.

 

Herbert, referring to cancer as a possible third wave of disease, said the

first was the chronic coughing and acute respiratory problems that workers got

right after their post-Sept. 11 work.

Second, she said, are more serious chronic lung diseases such as

sarcoidosis, which killed a New York woman who inhaled dust from the collapsing

twin

towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The city medical examiner last week added Felicia

Dunn-Jones' 2002 death to the official list of Sept. 11 attack victims.

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of Herbert's remarks on blood cell cancers:

" The city's own doctors don't — they will not say there's no possibility —

but

they don't at the moment see this as the great threat. "

 

Said Worby: " It's not a great threat to the general public, but to people

who are already sick and have these blood cell cancers and who gave up their

lives ... it's a great threat to them because a lot of them are going to die. "

___

Associated Press writer Sara Kugler contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

New England Journal of Medicine: _http://content.http://c_

(http://content.nejm.org/)

WTC Medical Monitoring Program: _http://www.wtcexamshttp_

(http://www.wtcexams.org/)

 

 

 

 

 

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