|
 Some previous research has linked working at the site with higher
rates of certain cancers than are seen among people who weren’t at
the World Trade Center during that time.
The current study, however, found firefighters who responded to the
attacks in New York don’t appear to have a greater cancer risk than
firefighters from San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia who were
not part of the 9/11 emergency response – with the exception of two
cancer types.
“Within the first eight years after 9/11 there was no difference in
the risk of cancer overall between the two firefighter groups,
although the risks of thyroid cancer and prostate cancers were
elevated among WTC-exposed firefighters compared with
non-WTC-exposed firefighters,” said one of the study’s authors,
Rachel Zeig-Owens, a researcher for the Fire Department of the City
of New York.
To assess the relative risk of cancer, researchers looked at data on
11,457 firefighters who were exposed to the World Trade Center site
after 9/11 as well as 8,220 firefighters in other large cities who
didn’t have any exposure to the site.
They examined cancer diagnoses from 9/11 through the end of 2009 in
state cancer registries.
Firefighters that responded to 9/11 were more than three times as
likely to get a thyroid cancer diagnosis during the study period
than their peers in the unexposed group, researchers report in the
American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
Later in the study period, from 2005 to 2009, the 9/11 group was
also about 38 percent more likely to get a prostate cancer diagnosis
than the firefighters in other cities.
The findings mirror previous research that found a greater risk of
thyroid and prostate cancers in 9/11 rescue and recovery workers
than the general population, Zeig-Owens said by email.
[to top of second column] |
But because routine firefighting can expose workers to pollutants
associated with cancer, the current research helps to clarify that
even within this profession, there may be an excess risk linked to
9/11.
“It will take decades to know the full extent of the association
between World Trade Center exposure and cancer,” Zeig-Owens added.
Part of the problem is that not enough time has passed. The study
only followed people for a little over eight years and many tumors
take decades to develop after people are exposed to chemicals in the
environment that can cause cancer.
In addition, firefighters are a complicated group to compare to the
general population when it comes to cancer risk, said Sandrah Eckel,
an environmental health researcher at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles who wasn’t involved in the study.
“In general, firefighters might tend to be healthier and more fit
then the general population so they could have lower cancer
incidence rates,” Eckel said by email.
“Or, since firefighters may experience much higher levels of
exposure to carcinogens in smoke or debris during the course of
their typical duties than the general population, they could have
higher cancer incidence rates,” Eckel added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2d2Xw2T American Journal of Industrial
Medicine, online September 1, 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
