By Michael Ventura
DNAinfo Senior Editor
MANHATTAN — Firefighters and first responders had "substantial declines in lung function" following exposure to World Trade Center dust after 9/11, a new report says.
The New England Journal of Medicine's study tracked the long-term health effects of the dust on more than 90 percent of the roughly 14,000 emergency personnel who worked at Ground Zero during the first two weeks after the attack.
It determined "a substantial proportion of workers with abnormal lung function," also lost pulmonary function during the first year after the event, “more than 12 times the annual age-associated rate.”
“The fact that this decline is persistent demonstrates that there is a need for continued monitoring and aggressive treatment,” Dr. David J. Prezant, an author of the study and the chief medical officer in the Office of Medical Affairs at the FDNY, told the New York Times. “It is real.”
Of all the workers studied, up to 40 percent, or 5,000 people, had persistent problems like coughing, wheezing, sore throat, and shortness of breath, Prezant told the paper.
This study also looked into the varying degrees of declining lung function separating the subjects into two groups, firefighters and Emergency Medical Services workers.
“Firefighters had heavier exposure to dust and had commensurately greater first-year declines in lung function than did EMS workers,” the study reports.
Throughout the entire seven year period, the study found that arrival time onto the scene had “no apparent influence,” but looked instead to the intensity of the initial exposure that “may have been the critical determinant of acute inflammation and early reductions in lung function. The long-term course was more related to the population that was exposed than to the exposure.”
Thousands of Ground Zero workers who were sickened by the aftermath of the attacks sued the city. Last month, a federal judge said a settlement proposed by the city was "not enough" and too confusing, and ordered a judicial review of the proposal.
