Mother dies of cancer ‘caused by dust from September 11’
AN American woman whose traumatised, dust-covered face summed up the horrors of September 11 has died of stomach cancer at the age of 42.
Marcy Borders, known as “The Dust Lady” because of the photograph taken in the immediate aftermath, became one of the most recognisable survivors. She had started work at Bank of America a month before the attack, and was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit.
She managed to make it down to the ground level, and was walking away when the second plane struck the tower, leaving her covered from head to foot in thick grey dust.
In the years that followed the mother of two fell into a spiral of drink, drugs and depression, which saw her rack up huge debts and have her children taken into care. “I just couldn’t cope,” she told
The Daily Telegraph in 2011, to mark the 10-year anniversary of the attacks.
“Every time I saw an airplane, I thought there would be another attack. I could not get that day out of my mind.” In 2014, she was finally getting back into the working world and helping with a candidate’s local campaign for mayor when she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
“I’m saying to myself, ‘Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?’ ” she said.
“I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses.”
Announcing the news of her death on Monday, her first cousin, John Borders, said she died of “the diseases that [have] ridden her body since 9/11”.
In the years since September 11, many hundreds of people caught up in the attacks have been diagnosed with cancer. Figures from July 2014 showed that more than 2,500 police officers, firefighters, ambulance staff and sanitation workers reported they had cancer in 2013 – twice as many as said they had the disease 12 months earlier.
It is unclear how many emergency staff have already died after being diagnosed with cancer as a result of their work at Ground Zero.
Doctors said those who spent significant amounts of time at the site are at increased risk of a number of different cancers after coming into contact with “wildly toxic” dust emitted for months following the attacks.