Staggering toll on G. Zero cops
Cancer rate 50% higher than before 9/11
NYPD cops who worked at Ground Zero after 9/11 had 50 percent more cancer diagnoses than officers did in the years before the terror attacks, a longawaited study has found.
The NYPD’s 20year study — the largest ever of cancer among police officers — was distributed internally by the department’s chief surgeon Thursday and obtained exclusively by The Post.
Researchers scrutinized the medical records of nearly 40,000 cops who were on the job on 9/11 and tracked their cancer rates through 2014. Post9/11 retirees’ rates were also tracked.
The findings showed 859 cops were diagnosed with cancer, with 11 having more than one case for a total of 870 diagnoses.
Overall cancer rates among cops were lower than those of the general population because cops are typically in better health, according to the study. It also found that: nOverall rates increased roughly 50 percent between 2002 and 2014 compared with the period between 1995 and 2001. Diagnoses included common cancers such as colon, prostate and female breast cancer.
nRoughly 56 percent of the cops with a cancer diagnosis served at Ground Zero within 24 hours of the attacks, when the toxic debris cloud was the most intense, and 81 percent served there at some point later.
nThere were large increases in four rarer cancer types. Malignant brain tumors and kidney cancer tripled since 2001. Thyroid cancer doubled and nonHodgkin’s lymphoma increased by about 50 percent.
nOnly 16.5 percent of cops with cancer were smokers.
The study was conducted by NYPD staff and experts from WeillCornell Medical College and Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Medical Center.
The summary noted that there is debate over whether the rates were affected by better screening methods.
But the four cancer increases that most surprised the researchers — brain, kidney, thyroid and lymphoma — were usually detected after the person showed symptoms rather than through screenings.
“These cancers are thus troubling — even in their small numbers — due to the fact they have either doubled or tripled in our internal comparison between the pre and postexposure periods, and there are no clear explanations for their increased rates,” the study said.