健康英语新闻:9/11 firefighters more likely to develop cancer: study

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Firefighters who worked in the wreckage of the World Trade Center in 2001 were 19 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who were not there, according to a study.

The study, published Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, surveyed cancer occurrence in nearly 10,000 male firefighters in the seven years after Sept. 11, 2001. (There were too few women to create a meaningful sample size.)

The 9/11 attacks occurred on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, the World Trade Center collapsed, and nearly 3,000 Americans killed. Among the 2,753 victims killed in the World Trade Center were 343 firefighters.

There were 263 cancer cases in the exposed population, showing a cancer rate 19 percent higher than that of the group not exposed.

The study indicated that cancers like melanoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, thyroid and prostate cancer occurred more frequently among exposed firefighters than in the general population. But occurrences of lung cancer did not increase.

The findings “provide information that there may be a significant cancer risk for these people”, said Dr. James Melius, the administrator of the New York State Laborers’ Health and Safety Trust Fund and one of the peer reviewers of the study.

But the results were far from conclusive. “This is not an epidemic,” said Dr. David J. Prezant, a lead researcher and the chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department.