9/11 rescue teams’ lungs still affected and aged by 12 years: say researchers

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 8 2010

In a published report in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine this Wednesday researchers revealed that fire fighters and rescue workers who assisted in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 had compromised lung function even seven years after the incident.

Dr. David Prezant of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York was the lead author of the study. According to him the New York Fire Department employees developed breathing problems that became apparent nearly a year after the incident.

The scientists believe that the dust, toxic chemicals and smoke could be the triggers. These problems have changed the lung capacity of these people as if they had aged 12 years say researchers. Initially their physicians had hoped that the lungs would bounce back to normalcy as is often seen in such cases, but the cases worsened over the coming six years. These firemen, he further said, had no other risk factors like smoking that could be responsible for such lung damage. They lost around 25ml of lung volume per year according to the results of the study. Emergency medical personnel suffered similarly with an annual 40ml loss of lung volume. This loss is usually seen in non smokers at a much higher age said Dr. Prezant. The rescue workers who worked initially were often the worst hit compared to those that joined in later.

The rescue workers have been routinely examined for their lung capacity since 1997. This is usually done by asking the person to blow into a machine forcefully and to amount of air blown out for the first 1 second determines the lung capacity. Before 9/11 the number of firemen with less than normal lung capacity was very few. After the incident it rose to 13%. Among emergency medical personnel pre 9/11 figures were 11% which rose to 23% after 7 years.

According to Prezant, "This was different from a regular fire in that it included not just the combustion byproducts you would see in a normal house fire, but the combustion byproducts of thousands and thousands of gallons of jet fuel from the two planes that collided, and the incredibly dense nature of the exposure to particulate matter that you don't see in a fire."

This study included 91% of the rescue workers with a total of 10,870 firefighters and 1,911 Emergency Medical Service workers.