FDNY FIREFIGHTER SUCCUMBS TO CANCER FOLLOWING 9/11 WTC OPERATIONS

The Secret List www.FireFighterCloseCalls.com

 

FDNY FF John McNamara assigned to Engine Company 234 passed away yesterday, Sunday August 9, 2009. FDNY has determined that his loss with be classified as an Administrative Line of Duty Death. FF McNamara, a 10 year veteran of FDNY, was diagnosed with Cancer in 2006 only 5 years after working at the World Trade Center.  Since being diagnosed, John had made several trips to Washington to fight for the sick from 9/11/01.  He is one of the charter members of the FDNY FIREFIGHTER Brotherhood foundation, a not for profit organization founded to support and promote the needs of those first responders who are sick following work at the World Trade Center. http://www.nycfirefighterfoundation.org/

McNamara spent about 500 hours looking for his fallen brethren at the site where the World Trade Center once stood, and his plight was part of a documentary called "Save the Brave," which chronicled the lives of ailing rescue workers. McNamara, who was assigned to Ladder 123 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, also joined the FDNY's rescue mission to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

 

He became ill in June 2006 and the cancer spread to his liver and stomach. Though gravely ill, he spent his remaining years fighting for better testing and health benefits for firefighters who worked at Ground Zero.
McNamara is survived by his wife, Jennifer, and 2-year-old son, Jack. Our most sincere condolences to the family, friends and Brothers/Sisters of FF McNamara.

 

 

RELATED: 9/11 RESPONDERS CANCER:

Researchers specifically studying responders specifically say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer. No doubt-the findings will mirror the issues known within the FDNY and FDNY EMS community.


The numbers are tiny, and experts don't know 100% that there is a confirmed link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster, but numerous signs point in that direction. The doctors who coordinated the study, published today in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.


"What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert," said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
The researchers looked at 28,252 emergency responders who spent time amid ground zero dust and found eight cases of multiple myeloma.


Those findings were no surprise. Multiple myeloma is the second most common hematological cancer in the U.S. after non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Normally, researchers would expect to find about seven cases in a group as large as the one examined in the study.


However, four of the people who fell ill were under age 45, and multiple myeloma is thought to be more rare among people of that age. Under normal circumstances, researchers would have expected to find only one case of the disease in that age group.


Those four young multiple myeloma patients included one officer who was caught in the dust cloud on 9/11 and then spent months working long hours at the site. Another spent 111 days at the Staten Island landfill where the rubble was sifted. Two others had less exposure, working 12 and 14 days each in the pit and rubble pile.


The study said it is possible the monitoring program was simply more effective at finding the illness among people who wouldn't ordinarily be subjected to intense medical tracking.
Nevertheless, Moline said, "You shouldn't be seeing so many cases of myeloma in younger folks." The median age of diagnosis for that cancer in the general public is 71.


Several groups are studying New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust when the skyscrapers collapsed.
To date, no study, including the one published Monday, has established a 100% link between that dust and cancer, said Lorna Thorpe, a deputy commissioner and epidemiologist at New York City's health department, but it doesn't that a "researcher" to figure out where this will probably lead.


The timing of the four cases examined by the team at Mount Sinai also raised questions about whether they are related to their work at ground zero. Most research on multiple myeloma indicates that it usually takes 10 to 20 years for someone to develop that cancer after an environmental exposure to a carcinogen.
In these cases, the cancers were diagnosed in as little as three to four years after the attacks, suggesting that something else might have caused the disease. Or, could it be the heavy concentration in a very limited period of exposure to some of the worst possible carcinogens out there? Time will tell. And hopefully sooner than later so that ALL who responded and operated at the WTC on 9/11 will be properly diagnosed and treated. Right now, for many who know-and many more who do not know, it is a race against time.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE REPORT:

http://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2009/08000/Multiple_Myeloma_in_World_Trade_Center_Responders_.7.aspx

Take Care-BE CAREFUL,