9/11 cancer deaths: Why have cancer rates gone up since the September 11 attacks?

THEY dedicated hours, days, weeks to shovelling away the tower debris and searching for September 11 survivors.

But now thousands of people who rushed to Ground Zero to help have been left diagnosed with various forms of cancer - including cancers of the blood, breast cancer and cancers affecting the digestive system.

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Why have cancer rates gone up since September 11?

Government reports have suggested that those near the World Trade Center were exposed to chemicals that were known carcinogens or cancer-causing agents.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center oncologist, Dr. Larry Norton, has even formerly spoken out and said there was “every reason to expect” that the debris released in the attack could have been carcinogenic.

More than 50 types of cancer are now believed to be related to the toxic smoke and dust of September 11.

According to the New York Post, the NYPD cops who worked at Ground Zero after 9/11 had 50 per cent more cancer diagnoses than officers did in the years before the terror attacks.

In a report compiled by the NYPD, it was found that more than 50 per cent of the police officers with a cancer diagnosis served at Ground Zero within 24 hours of the attack, when the toxic debris cloud was the most intense.

In 2016, New York Daily News reported that 21,000 of  were being treated for conditions caused by the toxic and hazardous air after the terrorist attack.

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Has it happened before?

In 1986, a reactor exploded at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in Ukraine, with radioactive materials released into the atmosphere.

More than 350,000 cleanup workers rushed to help, with the World Health Organisation reporting a huge increase in thyroid cancer diagnoses of those who were young children at the time of the accident.

A research group determined that there may have been up to 4000 more additional cancer deaths among the three highest exposed groups over their lifetime.

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The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War Two also saw a huge increase in the rates of leukaemia and other forms of cancer.

The cancer risk for Hiroshima survivors increased by 42 per cent.

Likewise, the Fukushima disaster that saw nuclear reactor meltdown after a tsunami saw a jump in cases of thyroid cancer.