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.
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.
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.
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