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Respiratory function has been so severely compromised in some World Trade Center rescuers that experts are reporting a dramatic aging effect in the lungs of firefighters and others.
A new analysis found that rescuers experienced a decrease in lung function equivalent to more than a decade of age-related decline in the first year following the disaster.
“The aging portion of the study was used as a convenient yardstick to make understandable the drop in lung function that we found,” said Dr. Gisela Banauch, a pulmonologist. The researchers’ study will appear Wednesday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
They analyzed lung function tests of 12,079 New York Fire Department personnel.
