by KIRSTEN DANIS and JORDAN LITE
Lung problems spiked in firefighters who responded to 9/11, and a raft of mental-health effects continue to plague responders years later, city officials said yesterday.
Previously healthy firefighters have developed asthma or a rare lung condition called sarcoidosis, according to a report on nearly 14,000 responders compiled by Fire Department doctors.
Others are worried about dying young. They experience nightmares, insomnia, anger and guilt from the brothers they lost and time spent at the World Trade Center site.
"It shows you unquestionably that there has been an impact on the health of those who responded on 9/11," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said yesterday.
He called the report "an enormously important and very unique document that will help us an awful lot."
Among the findings in the report, "World Trade Center Health Impacts on FDNY Rescue Workers":
*Twenty-six new cases of the inflammatory lung disease sarcoidosis in the first five years after 9/11, most of them with asthma. Five or fewer rescuers got sarcoidosis annually before 9/11. Almost none had symptoms.
* 22% of FDNY rescue workers said they were "feeling as if [their] future will be cut short."
* As many as four years after the attacks, 53% said their mood had changed, with about one-third struggling with concentration and feelings of irritation, anger and anxiety.
* The extent of sleep problems among responders barely diminished over the first four years after the attacks. Some 61% had them in the first year; 58% did in the next three.
* Two-thirds of responders said their exercise routine changed in the first year after 9/11, but 18% said they had started working out more two to four years later.
"Why this report is so important today is that it scientifically shows the connection between 9/11 and illnesses," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said yesterday at the Gouverneur Hospital, a medical center on the lower East Side that will house one of the two new outposts of the Bellevue WTC treatment clinic. "It's very, very important for making the case in Congress."
A separate 9/11 health program for downtown residents, workers and students will be able to accommodate up to 20,000 people, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
The WTC Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital has two new sites - at Gouverneur Health-Care Services in lower Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens.
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