It’s not just cops and firefighters who rushed to Ground Zero coming down with Sept. 11-related cancers — students and teachers at downtown schools are getting sick, too.
Officials are launching a campaign to urge former schoolkids and neighborhood residents to sign up for federal help, after at least 22 students and teachers were diagnosed with cancer.
Alexandra Jorge, now 37, was a senior at Pace University when the towers fell. She walked from Manhattan to Queens through a cloud of debris the day of the attack, and returned to school about two weeks later.
“For over a year, it was just horrible. You could smell it. It smelled like jet fuel,” she said.
At age 28, Jorge, herself a cancer researcher in Los Angeles, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “It was devastating, honestly. It was a devastating diagnosis,” she said.
Lawyer Michael Barasch said he represents a dozen former students — half of them from Stuyvesant High School — and another 10 teachers who have developed cancer after being exposed to toxins from the attacks.
Dozens of others have come down with respiratory diseases.
“We are now seeing what … is basically a cancer cluster,” he said at a press conference Thursday.
He said the then-students, who ranged from elementary school to college at the time of the attack, have developed breast, colon and bladder cancer in their late 20s and early 30s.
“What did these kids and teachers do wrong? The only thing they did wrong was listen to the EPA and believe the EPA when it said, ‘Come back, the air is safe.'”
Jorge signed up for the World Trade Center Health Program, which is paying for the thyroid medication she’ll have to take for the rest of her life.
“I’m cancer-free, thank God,” she said.
While most of the attention has gone to first responders, anyone who lived, worked or went to school near the World Trade Center site and develops a related illness is eligible for health care and possible compensation under the Zadroga Act.
Survivors who have symptoms but aren’t sure if they’re eligible can get a health evaluation to check for any signs of trouble.
Maria Sanabria, 53, was an assistant teacher at Leadership and Public Service High School on Trinity Place, and fled the building with students after the attack.
“There was a lot of debris. It was very chaotic,” she said. “The smoke, the ashes — I couldn’t see hardly anyone. It got really scary.”
Two of her former colleagues have died of cancer, Sanabria said. After years of breathing and throat problems, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer this year, had surgery in July and remains in treatment.
“I just broke down crying,” she said of the diagnosis. “I wasn’t thinking about 9/11. I was just thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to die.'”
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said there are likely far more cancer cases among current and retired teachers, but many don’t know they’re eligible for help.
The union has now contacted all staffers who were working at 12 lower Manhattan schools at the time of the 2001 attack, and is reaching out to parent teacher associations.
“We started seeing anecdotal evidence of members who were coming to us with specific types of cancer…. There was a trend,” Mulgrew said.
“The federal government is the one who told people it was safe,” he said. “That was a lie. It was an absolute lie.”
Education Department officials declined to comment and said the agency had no figures to show how many staffers and students have been affected.
The tenants association at Chinatown’s Confucius Plaza is also holding workshops urging residents to sign up.
So far, the compensation fund has paid out $3 billion and 80,000 have registered for the World Trade Center Health Program, but a total of 400,000 could be eligible.
Of the 80,000 registered so far, 12,015 are residents, workers, and students in the area who have gotten sick and signed up for the program.
The rest are first responders.
