Number of men with breast cancer near NYC’s Ground Zero skyrockets — now 90 times national average

NEW YORK POST

The number of men who have developed breast cancer while working or living around Ground Zero has skyrocketed, The Post has learned.

The federal Centers for Diseases Control reports that 91 men in the World Trade Center Health Program have been diagnosed with breast cancer to date, six times the number The Post first reported in 2018 — and 90 times higher than the national average, according to the lawyer for some of the victims.

Breast cancer is a rarity for men — roughly 1 out of 100,000 males get the potentially killer disease.

It is so unusual that many men don’t even know they can get breast cancer, as opposed to women who get tested regularly.

But 91 out of 98,590 men in the WTCHP have been diagnosed with it, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control.

That rate is a staggering 90 times the national average based on federal health data, said lawyer Michael Barasch, who represents 54 male breast-cancer patients enrolled in the WTCHP.

“These numbers may be the tip of the iceberg,” Barasch said. “”Breast cancer is really exploding among men.”

There are more than 50 cancers, diseases and other illnesses presumed to be linked to the stew of toxins that spewed into the air when the two World Trade Center towers in Manhattan collapsed after terrorists slammed hijacked planes into the buildings Sept. 11, 2001. Breast cancer is one of them.

First responders, officer workers and residents who were in the Ground Zero zone south of Canal Street and get breast cancer are eligible for government-funded treatment and $250,000 in awards from the Victims Compensation Fund if they enroll in the WTC Health Program.

One of the male WTCHP breast-cancer survivors is Jeffrey Glennon, 60, of East Hills, Long Island.

Glennon had been a superintendent for Weeks Marine at Pier 25 next to Stuyvesant High School, ferrying hazardous debris on barges trucked from Ground Zero to then-closed Fresh Kills landfill.

He discovered a pea-sized lump on his chest while taking a shower in April 2019 and was later diagnosed with breast cancer.

There was not any doubt in his mind that spending 11 months transporting smoldering, hazardous materials from the WTC was responsible for his freak illness, he said.

“We were working 12-hour shifts. The trucks with debris just kept on coming,” Glennon said.

“I was surprised but not surprised. I spent a lot of time at Ground Zero.”