Deaths of 9-11 First Responders Continue to Rise

Tom Frey now lives in Florida and is one of the many 9-11 First Responders with serious illnesses brought on by exposure to the dust, smoke and chemicals at Ground Zero.  A battle with Hodgkins lymphoma, tied to his 9-11 exposure, included multiple rounds of chemotherapy.  That treatment led to a secondary diagnosis:  pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable scarring of the lungs that can be have many causes and is one of the latest diseases to be correlated with Ground Zero exposure.

On 9-11, Frey remembers looking up to see gray ash falling like soft rain and realizing that he and other cops were wearing only paper masks:  "I said, 'This is not going to be good down the road.' "

When he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2016, his doctor told him "that the chemo drugs had started a fire in my lungs with some of the debris from the Trade Center, and he said there was nothing they could do for me."

Though Frey had long thought of himself as invincible --  "I figured, hey, all those hot dogs I ate from the street vendors, I must be immune to everything," he jokes --  he is part of the growing toll of victims of the 9/11 attacks.