Breast cancer diagnosis in Long Island man who worked at Ground Zero leads him to share story

Dominic D'Amico was washing his hands in his Smithtown office when he looked in the mirror and noticed he was bleeding through his shirt from his chest. 

"I said, I’ve got to get to the doctor,"' remembered D’Amico, 73, of St. James. "There's something wrong here."

After he underwent a biopsy and a mammogram in 2023, D'Amico's doctors gave him an unexpected diagnosis — he had stage 1 breast cancer.

But for D’Amico, who had worked for an electrical contractor at Ground Zero following 9/11, his case was not as unlikely as he thought.

A little over two years later, in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, D’Amico — whose cancer is in remission — is sharing his story to bring attention to both the disease and the World Trade Center Health Program to help those affected by 9/11 toxins to get the help they need.

"Definitely enroll in the program if you were down there, even if you don't have any symptoms," D’Amico said. "You should go and get yourself checked, because you never know."

The father of two said he and a co-worker went to Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, to work out a game plan on how to bring power back to the area, and he was there for 24 hours straight.

"It was like a bomb had hit," D’Amico recalled of that day. "It was just debris all over the place. And I’ll never forget the part of the Trade Center, it was standing up, but it was like a skeleton ... it was pretty horrific."

After going home to get some sleep, D’Amico returned every day for about two weeks with a crew to bring communication lines back to City Hall and surrounding businesses.

But the connection to those days and his illness hadn’t clicked until a close friend and former co-worker died from lymphoma, D’Amico said.

After his June 2023 surgery to remove the cancer, both his surgeon and his younger daughter told him about the World Trade Center Health Program. D'Amico is convinced it was his exposure to Ground Zero that resulted in the cancer.

"I think if I wasn't at 9/11, I don't think you and I would be sitting here," he told Newsday.

Established by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, the limited federal health care program provides medical monitoring and treatment for WTC-related conditions to those directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, according to its website.

It also funds medical research into physical and mental health conditions related to 9/11 exposures. The program does not replace primary health insurance.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which operates the health program, said services for survivors and those enrolled in the 9/11 victims' compensation fund, which provides financial compensation, are unaffected by the Oct. 1 government shutdown.

Michael Barasch, managing partner of law firm Barasch & McGarry, said his firm represents D’Amico and about 40,000 of the 145,000 people registered in the program, which includes responders and civilians. He represents about 100 men diagnosed with breast cancer.

Every month the firm enrolls about 500 people in the program, Barasch said.

"It's not just cops and firefighters," he said of the people who were exposed to 9/11 toxins. "It's all the commuters from Long Island, all the kids who were commuting, going to school at one of the colleges in lower Manhattan."

Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most commonly reported cancer in the program, with more than 15,000 cases, followed by prostate cancer, with almost 11,000 cases, according to its quarterly review. 

Female breast cancer is the third-highest related cancer reported in the program, with more than 4,000 cases, 85% of which are civilians, while 100 men in the program have reported being diagnosed with breast cancer.

In the general population, about one in eight women will develop breast cancer without any identifiable risk factor such as a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which have been linked to the disease, said Dr. Jules Cohen, Stony Brook Cancer Center oncologist specializing in breast cancer.

Roughly one of every 100 cases of breast cancer diagnosed in the United States  is found in a man, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Female breast cancer is the lion's share of the disease, and the men come in very occasionally," Cohen said. "I have a few, three or four male patients in my practice, and hundreds, if not thousands of women that I've seen."

But Barasch believes there are more men with breast cancer who were exposed to 9/11 toxins.

"This is not just a female illness," Barasch said. "Men don't normally associate it with the fact that they can get it, let alone that it was caused by their exposure to the World Trade Center toxins 24 years ago."

When D'Amico was diagnosed with breast cancer, he was also in shock.

"I never heard of a guy getting breast cancer," D’Amico said. "I always thought only women get breast cancer. I was like, am I the only guy that ever got this?"

Since men do not have annual mammograms to detect the disease early on, breast cancer can appear at a more advanced stage in men with physical symptoms, such as palpable lumps or bloody discharge, similar to D’Amico’s experience, Cohen said.

He encouraged both men and women to monitor themselves, have regular checkups and seek medical care if they see an unexplained change. 

Women should have a mammogram every year beginning at age 40, according to the American Cancer Society website.

D’Amico said he now has a mammogram every year and has regular checkups with his doctors.

"It's just the fact that they're providing this, which is tremendous," D’Amico said. "I'm sure there are a lot of people that are out there that aren't taking advantage of it ... they should be."