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Roses and a US flag are laid amid the names of the first responders along the South Pool of the 9/11 Memorial, ahead of the 11-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center at "ground zero" in New York on September 10, 2012.

Some estimates put the overall death toll from 9/11-related illness at more than 1,000. Nationwide, at least 20,000 Ground Zero workers are being treated and 40,000 are being monitored by the World Trade Center Health Program.

"We're burying guys left and right," said Nancy Carbone, executive director of Friends of Firefighters, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that helps treat first responders. "This is an ongoing epidemic."

In the past seven weeks, three New York City cops, two firefighters and a construction union worker who toiled at Ground Zero have died of cancer or respiratory illnesses, according John Feal, who runs a nonprofit that monitors Ground Zero healthcare issues.

The staggered nature of the respiratory diagnoses have complicated efforts to distribute $2.7 billion in federal victim compensation funds. A range of cancers is expected to be added to the list of ailments covered by the fund this month.

Leslie Haskins, who lost her husband on 9/11, said she has grown disillusioned by the politics of the reconstruction, and wants to see more attention paid to the ailing workers.

"They are sick and dying, and their marriages are breaking up," she said. "Why are we pouring all this money into buildings when men don't have enough insurance to buy breathing apparatus?"

Retired Fire Department of New York City battalion chief Jim Riches, who spent nine months digging through the rubble at Ground Zero before his firefighter son's body was recovered, called the reconstruction disputes "a disgrace".