Photo by Jan Somma-Hammel/ Staten Island Advance/SILive.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Rob Bass spent nearly a decade working at the Fresh Kills Landfill, often wearing little more than a paper mask as he worked around dust, debris and landfill gases. He handled construction wreckage connected to the rebuilding of Ground Zero and later helped transform the former dump into what would become Freshkills Park.
Rob Bass, a former Huguenot resident who also spent decades living near the landfill, believes his diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma was no coincidence. “It’s gotta be the landfill,” said Bass, who after surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan to remove a tumor from his nostrils is cancer-free. “I’ve never had a cigarette in my life. I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my life. My cancer was from the dump, from Staten Island.”Courtesy of Rob Bass
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