Another name has been added to the list of people killed in the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, a civil rights lawyer was caught in the huge dust cloud while fleeing the collapsing towers and died five months later of lung disease. It's the first time the city has officially linked a death to the toxic dust cause by the collapse.

New York City's chief medical examiner, Dr Charles S Hirsch, has for the first time directly linked her death to exposure to dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center. In a letter made public on Wednesday, Hirsch said that he was certain "beyond a reasonable doubt" that dust from the twin towers contributed to the death of Felicia Dunn-Jones.

Hirsch said he had decided to amend Dunn-Jones' death certificate to indicate that exposure to trade center dust "was contributory to her death". The manner of death will be changed from natural causes to homicide. Her name will be added to the official list of World Trade Center victims, and the official number of people who died as a result of the attack on the twin towers will be increased to 2,750.

By making a formal connection between Dunn-Jones' death and her relatively brief exposure to the dust, the medical examiner's decision could have a wide impact on how the city deals with the growing number of illnesses and deaths linked in some way to ground zero.

The city is already under pressure to re-examine the deaths of people like James Zadroga, 34, a New York police detective who worked at the debris pile in the months after the towers fell. Although a New Jersey pathologist's autopsy last year concluded that his death was linked to trade center dust, city officials have not accepted that.

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