NEW YORK (AP) – The family of a woman who died of lung disease five months after Sept. 11 had asked that the city’s medical examiner add her name to the death toll last year.

Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch wrote back at the time that his office could not link her death to the exposure “with certainty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That changed on Wednesday, when Felicia Dunn-Jones was added to the medical examiner’s list of attack victims, marking the first time the city has officially linked a death to the toxic dust caused by the World Trade Center’s collapse.

The 42-year-old attorney was caught in the dust cloud while fleeing the collapsing towers on Sept. 11, 2001, and died of sarcoidosis, a disease that causes inflammation and scarring in the lungs, on Feb. 10, 2002.

In explaining the reversal, Dr. Hirsch, citing “accumulated scientific research” that concluded exposure to trade center dust can cause or contribute to sarcoidosis, said that “Mrs. Dunn-Jones’ exposure to World Trade Center dust on 9/11/01 contributed to her death and it has been ruled a homicide.”

“Mrs. Dunn-Jones has now been added to the list of people who died as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers,” Dr. Hirsch wrote.

The city said the Sept. 11 death toll at the trade center is now 2,750. Dunn-Jones will be listed on the Sept. 11 memorial when it opens in 2009, a spokeswoman for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation said.

A class action lawsuit has claimed dozens of deaths have been caused by exposure to toxic trade center dust. A study published this month by a Fire Department of New York doctor linked sarcoidosis definitively to exposure to the toxic plume that enveloped lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, finding firefighters contracted sarcoidosis at a much higher rate after the attacks than before.

New York lawmakers seeking federal funding for Sept. 11 health issues said more names should be added to the list.

“Sadly, we have known that Felicia is not alone and that others have died from ailments caused by 9/11,” said Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York. “I hope that the medical examiner is no longer in denial about the trade center dust. Dr. Hirsch must review the cases of other 9/11 heroes who, like Felicia, died in the prime of their lives.”

A New Jersey medical examiner last year ruled that the January 2006 death of a retired police detective, 34-year-old James Zadroga, was “directly related” to his work at ground zero on and after Sept. 11.

Mr. Zadroga’s father, Joseph Zadroga, said that his son also suffered from sarcoidosis and that he and many others should be added to the list of victims with Dunn-Jones.

“I think that anybody that passes as a result of 9/11 should be listed on the wall,” said Mr. Zadroga. “They’re going to be adding to that wall for the next 20 years.”

James Zadroga was at the trade center site when Seven World Trade Center collapsed but not when the twin towers fell, his father said.

Dunn-Jones breathed in the toxic dust of the towers, did not return to ground zero and became ill shortly after the attacks. She was the only victim who didn’t die on Sept. 11 to receive a death benefit from a federal fund to compensate victims’ families.

In a letter last week to an attorney representing Dunn-Jones, Dr. Hirsch wrote that “I continue to have reasonable doubt” that exposure to trade center dust caused her disease, saying that there was evidence of scarring on Dunn-Jones’ heart muscle that appeared to be there before Sept. 11.

But Dr. Hirsch said that exposure to the toxic dust cloud certainly would have aggravated her disease and that he would change her listed cause of death.

Dunn-Jones will be listed on the Sept. 11 memorial with the names of 2,973 people killed on Sept. 11 in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., foundation spokeswoman Lynn Rasic said.

Mayor Bloomberg, who chairs the memorial foundation, said his “thoughts and prayers are with the Dunn-Jones family.”

“It is on their behalf and on behalf of all those affected by 9/11 that we are now building a memorial that remembers and honors the thousands of innocents that died,” he said.