After dragging its feet for 10 months, the city has appealed a judge’s decision to award a 9/11 pension to the widow of a fallen NYPD detective who died from ALS, the Daily News has learned.

If the city didn’t appeal, the precedent-setting decision would have linked neurotoxic illnesses like ALS or Parkinson’s Disease to the toxins over ground zero and paved the way for scores of suffers to recoup 9/11 pensions and federal health benefits.

But the city’s appeal puts the precedent on hold — and could end the possibility of any 9/11 pensions for sufferers of the disease.

The appeal — which came after the city burned through two extensions — outraged Cathy Hanson, the widow of Detective Michael Hanson. She had convinced a Manhattan Supreme Court judge that that the heavy metals that caused her husband’s fatal illness came from toxins swirling around Ground Zero.

“I don’t know how these city lawyers live with themselves,” Hanson said about the appeal. “These aren’t names on a piece of paper. These are real people with real families.”

Judge Lynn Kotler determined on Jan. 24 that Detective Hanson’s death in 2018 from ALS — also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease — was linked to his time at Ground Zero, paving the way for Cathy Hanson to collect a 9/11 disability pension that would amount to three-quarters of his last year’s salary.

The city immediately vowed to appeal. The city’s paperwork was due by Aug. 23, but it wasn’t filed with the Appellate Division until Nov. 22, the exact day the city’s last extension ran out.

“Every time I get one of these legal notifications about his case, I relive his illness, his bravery,” Cathy Hanson said. “(The city) should do what’s right for the responders who wouldn’t hesitate to help others again without any thought of themselves.”

Paul DiGiacomo, president of the NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association, said the last-minute appeal the one in the Hanson case “break your heart.”

“NYPD detectives were exposed to 9/11 disease and death-causing debris at Ground Zero, the morgue and at the landfill where Twin Towers debris were dumped. These locations were crime scenes,” DiGiacomo said. “And now legal challenges are being cynically used to spit on those who gave their all and who suffered for years.”

Autopsy results proved that massive traces of antimony, a heavy metal discovered at the World Trade Center site, was in Hanson’s brain tissue and spinal fluid, creating a link between his ALS and his eight months at Ground Zero.

ALS — short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — is a neurological disease that affects all the muscles in the body. Sufferers rapidly lose their strength and ability to speak, eat, move and, ultimately, breathe.

“It has always been my opinion that (Detective Hanson’s) deterioration and eventual death had some causality with his exposures on the 9/11 grounds,” said a letter a doctor, Andrew Hirsh, cited in Hanson case court papers.

“I feel that his toxic exposures played a real impact on his global health deterioration and trigger of neurologic decline,” Hirsh wrote. He added: “I feel that future studies and monitoring will confirm this relationship in others that have had similar exposure.”

Hanson’s victory in Manhattan Supreme Court had encouraged 9/11 first responders and survivors seeking benefits in similar cases. Retired firefighter Robert Olson sued the city for 9/11 benefits on Oct. 31, claiming that he suffered from ALS just as Detective Hanson did.

In its appeal seeking to reverse Judge Kotler’s decision, the city said the autopsy reports and statements from doctors supporting Hanson’s case could not conclusively prove that the heavy metals in the detective’s system came directly from Ground Zero.

“Mr. Hanson’s deeply honorable service at the WTC site is not in dispute,” the city said in its appeal, claiming that Kotler “erred in ignoring the limitations imposed by the legislature, substituting (her) judgement for that of the Medical Board, and awarding benefits as a matter of law in the absence of objective credible evidence that Mr. Hanson died from a WTC qualifying condition.”

“While we are, of course, sympathetic to this family’s loss, under the law ALS is not a qualifying condition for this pension benefit,” a Law Department spokesman said Friday. “The City is appealing because we believe the trial Court’s decision defies the intent of the Legislature and well-established law and that its finding on the medical board’s decision is erroneous.”

Hanson’s lawyer, Tim McEnaney, called the city’s appeal “outrageous,” given the evidence Detective Hanson “suffered from heavy metal poisoning which has been linked to his ALS.”

“This (9/11) statute was supposed to protect people like Cathy with the presumption that his death was caused by his work at Ground Zero,” McEnaney said.