“Our fear is that cancer diagnoses will only rise as we move into the next 25 years,” researchers with Northwell Health’s World Trade Center program said

NEED TO KNOW

• Over 57,000 cancer cases have been linked to toxic exposure from 9/11 debris, with rates continuing to rise, Jacqueline Moline, MD, the director of the Northwell WTC Health Program
• Northwell Health researchers warn cancer diagnoses could increase dramatically in the next decade
• “There has been a twofold increase in lung cancer in just five years,” Moline said

New data reveals that 25 years after 9/11, cancer cases for individuals who were in the area at the time have spiked. 

On Tuesday, Sept. 8, days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001, Northwell Health unveiled data outlining an “ongoing crisis” among the more than 100,000 patients in the World Trade Center Health Program.

Approximately 145,000 individuals enrolled in the program are currently receiving free medical monitoring amid what researchers are calling “a slow-motion health disaster as cancer cases have exploded.” The health system says that 30% of those enrolled in the Northwell WTC Health Program have already been diagnosed with cancer, and that number is expected to “rise dramatically” in the coming years.

Cases have already jumped 75% from 2023 to 2025, according to a summary of the data shared to its website.

During a gathering at Northwell’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Northwell Health shared the stories of multiple patients who were diagnosed with cancer after working around Ground Zero following the attacks.

Frank Kotnik, a 66-year-old patient at the hospital, was a blacksmith for New York City’s Department of Transportation and worked 20-hour shifts near Ground Zero in the aftermath. 

When he was diagnosed with cancer years after watching the same thing happen to his co-workers, the only thing that surprised Kotnik was how long it took to develop. 

“‘You’ve got 9/11 bladder cancer,’ they told me,” Kotnik said at the event on Tuesday. “I said ‘Really? Twenty-three years later?’”

Felicia Ivey-Toure, 58, said that she didn’t experience symptoms. She was diagnosed with cancer after she was involved in a crash on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and saw doctors about a concussion.

“Like many 9/11-related cancers, she had no family history of thyroid cancer,” researchers at Northwell Health said of Ivey-Toure’s diagnosis.

She had been working at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, which is now closed, on 9/11.

Tens of thousands of people have been diagnosed with cancer after long-term exposure to toxic dust and carcinogenic air due to debris from the Twin Towers after the deadly attack. 

Northwell Health said people who were in New York at the time of the attack “inhaled the toxic, pulverized particulates that floated and coated everything around them and contained 150 different chemicals,” adding that the “toxic brew now known as 9/11 dust” is now responsible for more sickness and deaths “than during that initial dark day.”

“For over 25 years, we have cared for people who were exposed to the aftermath of September 11th,” Jacqueline Moline, MD, the director of the Northwell WTC Health Program, said.

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“Hundreds of thousands of people were at risk then and remain at risk for disease now,” she added. “While we initially saw respiratory disease, we now are faced with increasing numbers of our patients developing cancer. Over 57,000 cases of cancer have been documented, and cancer rates — including rare cancers — are rising. There has been a twofold increase in lung cancer in just five years. Our fear is that cancer diagnoses will only rise as we move into the next 25 years.” 

Ivey-Toure and Kotnik are now in remission, but as Kotnik says, “9/11 is not over. I’m proof of that.”

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