Certified 9/11-related cancer cases have more than doubled at Northwell Health’s World Trade Center Health Program, according to the healthcare provider.
Northwell held a press conference at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park Tuesday morning to highlight how certified 9/11 cancer cases in the WTC Health Program jumped from 120 in 2023 to 262 in 2025 – a jump of 118%.
The healthcare provider reported a further 236 new cases in the first six months of 2026 – accounting for about 5% of all Northwell WTC patients. By comparison, there were just 234 cases confirmed in the first decade of the program.
Jacqueline Moline, director of the Northwell WTC Program, recalled hearing concerns from New Yorkers who lived and worked near the World Trade Center in October 2001, with many residents raising concerns about the toxic environment in Lower Manhattan.
“I’ll never forget a community event we went to in October 2001,” Moline said in a statement. “It was filled with residents and they were all concerned about the toxic environment eventually causing cancer. It was something the medical community thought might happen, but it was not our immediate concern. Turns out they were right.”
Northwell representatives outlined how an “entire cohort of people” are in a “fight for their lives” on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, noting that a range of cancers are “taking over” as the predominant 9/11-related illness.
Northwell officials stated that over 57,000 people who lived and worked near the World Trade Center in the aftermath of 9/11 have battled some form of cancer, with cancer taking over from a variety of lung diseases that once defined WTC-related illnesses.
Prostate and skin cancer were the most common forms of cancer observed in recent surges at Northwell’s WTC Health Program followed by cancers of the breast and the urinary tract.
The World Trade Center towers burn after being attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. AP Photo/Diane Bondareff
Several Queens residents spoke of their own experiences battling cancer as a result of inhaling toxic fumes near ground zero in the aftermath of 9/11, including Glendale resident Frank Kotnik.
Kotnik, 66, worked 20-hour shifts in the moonscape surrounding ground zero and knew it was “only a matter of time” before he was diagnosed with cancer. Many of Kotnik’s colleagues had already been diagnosed with cancer as a result of breathing in a toxic cocktail of over 150 chemicals now known as 9/11 dust.
Kotnik was diagnosed with bladder cancer and underwent surgery at Northwell’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center along with successful chemotherapy treatment. He is now in remission.
The diagnosis, however, still came as a shock when it arrived in 2024, 23 years after the 9/11 attacks.
“‘You’ve got 9/11 bladder cancer, they told me,” Kotnik said. “I said, ‘really? Twenty-three years later?”
Felicia Ivey-Toure, meanwhile, was working as a mental health counsellor at the now-closed St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village at the time of the 9/11 attacks, where she provided crisis and grief counseling to responders in the months following the attacks.
The 58-year-old Jamaica resident was diagnosed with thyroid cancer after suffering a concussion that would not go away following a car crash on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Ivey-Toure is now in remission after undergoing surgery at the Long Island Jewish Center alongside a course of radiation in January 2025.
Ivey-Toure said she had a “whole cohort” of friends who have been diagnosed with cancer having worked in Lower Manhattan post-9/11.
“I have a whole cohort of colleagues and friends who now have cancers – including brain tumors,” she said. “We had no idea that it could be 9/11-related.”
Northwell Health said both Ivey Toure and Kotnik are reminders that 9/11 is not “some distant event” and evidence that a “cancer crisis” is currently unfolding among the people who experienced Lower Manhattan directly after 9/11.
Approximately 145,000 people are currently enrolled in Northwell’s WTC Health Program, which provides free medical monitoring for people at risk of 9/11-related health conditions. Representatives for the program said a “slow-motion health disaster” is currently unfolding as cancer cases “explode” among those patients.
“9/11 is not over,” Kotnik said. “I’m proof of that.”