Northwell sees 75% jump in 9/11-linked cancer cases 25 years later

Cancer, not the respiratory illness that once defined the World Trade Center's health toll, is now the dominant long-term threat facing 9/11 survivors and responders, physicians and patients said this week at Northwell Health's Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center as they marked the attack's 25th anniversary, according to a Northwell news release.

Northwell is one of seven federally funded New York metro organizations that treat enrollees of the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program, seeing patients at a clinic in Rego Park, Queens, and through specialists across the health system. Congress created the program in 2011 to provide no-cost medical monitoring and treatment for people who worked, lived or went to school near Ground Zero after the attack, and it now covers roughly 145,000 people nationwide.

About two-thirds of Northwell's enrollees are certified for at least one WTC-related health condition, and 30% of those have battled cancer, a share the health system expects to keep climbing over the next decade.

Cancer certifications at Northwell jumped from 177 in 2023 to 235 in 2025, a 75% increase over three years, and another 132 cases were added in the first half of 2026 alone, bringing the total to 811 new cases in 42 months. That compares with 1,634 cancer cases documented in the program's first decade, from 2013 to 2022, and 2,445 all-time cases among 1,489 people as of June. Prostate and skin cancers are the most common among Northwell's patients, followed by cancers of the breast and urinary tract, according to the organization.

“For over 25 years, we have cared for people who were exposed to the aftermath of September 11th,” Jacqueline Moline, M.D., director of Northwell's WTC Health Program, said in the release. “Hundreds of thousands of people were at risk then and remain at risk for disease now. While we initially saw respiratory disease, we now are faced with increasing numbers of our patients developing cancer, and cancer rates—including rare cancers—are rising. There has been a twofold increase in lung cancer in just five years.”

The trend has played out in patients like Frank Kotnik, a former New York City Department of Transportation blacksmith who worked 20-hour shifts near Ground Zero and was diagnosed with bladder cancer 23 years later, and Felicia Ivey-Toure, a mental health counselor who offered crisis counseling to responders after working at Greenwich Village's since-closed St. Vincent's Hospital and was later diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Neither had a family history of the disease. Both were treated at Northwell's R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Hospital at LIJ Medical Center and are now in remission.

“Twenty-five years later, we must face a hard truth: September 11th was not a one-day event,” Craig Devoe, M.D., system head of gastrointestinal medical oncology at the Northwell Cancer Institute, said in the release. “The toxic dust cloud of Ground Zero and the grueling recovery work at sites like Fresh Kills created a persistent environmental catastrophe that continues to claim and alter lives. While 9/11-related cancers are on the rise, comprehensive screening offers early discovery and successful treatment at specialized cancer centers.”

The findings track with a broader investigation the CDC issued around the same time marking the WTC Health Program's 25th anniversary. Lung cancer screening among program members reached 54% in 2024, far above the 18% U.S. screening rate that year, according to the CDC.

Enrolled members diagnosed with cancer also had mortality rates 26% to 64% lower than other New York residents across several cancer types, including prostate, lung, kidney and colorectal cancers, the agency found. The comparison suggests the no-cost monitoring behind the rising case counts may also be catching disease earlier and extending patients' lives even as diagnoses climb.

“9/11 is not over,” Kotnik said. “I'm proof of that.”