Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, physicians who treated survivors say the public health crisis triggered that day has never stopped growing, with new cancer cases still being diagnosed among first responders, survivors and people who simply lived near Ground Zero.
Dr. Marc Siegel, who helped evacuate Bellevue Hospital on the day of the attacks and later walked through the rubble at the disaster site wearing an N95 mask, wrote in a Fox News opinion piece that he and other doctors were aware early on that the site posed serious health risks. He described a visible film in the air even on a clear, sunny day during his visit to the wreckage.
His comments came after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released roughly 170,000 documents related to the attacks, which Mamdani says show the public was misled about the dangers at Ground Zero. Siegel disputed the idea that officials covered up what they knew, writing that doctors and public health officials understood at the time that the molten debris and toxins in the air were dangerous, even if the full scale of the eventual harm was not yet clear.
The numbers tracking that harm have continued to rise. According to the Northwell WTC Health Program, 57,000 cancer cases have now been linked to toxic debris from the World Trade Center collapse. Cancer diagnoses connected to 9/11 exposure jumped 75% between 2023 and 2025 alone, and lung cancer cases have doubled over the past five years. The most common cancers tied to the exposure are skin, prostate, breast and thyroid cancers, along with lymphomas.
Siegel, who has treated patients with a range of illnesses linked to exposure — including gastroesophageal reflux disease, asthma, post-traumatic stress disorder and cancer — said many patients who simply lived in the surrounding neighborhoods have sought him out over fears that their symptoms could be connected to the attacks. He said he has referred patients to the World Trade Center Health Program, which screens people with chest CT scans and other tools.
More than 9,000 people have now died from health effects tied to 9/11, a toll that exceeds the number of people killed in the attacks themselves. Screening and monitoring for at-risk populations continues, and the trend in new diagnoses is still climbing.
Siegel said the long-term scale of the damage could not have been fully predicted at the time, even by doctors and officials who recognized the danger the toxic air posed. “We could only predict, screen, and treat,” he wrote.
