Thursday, October 1, 2026
For Felicia Ivey-Toure, Sept. 11, 2001, did not end when the smoke cleared from Lower Manhattan.
Two days after the attacks, Ivey-Toure went to Ground Zero as a volunteer counselor, spending about three weeks helping people who had been shaken by what they had witnessed. At the time, she never imagined she would one day be talking about her own cancer.
Twenty-five years later, Ivey-Toure, 58, of Jamaica, Queens, and Frank Kotnik, 66, of Glendale, Queens, shared their stories Tuesday at a Northwell Health press conference at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where doctors discussed the growing number of cancer cases among people exposed to 9/11.
Northwell’s World Trade Center Health Program saw 9/11-certified cancer cases grow from 177 in 2023 to 235 in 2025, a 75% jump over three years. Now, 132 new cases through the first half of 2026 continue the trend with 811 new cases in 42 months.
Prostate and skin cancers were the most common, followed by cancers of the breast and urinary tract. By comparison, the program totaled 1,634 cancer cases over the first decade and 2,445 all-time through June among 1,489 people, representing 30% of overall Northwell WTC enrollees.
More than 57,000 have battled cancer.
Dr. Jacqueline Moline, director of Northwell’s World Trade Center Health Program, said doctors are seeing some cancers earlier than expected.
Multiple myeloma normally affects people in their 70s, but Moline said she has seen patients as young as 37 and 41 with the disease.
“I’ll never forget a community event we went to in October 2001,” Moline said. “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.”
For Ivey-Toure, the connection between her cancer and her 9/11 experience was not immediately obvious.
She noticed spots on her hands and skin but initially did not associate them with cancer or her time at Ground Zero.
“I never correlated it with cancer. Never correlated it with the World Trade Center,” she said.
Her thyroid cancer was eventually diagnosed after doctors discovered a mass while treating her following a car crash on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. She underwent a thyroidectomy and continues to take medication and have nodules in her lungs monitored.
Ivey-Toure said the anniversary has become a time for reflection, particularly as she thinks about friends who may not have connected their health problems to their 9/11 exposure.
“Today, it’s a day of reflection,” she said.
Kotnik, a retired New York City Department of Transportation blacksmith, worked 20-hour shifts at Ground Zero, cutting steel and helping with the cleanup. He watched colleagues become sick and die from cancer.
In 2023, after helping his brother cut down a tree on Long Island, Kotnik noticed blood in his urine. He contacted his doctor, and testing eventually revealed bladder cancer that was determined to be 9/11-related.
Kotnik underwent surgery in June 2024, during which doctors removed his bladder and part of his colon and reconstructed his urinary system.
“I was scared, but you got to face the music,” Kotnik said.
Both Ivey-Toure and Kotnik received treatment through Northwell and are now in remission.
The rising number of cases, Moline said, is a reminder that the health consequences of Sept. 11 did not end when the cleanup did.
She urged people in the WTC Health Program to continue screenings and to speak with their doctors about new or persistent symptoms.
