Number of first responders, others with cancers linked to Sept. 11 skyrockets

The number of first responders and others diagnosed with 9/11-linked cancers has ballooned to 48,579 — a staggering 143% increase in five years, the latest data from the World Trade Center Health Program show. 

Skin, prostate and breast cancer top the list, along with melanoma, lymphoma, luekemia and cancers of the thyroid, kidney, lung and bladder — believed to have been triggered by toxins at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.

The cancer surge is attributed, in part, to the advancing age of the population of Ground Zero responders — most now in their late 50s and 60s.

“We know that the population is aging so we can predict that the number of cancers is going to go up,” said Dr. Steven Markowitz, an occupational medicine expert at Queens College.

In addition, the WTC Health Program has had a significant increase in enrollment since 2017, with 2024 “a record year” for the highest number of new members — more than 10,000 — to date, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told The Post.

“We will continue to see an increase in cancer and other serious conditions that have longer latency periods,” the spokesman said.

The CDC counts 8,215 WTC enrollees who have died, including 5,844 responders, as of March 27.

As of this week, 3,767 members who died, including 2,388 responders, had cancer. The total eclipses the 2,977 people killed on 9/11.

Retired NYPD Officer John DeVito, of Bellport, LI, worked at both Ground Zero and Fresh Kills, where he and other cops sifted through debris without wearing masks.

“They had a bulldozer lay out debris,” the 53-year-old recalled to The Post. “We went through it with rakes.” 

DeVito was diagnosed with esophageal cancer on March 13, 2020, and underwent a half dozen rounds of chemo before having part of his esophagus and stomach removed.

“Everybody said everything was safe,” said DeVito, who was in his late 20s at the time and is now a grandfather of 1-year-old Charlotte.

Retired NYPD Officer Glenn Taraquinio, 62, worked on “the pile” in the days after the attacks, passing buckets of debris out of the mountains of rubble.

“Every once in a while you’d look in the bucket and you’d see a hand or another body part,” he said. “With all the dignity it deserved, we’d take the body part over to the Medical Examiner’s office.”

He remembers officials insisting the air was safe.

Then-EPA commissioner Christie Todd Whitman “stood up there and said there’s nothing wrong with the quality of the air,” he recalled.

A short time later FEMA began handing out boxes of N95 masks. 

“The masks would turn black in an hour,” he said. 

Taraquinio, who was diagnosed with 911-related prostate cancer in 2020, called the cancer numbers “insane.”

Phil Rizzo, a 69-year-old retired Department of Correction Emergency Services Unit captain, spent weeks on the pile, arriving right after the towers fell.

“There was so much ash falling it looked like it was snowing,” he recalled. “We weren’t really prepared. We had work gloves and baseball caps.”

At the end of the first day, the Red Cross washed out their eyes, he said.

“Our unit worked 12-hour tours seven days a week,” he said.

Rizzo was diagnosed with head and neck cancer in 2023.

“I always stayed in shape and did everything properly,” Rizzo said. “It looks like little by little it’s getting most of us who worked there.”

FDNY EMT Ivonne Sanchez, 59, was on the pile “from the beginning to the end,” about 10 months, she said. 

The mother-of-two was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. 

“It went from stage one to stage two in three months,” she said.

Sanchez, who had no family history, demanded that her reluctant doctors perform a double mastectomy.

“I knew in my gut it was something bigger,” she recalled. 

After surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering, a doctor told her she had stage two cancer in both breasts.

“You must have ESP,” she recalled the doctor telling her.

She and Taraquinio are among several first responders who plan to go to Washington, D.C., this week to push for extended health care for 9/11-related illnesses.

“Unfortunately, it’s another fight for funding,” Taraquinio said. “It’s exhausting.”