It’s 25 years since that morning when almost 3000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. While a couple of decades have passed since that tragic day, the health effects on those who were at Ground Zero have not. Iris Udasin is the medical director of the World Trade Center Health program at Rutgers University. She sees a lot of the first responders, and their illnesses, which she says can emerge after many years.
“We are continuing to see new cancers evolving every day, well, coming out everyday, they’ve been growing in people for 25 years,” she said.
Udasin also said time is not on the side of those who were exposed to toxins. All the intervening years have brought the health problems of aging, making their 9/11 related medical problems that much worse.
The suffering for many, said Udasin, has been physical and mental. She said time is the enemy of those who were exposed to toxins at Ground Zero.
“People have had time to age and get sick with other health conditions so if you had something if you had cancer or you had bad lung problems but you also had what I would call the normal consequences of aging your health problems are worse,” said Udasin.
Since 2003, the federally funded program has treated more than 130 thousand people, according to the Centers for Disease Control. More than 6,500 of them have relied on Rutgers for care.
Doctors are treating thousands of those who were at Ground Zero after the attacks, not only for cancers and other illnesses, but for renewed waves of grief and trauma as they age and retire.
“We continue to see anxiety, we see depression,” she said, “depression after something happened to you, depression combined with other things in life, we see a lot of people that are depressed about their medical illnesses.”
Udasin says many patients are not only trying to recover from 9/11, but from trauma they faced throughout their lives as police officers, firefighters and medics.