New York. Curt Andrews has had to have skin cancer removed eight times. On the face, head and chest. These are the parts of his body that were exposed to the dust caused by the attacks on the World Trade Center towers 25 years ago. The volunteer firefighter from the US state of Connecticut spent a week in the disaster zone that went down in history as Ground Zero. What hardly anyone realized at the time was that the helpers absorbed a highly toxic cocktail of powdered concrete, glass, plasterboard, burnt plastics and other pollutants through the air and skin.
“We all knew that thousands and thousands of people were working there. So I said to myself: I have to go there to help,” says Andrews, who quickly got into the car with a bag packed for two weeks and other firefighters to drive to New York, an hour and a half away.
The towers have already collapsed when he arrives. He wades through a kind of ash that reaches up to his knees. “It was like walking through snow,” he says. The streets around the World Trade Center are full of rubble.
Andrews expects to rescue people from the rubble and cries for help among the collapsed towers. But the only thing he hears are beepers. Before the collapse, firefighters from the entire city were called to the World Trade Center. More than 300 firefighters die when the towers collapse. The devices beep if they are not moved for a long time. A distress signal. At some point the batteries will run out.
"At 11 a.m., just before midnight, we found someone - a man who was still alive. A steel beam had pierced his arm. We had doctors come to him and give him morphine. Then we had to amputate his arm and remove him from the pile of rubble. He survived," says Andrews. It is said to be the only survivor that he finds within a week. As he remembers, he and his colleagues do not wear protective masks. "We were there to help others. We didn't worry about ourselves."
His eyes were irritated and he was coughing a lot. The then 41-year-old spent his first night on a curb. "We didn't get a chance to shower the whole time we were down there. So we were completely covered in this dust."
In addition to the toxic dust, fires that burned in the mountains of rubble at so-called Ground Zero until December also polluted the air for months. On September 18, 2001, the United States Environmental Protection Agency declared that the air was not harmful to health - an assessment that it later had to withdraw. Hundreds of thousands had already returned to their workplaces, schools and homes and were exposed to the toxic air. The nearby New York Stock Exchange reopened on September 17th.
At the time, Lila Nordstrom was a student at a school near the World Trade Center that was reopening at the beginning of October. The cleanup work is still in full swing. Shortly afterwards, many students complained of respiratory problems. In addition to an exacerbation of her asthma, the student developed reflux disease and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of experiencing the attack. She was at school when the hijacked planes crashed into the towers.
The US Central Health Agency (CDC) has recorded more than 57,000 cases of cancer as a result of the attacks. The most common is skin cancer, followed by prostate and breast cancer. In the twelve months leading up to June 2026 alone, the program recorded more than 10,000 additional cancer cases. According to the CDC, other typical illnesses resulting from the attacks include chronic reflux, asthma and post-traumatic stress disorder. By 2026, more than 150,000 people will have registered in a government health program for those affected by the attacks. It is checked whether the illness, the extent of the stress at the time and the course over time meet established scientific criteria. If this is the case, the illness is recognized as being caused by 9/11.
In October 2001, experts detected more than 350 chemical substances in the dust - powdered concrete, insulation material, kerosene, electrical devices and a high concentration of glass particles. The dust directly attacked the sinuses and the gastrointestinal tract. Immediately after the attack, a photo of Marcy Borders, who became known as the Dust Woman, went around the world. She died of stomach cancer in 2015 at the age of 42. She blamed it on the dust.
The US authorities do not report an exact number of people who have died from illnesses related to the disaster since the attacks of September 11, 2001. However, experts assume that there are more than the 3,000 people killed as a direct result of the attack.
Firefighter Andrews has many stories like this. One of his colleagues from Connecticut died of liver cancer in 2018, and another was treated for years for mercury poisoning. The fact that Andrews has paid for his efforts with multiple cancers to this day does not make him feel any remorse. "I would 100 percent do it again. I'm grateful I was able to help."
It took more than 20 years before Andrews was able to return to Ground Zero. In 2023, a friend who wanted to show Andrews the place persuades him. It also took years before he was able to have a picture of the Twin Towers wrapped in an American flag tattooed on his forearm. Underneath it says “Never Forget”.
