Years later, ‘9/11 cancer’ sickens thousands who were in New York
- The 9/11 attacks released unprecedented amounts of chemicals into the air in Manhattan
- Years later, thousands of people have developed cancer or other serious illnesses
Jacquelin Febrillet was 26 years old on September 11, 2001 when jihadist hijackers flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Centre just two blocks from where she worked.
Fifteen years after the attacks that day, Febrillet, by then a mother of three, was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.
The likely cause: a cloud of toxic ash that engulfed her.
“I was there (on) 9/11 … For years I have been working down there every day since 9/11. We were never told that something could happen,” she said.
Unlike Febrillet, Richard Fahrer, then 19, wasn’t in the area on 9/11, but he regularly worked as a land surveyor between 2001 and 2003 in south Manhattan, where the Twin Towers came crashing down.
Eighteen months ago, the young father, now 37, was diagnosed with aggressive colon cancer – a disease that usually affects older men and which there is no history of in his family.