The consequences of September 11
When the Twin Towers were toppled on September 11, 2001, 2,977 people died in New York City. This figure was engraved in memorials, is repeated on every anniversary of the tragedy, and is taught in schools across the United States.
After the World Trade Center collapsed, particles of asbestos, lead, mercury, arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, glass fibers, cement, and jet fuel residue were released into the air, settling over Lower Manhattan and into the lungs of everyone present.
The World Trade Center Health Program —established in 2010 and funded until 2090 by the James Zadroga Act— has identified more than 60 types of cancer affecting over 44,000 people to date. It has also documented respiratory diseases, neurological damage, cardiovascular conditions, and two dozen other illnesses directly linked to exposure at Ground Zero.
As of 2025, more than 3,800 people have already died from 9/11-related illnesses, surpassing the number of direct victims of the attack. I reference this fact because this event revealed something about war and massive fires that was unknown until now: beyond the official death tolls, there are other secondary victims who do not know they are going to die due to the inhalation of toxins in the days, months, and years following the main event.
Prior to the 2010 study, authorities claimed the air was safe. However, it was not. Firefighters who arrived on the morning of September 11 showed a 30% higher rate of prostate cancer and more than double the rate of thyroid cancer compared to firefighters from other cities without WTC exposure. By late 2024, 30% of the members enrolled in the program had a cancer diagnosis—compared to just 8% in 2007. The biological clock is still ticking.
The lesson left by the 9/11 tragedy is that the destruction of buildings is a form of toxic environmental pollution that extends far beyond the moment of collapse. The cloud of a destroyed city is not just dust. It is a slow-motion chemical death sentence affecting many who breathe it.
(Sources: World Trade Center Health Program, CDC/NIOSH, 2025; Scientific American, 2024; OncLive, 2025; Asbestos.com/WTC, 2025; WTC Health Program Statistics, 2025)
The Mirror of Iraq
Before asking what this means for Ukraine, we must look at what has already occurred in Iraq, as its tragedy serves as a long-term mirror of what sustained urban destruction does to a population's health.
A study published in the Iraqi Ministry of Health’s Cancer Registry, and cited in multiple peer-reviewed publications, shows that childhood leukemia cases in Basra more than doubled over a 15-year period (1993–2007). A 2009 report from the Health Improvement Directorate recorded 340 cases of leukemia between 2001 and 2008 in Basra alone—compared to just 17 cases in 1988. The national cancer incidence rate in Iraq rose from 38.91 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1994 to 78.93 in 2020; it nearly doubled in less than three decades.
The causes are multifaceted:
• Depleted uranium from munitions: It pulverizes into fine radioactive particles upon impact, contaminating soil, water, and air for generations.
• Burn pits: Open-air incineration pits used by military forces to dispose of waste—including electronics, medical equipment, plastics, and chemicals—which generated constant clouds of toxic smoke inhaled by both soldiers and civilians.
• The pulverization of buildings: Constructions containing asbestos, lead, and heavy metals—the same mechanism as Ground Zero, but repeated across entire cities for years.
(Sources: ReliefWeb/Ministry of Health of Iraq, 2009; PMC/Cancer Trends in Iraq 2000–2016; Journal of Contemporary Medical Sciences, 2024; MERIP, 2020).
The Question Nobody Is Asking
If the collapse of two buildings in a single morning in one city produced decades of deaths for tens of thousands of people—and if Iraq shows us that sustained urban warfare creates a much larger analogous toxic footprint—what health damage will years of continuous bombardment produce over an entire country like Ukraine?
We are talking about cities like Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Bakhmut, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, among many others, where residential buildings, factories, hospitals, schools, fuel depots, and industrial facilities have been repeatedly attacked for years.
Science reveals the following:
• In Kyiv alone, less than a month after the start of the full-scale invasion, air pollution reached 27.8 times the safety limit recommended by the WHO.
• In the first 13 months of the war, 36 fuel storage facilities were destroyed, releasing pollutants from 108,000 tons of burning oil and gasoline.
• Chemical plants, fertilizer facilities, and industrial infrastructure were targeted, releasing substances that linger in the air for months.
• A 2024 study published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology stated that, once the war ends, thousands of people will require treatment for health conditions caused by environmental toxins—many of which have not yet been diagnosed.
Furthermore, a report from Brown University’s Costs of War project documented dangerously high levels of uranium and lead in cities that experienced sustained bombardment, including chronic diseases and potentially intergenerational health effects.
(Sources: International Organization for Migration, 2022; Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, 2024; Costs of War Project, Brown University).
The Accounting We Are Not Doing
September 11 has revealed something significant from a scientific standpoint. Occurring in the United States, in a wealthy city with world-class research institutions, it became the first disaster in modern history where the long-term health effects of toxic dust from destroyed buildings were systematically tracked for decades.
The official death toll in any conflict counts those who died from bullets, missiles, fires, and bombs. It does not count those who will die from the air they breathed while their city was being destroyed. The 9/11 monitoring revealed a truth that had not been documented until then: the destruction of cities does not only kill on the day it happens, but sows diseases that claim lives in the following decades.
A health program like the World Trade Center's does not exist in Ukraine. No long-term oncology registry is being built for the people who survived the siege of Bakhmut or lived for months in Kharkiv under continuous bombardment, breathing in what those explosions released into the air. The infrastructure for that type of accounting does not exist and, in the midst of a war, it is very difficult to build.
But the biological clock is already ticking for hundreds of thousands of people. The question of how many there will be—one million deferred deaths? two million?—is one that Ukrainian medicine has not yet raised on this scale, and for which there is no budget.
That is why I am asking you directly: Have you seen the health effects mentioned in this post within your communities, or have you shown health problems after leaving Ukraine? Do you know of researchers or organizations in Ukraine conducting this type of long-term environmental and epidemiological monitoring?
I ask because I am working on a book titled "Death in the Air", which addresses this issue from the perspective of the anthropology of disasters, a new field of study worldwide.
I do not have much data on what is happening to you. I do not have your experience. What I have is a pattern documented across three distinct historical events—New York, Iraq, and now the early data from Ukraine—pointing toward a future health crisis that is not being discussed. This is why any on-the-ground information you could provide would be invaluable to me.
With nothing further to add, sincerely, J.L.A.T.
Sources cited in this post:
• World Trade Center Health Program (CDC/NIOSH) — Program Statistics, 2025
• Scientific American — "Health Effects of 9/11 Still Plague Responders and Survivors," 2024
• OncLive — "New Cancer Study Results Confirm Lasting Effects on 9/11 First Responders," 2025
• Journal of Contemporary Medical Sciences — "Cancer in Iraq, General View of Annual Report 2022," 2024
• PMC — "Cancer Trends in Iraq 2000–2016," NIH
• ReliefWeb / Basra Health Directorate, Iraq — Cancer data, 2009
• MERIP — "Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq," 2020
• The Lancet — "Questions raised over Iraq congenital birth defects study," 2013
• Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology — Environmental health in war zones, 2024
• Costs of War Project, Brown University — Long-term environmental pollution
• International Organization for Migration — Ukraine environmental impact report, 2022
Note 1. This post was translated from Spanish into English using Google Translate.
Note 2. All images were generated by Gemini AI.