"The number of victims receiving aid has tripled in recent years, a Post analysis finds, as the illness’s toll becomes more apparent."
"When Mariama James returned to her Lower Manhattan apartment on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, it was covered in dust. She’d left the windows open that warm day, and the clouds of toxic material released when the twin towers collapsed had rushed in.
Everything was blanketed in white, like after a good snow,” James said.
A few years later, James developed skin cancer. In 2013, James’s mother, Juanita, who was on her way to work in the financial district on the morning of the attacks and covered in the dust, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. She died in 2023."
Daniel Wu and Chris Hacker report for the Washington Post September 9, 2026.
