Eric Shawn, an anchor with Fox News, recently opened up about serious health struggles he’s facing that have, unfortunately, followed him around for decade after decade, all of which came after he reported on the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center. Shawn, 69, was hoofing his way to work in Manhattan on the morning of the tragedy, just as American Airlines Flight 11 flew in low overhead, ready to crash into the North Tower.
“I thought it was gonna hit a skyscraper and my mind was playing tricks on me,” Shawn said in an interview with PEOPLE. “You don’t think you really see what you’re seeing.” Eric Shawn immediately took off to try and reach the Fox newsroom. Once he arrived, he told his colleagues what he saw and then got on the air as fast as possible.
Just a few hours later, Shawn was on the street, reporting directly from Ground Zero. He spent weeks covering the aftermath of the attacks. “I was there reporting for at least a month, if not longer. We did 12-hour shifts. It was a shocking hellscape,” he recalled. “It was an overwhelming experience — seeing the photographs and seeing it on television from home certainly does not give justice to what I was confronted with and what we saw. It was just monstrous and momentous.”
“I’ve covered war zones and this was by far the worst traumatic thing that a reporter can experience, just by seeing what I saw that first night,” he added, according to a report from Trending Politics News. Unfortunately, the dangers posed by the aftermath of the attack at Ground Zero didn’t stop when the fires finally went out.
Shawn said that he spent long hours in the midst of a “thick haze of choking dust” after the towers collapsed. Reporters, much like first responders working at the actual site, were given respiratory masks, however, Shawn revealed there was just no getting away from the contaminated air. “I remember the first night thinking, ‘This is not healthy,’ just on the basis of dust. Not even knowing about carcinogens, not knowing about toxic chemicals,” he explained.
“And I remember back then thinking, ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen in 20, 30 years from now.’ Well, we’re there now. This is the time period we were concerned about,” the anchor said. Shawn said the warning signs appeared swiftly. Just several months after the attacks, he developed an “uncontrollable cough,” which led to him seeking medical attention.
“I went to the doctor in November and he said, ‘Oh, you’ve got the World Trade Center cough.’ That’s what we called it at the time,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘I know — it’s a cough from all that dust and smoke. It’ll go away.’ No. The World Trade Center cough actually turned into acute chronic bronchitis…and I suffered from it for years.”
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His cough became so bad that at one point he needed to have two Prednisone shots within a 72-hour period. His doctor told him the standard was only two shots per year. Later, Shawn was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD. “It felt like I had a golf ball in my throat on and off for years,” he said.
Shawn was recently diagnosed with skin cancer, which he also attributes to his exposure to hundreds of chemical, physical, and biological hazards at Ground Zero. He said that doctors also uncovered that his prostate-specific antigen levels were rapidly going up. Physicians determined that the journalist has “the highest level of probable” prostate cancer.
Shawn has, for the most part, been quiet concerning the toll that his 9/11 reporting took on his health. However, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, he decided to speak out publicly to draw attention to the thousands of responders, journalists, and others who have suffered from health issues tied to their exposure at Ground Zero.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video