Beloved Fox News Star Reveals New Cancer Diagnosis

Nearly 25 years after the September 11 attacks, one veteran Fox News anchor is revealing the devastating health toll he says followed him home from Ground Zero.

Eric Shawn, 69, spent weeks reporting amid the smoke, dust and wreckage of the World Trade Center after the Twin Towers collapsed. Now, decades later, he says he is confronting cancer and other serious health problems linked to his exposure.

And hauntingly, Shawn says he worried something like this could happen even as he stood in the toxic haze.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Shawn was walking to work in Manhattan when American Airlines Flight 11 suddenly roared low above him, headed toward the North Tower.

“I thought it was gonna hit a skyscraper and my mind was playing tricks on me,” Shawn told PEOPLE. “You don’t think you really see what you’re seeing,”

Shawn raced to the Fox newsroom, warned colleagues about what he had witnessed and was quickly on the air.

Within hours, he was reporting from Ground Zero.

What followed was weeks of grueling 12-hour shifts inside a disaster zone unlike anything he had ever experienced.

“I was there reporting for at least a month, if not longer. We did 12-hour shifts. It was a shocking hellscape,” he recalls. “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.”

Shawn had reported from war zones before. He says nothing compared to what he witnessed that night.

“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 adds.

But for Shawn, the nightmare did not end when the cameras stopped rolling.

For weeks, he worked surrounded by what he described as a “thick haze of choking dust.” Reporters and first responders were given respiratory masks, but the contaminated air was seemingly impossible to escape.

Even then, Shawn remembers wondering what that exposure could mean decades later.

“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 continues. “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.”

It didn’t take decades for the first warning signs to appear.

Within roughly two months of the attacks, Shawn developed an “uncontrollable cough” that became serious enough for him to seek 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 recalls. “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.”

His respiratory problems eventually became severe.

During one particularly difficult year, Shawn needed two Prednisone shots within just 72 hours — despite his doctor telling him the standard was only two shots per year.

He was also diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD.

“It felt like I had a golf ball in my throat on and off for years,” he says.

Then came an even more frightening development.

Shawn was diagnosed with skin cancer, which he attributes to his exposure at Ground Zero to hundreds of chemical, physical and biological hazards.

And doctors discovered another alarming warning sign.

His prostate-specific antigen levels were rising rapidly. According to Shawn, physicians determined that he has “the highest level of probable” prostate cancer.

He is now undergoing testing every three months as doctors closely monitor his condition.

“So, I’m certified for cancer under the World Trade Center Health Program,” he says, referring to the federal program that provides medical monitoring and treatment to responders and survivors exposed to carcinogens including jet fuel, mercury and asbestos. “I’m just waiting and watching,” he says.

For years, Shawn largely kept what he was going through private — even from many of his colleagues at Fox News.

Now, with the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, he is telling his story publicly.

His goal is to draw attention not only to his own ordeal, but to the thousands of first responders, survivors, journalists and others who continue living with illnesses associated with their exposure at Ground Zero.

Nearly a quarter-century ago, Shawn looked into the Manhattan sky and watched Flight 11 fly overhead toward the World Trade Center.

Today, the consequences of what happened in the hours and weeks that followed are still unfolding.