New York City has released previously unseen documents raising concerns about air quality in Manhattan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday. The documents from 25 years ago suggest that officials had concerns about toxic air after the World Trade Center towers collapsed, while the public was being reassured the environment at the site, known as Ground Zero, was safe. “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said at a news conference, surrounded by survivors. The release resolves a lawsuit brought by advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, which sued the city for the documents.
City officials found 68 boxes of the documents last year. Officials had previously said they did not have them. “Administration after administration has ignored those calling for answers and clarity,” he added, standing next to television host and 9/11 survivor advocate Jon Stewart. “We will do no such thing.” Thousands of people have experienced health effects like cancer from the terrorist attacks, including many who have died, after breathing in hazardous contaminants from the building collapses.
Mamdani said on Tuesday that he planned to release hundreds of thousands of pages of air quality reports through an online portal, timed with the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He said City Hall will spend more than $34m (£25m) on the effort. Mamdani said the documents show what the city “knew about the toxic air around Ground Zero, when they knew it, and how they acted to limit liability”. The mayor said the documents show asbestos was found “nearly everywhere” they tested.
He said more documents will be released over the course of the next year. The release comes after years of survivors advocating for more transparency from city officials. Speaking at the news conference on Tuesday, Stewart said the documents show the city didn’t recognize that the air that everyone was breathing in downtown Manhattan was toxic until October of 2001. “So to be fair to them, they only buried that information for 25 years,” he said sarcastically.
The documents include an October 2001 file known as the “Harding Memo”, in which an aide warned former Deputy Mayor Robert Harding – serving under Mayor Rudy Giuliani – that the city could face as many as 35,000 legal claims for its response to the attacks. The document states that the city could be sued because health advisories caused individuals “to return to the area too soon (causing toxic exposure or emotional harm)”. Days after the attack, city and federal officials – including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – declared that the air near the Twin Towers was safe, though research suggests people were breathing in toxic chemicals. Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the EPA at the time, later apologised for this declaration, saying the agency “did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had”.
Illnesses related to the dust and smoke from the collapse of the Twin Towers have claimed twice as many lives than the attacks themselves. Elizabeth Cascio, a former New York Fire Department (FDNY) emergency medical technician, previously told the BBC that she suffered sinus issues and headaches after responding to the attacks. “We all knew the air quality was not safe – it was very toxic in terms of how it felt,” she said. “Initially, when I came off the bus and arrived at the Trade Center, you felt like you had to hold your breath.
But there’s only so long you can hold your breath. I could feel the particles coming into my nose and mouth and thought: ‘This can’t be good’.” Toxic dust legacy of 9/11 plagues thousands of people Firefighter describes emotional 9/11 stair climb
