Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration released more than 170,000 pages of previously withheld city records on Tuesday about the air quality around the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“For too long, New Yorkers have had to fight for access to records that should have been available to them in the first place,” Mr. Mamdani said in a news release.
The documents seem to suggest that New Yorkers were instructed to return to the ground zero area before it was safe to do so. More people are believed to have died from illnesses related to the attacks than the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on Sept. 11.
Mr. Mamdani allocated $34 million for attorneys to review and redact records that would eventually end up on an online portal for the Sept. 11 records.
The release resolves the ongoing lawsuit from 9/11 Health Watch, an advocacy group that sued for the publication of the documents, but their release could still open the city up to future litigation.
Here’s what we know so far.
Where have the documents been?
Sixty-eight boxes of records sat in a city office for more than two decades before being discovered last year. The files released include air quality and contamination reports from those boxes and, separately, the “Harding Memo,” a liability assessment sent to Robert Harding, who was then the deputy mayor for economic development and finance.
It also included resident complaints.
Mr. Mamdani directed his administration to release the documents, timing it for the upcoming 25th anniversary of the attacks. His administration intends to publicize more documents throughout the next year.
“This portal is part of our administration’s enduring commitment to honor those we lost, care for those living with lasting health consequences and give thousands of New Yorkers the answer they’ve been asking for,” Mr. Mamdani said in the news release.
What do they say about the air quality?
The documents, while limited, seem to show that while New Yorkers were being urged to return to Lower Manhattan, it wasn’t necessarily safe yet and that they may have been exposed to dangerous toxins as a result.
Hazardous toxins like carcinogenic benzene and asbestos were still being detected months after the attacks. Records showed, for example, evidence of asbestos a half-mile away at 15 John Street 10 months after the attacks.
In November 2001, an audit from a private firm told the Environmental Protection Agency that high levels of benzene were found near the towers. It also found increasing levels of asbestos in the air at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island after the attacks.
The records also show high asbestos levels, the presence of carcinogenic organic contaminants, heavy metals, fungi and bacteria at 130 Liberty Street, the old Deutsche Bank building that was near the second tower, between September 2001 and April 2002.
What were public officials saying at the time?
City, state and federal officials vouched for the air quality in Lower Manhattan in the weeks after the attacks. The E.P.A. administrator at the time, Christine Todd Whitman, and former Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg all assured the public that the air was safe.
“I come down here in the morning, and sometimes the odor is terrible,” Mr. Giuliani said in late October 2001. “You smell it and you feel there must be something wrong with it. But what I’m told is that it is not dangerous to your health.”
Mr. Bloomberg doubled down in February 2002.
“Every test that has been done says the air quality was in acceptable limits,” he said. “I think some people are just never going to want to believe that.”
A memo in 2002 describes U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler pushing back against the E.P.A. and the city’s assessment. This week in an interview he suggested that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg knew about the dangers and did nothing.
What questions are still unanswered?
While eye opening, the reports are still murky as some show that asbestos levels appeared to stay under limits set by environmental and worker protection agencies. (Medical experts say no amount of asbestos exposure is safe.) Others indicate that the levels were too high, and many of the papers are not accompanied by written analysis.
It’s also unclear when the next document dump will be or if there will be legal consequences for the city.
What’s next?
Mr. Mamdani’s administration will appoint dedicated city employees at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and New York City Public Schools to help New Yorkers retrieve records needed to qualify for the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
“The Mamdani administration will work to promote participation in both programs for responders and survivors,” the release reads.
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