Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday accused previous New York City leaders of lying about air quality safety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, resulting in residents and workers developing serious illnesses years later.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” he said at a news conference at City Hall, surrounded by politicians, relatives of those who died on Sept. 11 and advocates for the health of those now suffering from illnesses that surfaced years after the attacks.
“As the years pass and the human toll grows, we reckon with the cost of Sept. 11 whenever another New Yorker is stolen from us too soon,” Mr. Mamdani said at the event, where he announced the release of more than 170,000 pages of documents related to toxic air quality around the site of the felled towers.
Mr. Mamdani declined, when asked repeatedly, to say who he believes lied to the public and what exactly they lied about. But in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, city and federal officials, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor at the time of the attacks, and Christine Todd Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reassured New Yorkers that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe.
But the documents, which The New York Times reviewed in advance of their release, revealed various instances in which carcinogens were present in the area for months after the attacks.
An audit from November 2021, based on information provided by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed that there were elevated levels of the carcinogen benzene near ground zero that month, as well as increases in the concentration of ambient asbestos on Staten Island.
Ten months after the attacks, asbestos was still being found around 15 John Street, a building less than a mile from the World Trade Center.
Among those joining Mr. Mamdani at the news conference was Jon Stewart, the comedian and talk show host who has become an outspoken advocate for the health of Sept. 11 survivors.
Mr. Stewart lamented “the struggle” it had taken to get people to understand what everyone seemed to know who lived in Downtown Manhattan: “that there was poison in the air and on the ground and in the windowsills and in your air-conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes, and it stayed there for months.”
“Everyone knew,” he said.
The records were stored in 68 boxes in a city office, shielded from public view for more than two decades and, according to city officials, discovered only last year. The release of the documents resolves a lawsuit that had demanded their release filed by an advocacy organization, 9/11 Health Watch.
Over the next 12 months, city officials intend to review, redact and make public many more records, according to the mayor and the city’s lead lawyer, Steven Banks.
A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment. Among the documents released was a memo prepared for his deputy mayor at the time, Robert Harding, that showed city officials discussing potential liability from the poor air quality.
A spokesman for Michael R. Bloomberg, who became mayor four months after the attacks, declined to comment.
Mr. Mamdani noted on Tuesday that more people had died from illnesses related to the attacks than the 2,977 killed on the day itself, 25 years ago this Friday.
“It would be one thing if government had stood alongside survivors and provided them with everything they needed at every step of the way, and yet we know that could not be further from what actually happened,” he added.
While the documents seem to suggest that government officials misled people about the air quality, it is unclear if their release will put the city at risk of being sued by those affected.
A lawyer for 9/11 Health Watch, Andrew Carboy, said anyone receiving money from the federal government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund had already agreed not to sue the city. He also said that an appeals court upholding the city’s longstanding argument that the attack was an “act of war” provided further immunity.
Laura Michaels lived on Chambers Street in Downtown Manhattan with her husband and daughter and watched the twin towers fall. They immediately closed their windows and air-conditioning vents and started walking up the West Side Highway with their cat and dog.
The family later moved to an apartment in the West Village, but when Ms. Michaels returned to their place on Chambers Street to recover their personal items, the dust was so thick she could see her finger’s imprint clearly on surfaces.
Ms. Michaels’s daughter had been a second grader at Public School 89 and ended up being moved to two different schools before being told to return to P.S. 89 in February 2002.
“We were like, how can we possibly do that?” Ms. Michaels recalled. She and a group of other parents sued the city — ultimately to no avail. “In order for Manhattan to succeed we had to open up Wall Street, we had to open up Downtown Manhattan, no matter the health costs,” she said. “It was really clear that was the message.”
She said she never believed the air was safe to return, and she moved her daughter to a different school on 11th Street, farther north.
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