September 11: New York publishes documents on air toxicity after the attacks

Were the authorities aware of the toxicity of the air that New Yorkers breathed after the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers? Twenty-five years after September 11, the mayor of New York announced Tuesday, September 8, the publication of tens of thousands of documents revealing, according to him, the city's cover-ups on the toxicity of the air after the attacks. “These documents show what the city knew about the presence of toxic air around 'Ground Zero,' when it became aware of it and how it acted to limit its legal liability,” Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference.

“People have gotten sick because the leaders they trusted lied to them that it was safe to breathe toxic air.”

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, at a press conference.

After the initial cloud of dust following the collapse of the towers, pollution and residual dust remained for months, notably leading to cancers from which thousands of New Yorkers still suffer today. In addition to the 2,977 people who died in the United States on the day of the September 11 attacks, mainly in New York, the federal program set up to ensure medical monitoring of exposed residents estimates that more than 9,400 other people died from illnesses linked to this exposure.

Asked about the names of the politicians who withheld information from the public, Zohran Mamdani kicked in: “this concerns a large number of people that New Yorkers trusted,” he said.

The publication of these documents was decided at the end of a legal agreement with the association 9/11 Health Watch, a victims' defense organization which had taken legal action to force the city to make public the information it had. Posted online in waves over 12 months, they could implicate two of Zohran Mamdani's predecessors: Rudy Giuliani, in office at the time of the attacks, then Michael Bloomberg, from the winter of 2002.

Some documents among the 173,000 released Tuesday relate to "discussions that the Giuliani administration had at the time about its legal responsibility and health risks," New York City's chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said at the press conference. Another document highlights “information provided by Congressional Representative Jerry Nadler” during the mandate of Michael Bloomberg “regarding the concerns of residents of lower Manhattan” about the quality of the air they were breathing. Questioned by AFP, those close to the two former mayors did not react immediately.

Director of the 9/11 Health Watch association, Ben Chevat thanked Zohran Mamdani for being "the first mayor, in 25 years, to finally begin to answer the question: 'What did the city know about the dangers linked to the toxic cloud at Ground Zero, and when did it become aware of it?'".