About to mark 25 years since the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, the citizens of New York are beginning to have information about something that many suspected, but for which they had no official confirmation: the toxicity of the air they breathed after the brutal Al Qaeda attacks. Contrary to what the authorities said, the dust and toxins around Ground Zero could make them sick. The city's mayor, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, announced this Tuesday the publication of long-awaited documents that demonstrate that the suspicions were founded.
Next Friday, the United States will pay tribute to the 2,977 people who died on 9/11 due to the fury of Al Qaeda. The country's top political staff will be at Ground Zero, but not Donald Trump, who will thus break the tradition of the last quarter of a century of the president attending events in New York. The president will be at the events held in Washington. 2,753 people lost their lives at the World Trade Center. But they were not the only ones who were directly affected. An unknown number of people breathed toxic air despite what the authorities told them those days. Now, finally, 25 years later, the details are known.
The release of more than 170,000 pages of records of what happened those tragic days sheds light on what the City knew about the toxic conditions around Ground Zero, when it was assuring residents and rescuers that the air was safe. The records, which include reports on air quality, pollution data and information shared between municipal officials, are now available for consultation on a City Council website.
“For a long time, New Yorkers knew the truth, but they have not been able to see it reflected in any document presented to them,” Mamdani said this Tuesday at the press conference in which he announced the declassification of the papers. The mayor has also said that many of the people exposed to the dust and debris at Ground Zero were misled about the risks they faced. “The leaders they trusted lied to them and told them that it was safe to breathe that toxic air,” he said. The mayor explained that the papers reveal that asbestos was found in practically all the places analyzed.
Thousands of people who lived, worked or studied near Ground Zero after the attacks have fallen ill over the years. According to the mayor, thousands of steelworkers, firefighters and employees of various types remember September 11 “every time they breathe hard, every time they have to take a pill and every time they are given another dose of chemotherapy.” “Almost 25 years later, more people have died from diseases related to September 11 than those who died on the day of the attack itself,” lamented the Democrat.
The publication of the papers comes after years of demands for transparency from survivors and emergency personnel who intervened in 9/11. It also resolves litigation brought by 9/11 Health Watch, an organization that sued the city to force the release of the records.
Ben Chevat, executive director of the organization, said in statements reported by The New York Times, which broke the news, that the documents showed that the city was aware of the danger posed by toxic chemicals, “even while municipal officials continued to communicate to the public that the air was safe.” The release of these documents could subject the city to new lawsuits and could also help people who became ill in the years after 9/11 process their applications for victim compensation for federal funds.
The documents with those 170,000 pages have been stored for more than two decades in 68 boxes in a municipal office, hidden from public view. According to city officials, they were discovered last year. Over the next year, the Mamdani Government plans to review, edit and make public many more documents, some of them found in municipal offices and others in insurance companies, related to environmental toxins derived from the events of that impossible-to-forget day.
It so happens that the mayor during the attacks, Republican Rudolph Giuliani, has led a campaign in recent days against Mamdani so that he does not attend the events in tribute to the victims of 9/11 next Friday. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, I am offended that he is coming,” Giuliani, a close Trump ally, told the ultra news outlet Newsmax. The former mayor even compared Mamdani, who is Muslim, to the hijackers of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers.
In the midst of 9/11 remembrance week, the Muslim faith is returning to the center of the debate in US politics. Much has changed in these 25 years, where the Muslim population has grown substantially in the United States. New York has its first mayor of this faith and, if Democrat Abdul El-Sayed wins in the midterm elections, on November 3 there will be a Muslim senator for the first time. In this context, Republicans are already sharpening their criticism against several Muslim candidates and warning of the risk of them imposing a radical vision of Islam.
