New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has released more than 170,000 pages of municipal records involving the impact of the September 11 attacks on air quality health, as well as the city’s response. Mamdani announced the documents and an online portal for accessing them on Tuesday. The release comes alongside the settlement of two lawsuits pursued by 9/11 Health Watch, which fought for access to these long-withheld documents.
But they do include an internal memo where New York City weighed possible liability related to air quality. The release of these records comes three days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11 – which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania. The documents provide further evidence that city officials knew air surrounding the twin towers was toxic – but misled the public into thinking it was safe, officials said.
The portal, Brewer said, “is a great first step toward giving the public access to that record, one that has been denied them under previous administrations …” Ben Chevat, executive director of 911 Health Watch, thanked Mamdani for “being the Mayor, after 25 years, who finally begins to answer the question: ‘What did the City know about the dangers from the toxic cloud at Ground Zero and when did it know it?’ “For 25 years, four different Mayoral administrations kept from the public, the U.S. Congress, and the City Council documents showing what the City actually knew about the danger of the toxic chemicals in Lower Manhattan and Western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapse, even as City officials continued messaging to the public that the air was ‘safe and acceptable’,” he said in a statement.
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