New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that near “Ground Zero” – the site where the World Trade Center towers collapsed in 2001 – asbestos was found “almost everywhere” where investigations were conducted.
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“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied to them and said it was safe to breathe toxic air,” he said, announcing the release of about 170,000 documents related to the attacks.
According to U.S. health officials, diseases related to the dust and smoke released by the collapsing towers have claimed more lives than the attacks themselves, in which nearly 3,000 people died.
Thousands of people who breathed dangerous pollutants after the collapse of the Twin Towers suffered various health disorders, including cancer. Many of them died.
At a press conference on Tuesday, television host and advocate for the rights of survivors of the September 11 attacks Jon Stewart said the new documents show that the city already knew in October 2001 – a month after the terrorist attacks – that the air in Manhattan was toxic.
“So, if we want to be fair to them, they hid this information for only 25 years,” he said sarcastically.
The documents show that asbestos was found near “Ground Zero” for several months after the attacks, even though people were told at the same time that it was safe to return to this area.
Among the documents containing air quality reports and correspondence between city officials is October 2001 correspondence known as the “Harding memorandum,” according to the BBC.
In it, an aide warned then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding that the city’s response to the attacks could result in as many as 35,000 legal claims.
The document states that the city could face lawsuits because health recommendations encouraged people to “return to the area too early, resulting in exposure to toxic substances or emotional harm.”
City officials also advised residents to clean dust and debris with “wet wipes and cloths,” even though asbestos was detected, which should only be removed by licensed specialists. This is noted in another memorandum recording Congressman Jerry Nadler’s concern.
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The memorandum also mentions part of the testimony of the then-highest city health official, stating that the investigation did not find “increased asbestos levels in indoor air,” but tests showed that some dust samples contained “small amounts of asbestos.”
The memorandum, attributed to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s special advisor Ester Fuchs, acknowledged that this could cause “potential problems for City Hall.”
A few days after the attacks, city and federal officials, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), declared that the air near the Twin Towers was safe.
Then-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman later apologized for this statement and said the agency “did everything it could at the time based on the information available.”
The documents released on Tuesday conclude a dispute over a lawsuit filed by the organization “9/11 Health Watch.” The organization went to court after officials claimed they did not have these documents.
Last year, city officials found 68 boxes of documents.
Pages of air quality reports and other documents were published on the internet portal ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks this Friday. More documents are planned to be released over the coming year.
Karen Klingon, associated with the “9/11 Health Watch” lawsuit, told the BBC on Tuesday that her brother lived just five minutes from “Ground Zero.” He developed asthma, was later diagnosed with cancer, and died at age 61 from a brain tumor related to the disease.
Robert Klingon, who lived near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, died of cancer in 2020.
“Probably a lot more research can be done about what was in the air and the diseases caused by the toxins in the air – like those that affected my brother,” said K. Klingon. “I hope this will help people who are ill now better understand what happened and will be useful in the future.”
Phil Alvarez, whose brother Luis Alvarez died of cancer in 2019 after being exposed to toxic substances at “Ground Zero,” told the BBC that people “continue to get sick every day and continue to die.”
