Air Quality After 9/11 Suffered, Despite What New York City Officials Told Residents After the Attacks
Last Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Since the attacks, many more people have died due to illnesses stemming from toxins released by the collapse of the towers. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration released more than 170,000 pages of records this week that document air quality conditions around the World Trade Center site after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The city stored the files in 68 boxes for more than 20 years before officials found them last year. The records include air quality reports, contamination logs, and internal memos from the administrations of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. They also include a 2001 memo from a senior scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who warned that the city’s asbestos testing guidelines couldn’t work in practice.
City officials plan to release more documents over the next year through a new online portal. This release settles a lawsuit that advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch filed after the city denied its 2023 records request. A judge later ruled that former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration violated New York’s Freedom of Information Law when withholding the files. The city agreed not to appeal and will meet monthly with 9/11 Health Watch to track its progress on releasing the remaining documents. “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said at a news conference announcing the release of the documents. The executive director of 9/11 Health Watch said the records show the city knew about the danger even while it kept telling the public the air met safety standards.
One document at the center of the release is the Harding memo. City Hall lobbyist Michele Goldsen sent it to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding in October 2001, just weeks after the attacks. The memo informed Harding that the city’s Law Department expected 35,000 potential plaintiffs to sue for injuries related to Ground Zero. The memo also warned that health advisories telling people to return to Lower Manhattan too soon could expose the city to lawsuits for causing “toxic exposure or emotional harm.” Goldsen suggested that congress create a compensation fund or that the city seek federal protection against future claims. She specifically flagged the risk of “toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades,” according to the memo.
City officials kept reassuring the public even as these warnings circulated internally. Just five days after the attacks, Giuliani’s administration said the public faced a very low risk of short-term or long-term health effects. By early October, officials called the air “safe and acceptable.” Bloomberg made similar statements in February 2002, saying test results showed acceptable air quality and that “some people are just never going to want to believe that.” Federal officials sent the same message. Then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told the public just a week after the attacks that the air was safe to breathe and the water was safe to drink. The EPA’s internal watchdog found that Whitman’s office didn’t have enough data to support that claim two years later. Whitman apologized in 2016, saying she was very sorry that people got sick and that her agency did the best it could with the information available at the time.
According to the World Trade Center Health Program, more than 9,000 people have died from illnesses connected to September 11, including 600 firefighters. That toll now exceeds the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks and the more than 300 firefighters who died during the rescue effort. The 9/11 Memorial reports that doctors have diagnosed at least 49,000 people with cancers linked to 9/11 and its aftermath. These newly released records help explain why. Inspectors found asbestos on roofs, cables, and building facades at 15 John Street, a building about a third of a mile from Ground Zero. A resident living about half a mile away wrote to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection in February 2002 describing how she scooped dust off her coffee table with a paper bag because she had no electricity to vacuum. She told investigators the cleanup felt “mostly futile” because the dust was so light it kept resettling.
Ground Zero Health Conditions
- Asbestosis
- Breast cancer
- Chronic Respiratory Illness
- Colon cancer
- Kidney cancer
- Leukemia
- Lung cancer
- Lymphoma
- Mesothelioma
- Prostate cancer
- Thyroid cancer
People who worked and went to school in Lower Manhattan or were exposed to the smoke and dust plume that spanned boroughs all face a higher risk. They’re urged to discuss their exposure history with their doctors. According to doctors, screening and monitoring is key for anyone exposed. A baseline chest X-ray, lung function test, and physical exam can help a doctor track changes over time. These conditions often take years or even decades to appear after asbestos exposure. If caught early, certain conditions are more treatable, allowing for longer survival and more comfortable quality of life.
People exposed to the toxins from 9/11 could have legal options to receive compensation. People who may not even realize they were exposed to the toxic debris could link their exposure thanks to the release of the documents.
If you were exposed to asbestos or another toxin and now have mesothelioma, lung cancer, or another cancer, contact us today to see if you could be entitled to compensation. Either call 412-471-3980 or fill out our contact form and a member of our team will get back to you to review your case.
Sources:
Alex Woodward, “Asbestos dust and toxic smoke-filled air were no match for officials seeking to reopen NYC after 9/11, documents reveal” Independent (September 8, 2026). [Link]
Agrawal & S. Goldenberg, “After 9/11, Documents Suggest, New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality” The New York Times (September 7, 2026). [Link]
Paul Day, “EPA scientist’s 2001 memo reveals WTC dust posed extreme cancer risk” Air Quality News [Link]
“Welcome to the VCF” 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund [Link]
World Trade Center Health Program [Link]
