NYC Mayor Mamdani Releases 170,000 Pages of 9/11 Air Quality Records

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released approximately 170,000 pages of records Tuesday revealing the city knew air quality in Lower Manhattan was hazardous after the September 11 attacks but publicly downplayed the danger. The documents, found in 68 boxes at the Department of Environmental Protection in 2025, include a February 2002 memo from then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's senior policy adviser summarizing Representative Jerrold Nadler's concerns about indoor air quality and warning of potential legal and public-relations problems.

The release settles years of litigation with advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, which had sued over the city's previous refusal to turn over the records. Mamdani said at a press conference that people got sick because leaders they trusted lied and told them the toxic air was safe to breathe. Then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman had stated on September 18, 2001, that monitoring showed the air near Ground Zero was safe.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.”

Among the records, asbestos was detected ten months after the attacks on the roof of 15 John Street, less than a mile from the World Trade Center site. Health authorities say there is no known safe level of asbestos exposure. Some readings appeared to exceed cleanup benchmarks while others fell below them. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 2001 attacks, and thousands exposed to the dust have since died from related illnesses.

Lawyers who have handled 9/11-related claims for decades told amNewYork the city is unlikely to face new lawsuits based on the newly released information. Hundreds of thousands of additional documents are expected to be published in the coming months.