Twenty-five years after September 11, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday, September 8, the publication of tens of thousands of documents revealing, according to him, the city’s cover-ups on the toxicity of the air after the attacks.
“These documents show what the city knew about the presence of toxic air around Ground Zero, when it became aware of it and how it acted to limit its legal liability,” the mayor said at a news conference.
This online publication was decided following a legal agreement with the 9/11 Health Watch association, a victims’ defense organization which had taken legal action to force the city to make public the information it had.
In addition to the 2,977 people who died in the United States on the day of the September 11 attacks, mainly in New York, more than 9,400 others died from illnesses linked to their exposure to the attacks, according to the federal program set up to ensure their medical monitoring.
Dust swirls above lower Manhattan moments after the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers in New York, September 11, 2001. © Spencer Platt, Getty Images via AFP
After the initial cloud of dust following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, months of pollution and residual dust followed, leading in particular to cancers from which thousands of New Yorkers still suffer today.
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“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied to them that it was safe to breathe toxic air,” insisted Zohran Mamdani.
These documents, which will be put online in waves over 12 months, could implicate two of his predecessors: Rudy Giuliani, in office at the time of the attacks, then Michael Bloomberg, from the winter of 2002.
“Everyone knew it”
Some documents among the 173,000 released Tuesday relate to “discussions that the Giuliani administration had at the time about its legal responsibility and health risks,” New York City’s chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said at the press conference.
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg on June 23, 2026 in London. © Justin Tallis, AFP
Another document highlights “information provided by Congressional Representative Jerry Nadler” during the mandate of Michael Bloomberg “regarding the concerns of residents of lower Manhattan” about the quality of the air they were breathing.
Questioned by AFP, those close to the two former mayors did not react immediately.
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Asked about the names of the politicians who withheld information from the public, Zohran Mamdani kicked in, indicating only that “this concerns a large number of people that New Yorkers trusted.”
“What we all knew, we who lived in lower Manhattan, was that there were toxic substances in the air and on the ground, on the window sills and in the air conditioners (…), and that they remained there for months,” declared the comedian Jon Stewart, a figure in the defense of the victims of September 11.
“Everyone knew it, and now it’s clear that the city knew it too,” he continued.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends the commemorations of the September 11 attacks on September 11, 2025 in New York. © Timothy A. Clary, AFP
Director of the 9/11 Health Watch association, Ben Chevat thanked Zohran Mamdani for being “the first mayor, in 25 years, to finally begin to answer the question: ‘What did the city know about the dangers linked to the toxic cloud at Ground Zero, and when did it learn about it?'”
On September 11, 2001, two planes hijacked by hijackers crashed into both World Trade Center towers, a third tore through the Pentagon, and a fourth, which appeared to be aimed at the Capitol or the White House, crashed in a wooded area of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a counterattack by passengers.
With AFP
