Three Days Before the 25th Anniversary, New York City Unseals 170,000 Pages Showing Officials Knew the Air at Ground Zero Was Not Safe — Nadler Says He Was "Screaming at the Top of My Lungs," and the EPA Administrator Who Said It Was Safe to Breathe Says She Only Repeated What Her Scientists Told Her
On Sept. 8, 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that New York City had published more than 170,000 pages of records on the government's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, and settled two long-running lawsuits brought by the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch. The material — including the previously restricted Harding Memo and 68 boxes of Department of Environmental Protection files that sat in a city office for more than two decades — is posted to a free public portal. The documents indicate that while officials were publicly reassuring residents and workers that Lower Manhattan was safe, internal data said otherwise: benzene and asbestos spiking in November 2001, carcinogens still present the following summer, major lead contamination at the Department of Transportation headquarters building, and guidance that discouraged respirator use. City Hall's own analysis anticipated that thousands of responders and community members could face long-term health consequences. The release lands on the 25th anniversary and reopens the question of who knew what. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who represented Ground Zero at the time, said he warned local and federal officials and was ignored, and accused former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of "intentional obfuscation of the truth." Sen. Chuck Schumer, who pressed for Lower Manhattan to reopen quickly, said "in the very first weeks no one knew whether the air was fine or not." Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, whose Sept. 2001 statement that the air was "safe to breathe" is the most-cited assurance in the record, responded in writing that her assessments "were based entirely on the analysis done by EPA scientists." Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand praised the release and turned to the backlog at the World Trade Center Health Program.
“I will keep pressing the program to fix delays in certifying new conditions, clinical staffing shortages, and administrative backlogs.”