Published : 10 Sep 2026, 01:00 AM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:49 AM
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has opened a trove of more than 170,000 municipal records detailing the toxic air left by the Sept 11 attacks, its health consequences and how City Hall responded.
Mamdani announced the release on Tuesday, alongside an online portal where the records can be accessed, The Guardian reported.
The move coincides with the settlement of two lawsuits brought by 9/11 Health Watch, which had fought for years to obtain the documents.
“For too long, New Yorkers have had to fight for access to records that should have been available to them in the first place,” Mamdani was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
“The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled,” he said at a press conference.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.”
The documents represent only a fraction of the city’s air-quality records from Ground Zero.
But, as The Guardian reported, they include an internal memo in which officials considered potential liability over air quality.
Their release comes three days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Congressman Jerry Nadler said he and colleagues had warned city and federal officials at the time about toxins in the air.
“Our warnings were not heeded, and now we and the public know that city hall, led by former mayor [Rudy] Giuliani, predicted that thousands of responders and community members would face devastating long-term health impacts from these toxins.”
New York City council member Gale Brewer said survivors, first responders and lower Manhattan residents had spent 25 years living with the consequences while key records remained inaccessible.
The portal, she said, was “a great first step” towards public access.
Ben Chevat, executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, thanked Mamdani for finally beginning to answer what he called a central question: “What did the city know about the dangers from the toxic cloud at Ground Zero and when did it know it?”
He said four previous mayoral administrations had withheld documents showing what officials knew about toxic chemicals in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn, even as the public was told the air was “safe and acceptable”.
