From The New York Times:
After 9/11, Documents Suggest, New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality
The Mamdani administration is releasing more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the harrowing months that followed the attacks on the World Trade Center, New Yorkers were repeatedly assured that the air around the fallen towers was safe to breathe.
But 10 months later, health officials were still finding evidence of asbestos as much as half a mile away, according to a sample of air quality records being released on Tuesday.
The documents, reviewed by The New York Times in advance of their release, include more than 170,000 pages of air quality reports, contamination records and correspondence among city officials. The records were stored in 68 boxes in a city office, shielded from public view for more than two decades and, according to city officials, discovered only last year.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has directed his administration to release the records to the public through an online portal, timing it to the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the attacks in Lower Manhattan.
Over the course of the next year, his administration intends to review, redact and publicize many more papers, found in municipal and insurance offices, that relate to the environmental toxins brought about by Sept. 11.
The records being released on Tuesday provide a snapshot of the frenzied months after the attacks, when New York City and its leaders were struggling to balance the city’s recovery with fears of terrorism and lingering toxins.
The documents are limited in scope, offering only a fraction of the air quality reports taken around ground zero. And while they also include a smattering of internal memos — including the so-called Harding memo, in which the city discussed its potential liability stemming from the Sept. 11 air quality — many more are presumably absent.
But even in a scattershot way, the records seem to strengthen the notion that New Yorkers were instructed to return to the ground zero area before it was safe to do so, potentially exposing workers and residents to dangerous toxins.
“The very least our city owes the families, survivors and first responders whose lives were forever changed by the horrific terror attack of Sept. 11 is transparency and accountability,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement.
The release of the documents resolves litigation brought by 9/11 Health Watch, an advocacy organization that sued to force the publication of the documents.
Ben Chevat, the group’s executive director, said the documents showed that the city knew about the toxic chemicals’ danger, “even as city officials continued messaging to the public that the air was ‘safe and acceptable.’”
But the documents’ release may expose the city to new or amended lawsuits. The information could also help those sickened in the years after Sept. 11 with their applications for federal victim compensation funds.
Releasing the documents was both a significant logistical hurdle, for which the mayor budgeted $34 million, and an acknowledgment that, even after so many years, as fewer Americans remember the attacks, the health effects persist. More people are believed to have died from illnesses related to the attacks than the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on Sept. 11. They are succumbing to lung and blood cancers and heart and respiratory diseases.
Records related to 15 John Street, a building less than a mile from the World Trade Center, offer a glimpse into the prolonged, frenzied and often confusing cleanup work that took place around ground zero.
On July 13, 2002, with New Yorkers still reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center that blanketed Lower Manhattan in debris, inspectors were busy collecting dust samples from the building.
Each report echoed the last: Asbestos present on the facade ledge. Asbestos present on the west side roof. Asbestos present on the top electrical cable.
Some reports show that asbestos levels appeared to stay under limits set by environmental and worker protection agencies; others indicate they may have been too high, though many of the papers are not accompanied by written analysis.
The documents show that the asbestos found at 15 John Street was not an outlier: Lists of environmental quality measurements taken by city agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and privately contracted laboratories demonstrate the presence of asbestos and other contaminants, sometimes at levels exceeding acceptable limits, in dust and air in other parts of Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11.
They include records preserved by the Giuliani administration, as well as documents related to 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed on the afternoon of Sept. 11.
No comments:
Post a Comment