Mamdani's 9/11 document release puts city's Ground Zero air-safety record in focus

A cache of more than 170,000 pages of city and environmental records made public by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday contradicts the official line, held since September 2001, that air near the World Trade Center site was safe to breathe. The documents, found in 68 boxes at the Department of Environmental Protection in 2025, arrive just days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, in which 2,977 people were killed.

The numbers on contamination

The starkest readings in the records come from Stuyvesant High School, located less than half a mile north of the World Trade Center site. A carpet sample from the school's auditorium, tested in August 2002 using the EPA-recognized ultrasonication method, registered roughly 2.5 million asbestos structures per square centimeter. The EPA's Lower Manhattan Test and Clean Program called for professional cleaning when settled dust exceeded 5,000 structures per square centimeter. The Stuyvesant sample was roughly 500 times that benchmark.

Asbestos traces also appeared on the roof of a building at 15 John Street, less than a mile from the WTC site, ten months after the attacks. Lori Mogol and Richard Zimbler, a couple at Independence Plaza North in Tribeca, still had more than double the EPA's risk-based clearance level for asbestos in their dining room as of February 2003, according to tests performed by their assigned contractor.

The paper trail inside city hall

A February 28, 2002, memo from a senior policy adviser to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg mapped the legal exposure plainly. The memo summarized Representative Jerrold Nadler's warning that the EPA had handed indoor air quality monitoring to the city without oversight, while the Health Department had instructed residents to clean apartments with wet mops and rags. "If Nadler's concerns are justified, we are not informing people of the real health risks in lower Manhattan," the memo stated, "the City may face major public relations problems and is leaving itself open to a barrage of lawsuits."

Then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman had stated publicly on September 18, 2001, that monitoring results showed the air near the World Trade Center was safe to breathe, following EPA assurances dating to September 13. At Tuesday's press conference, Mamdani said people got sick "because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air."

In July 2002, the Independence Plaza North Tenant Association wrote to the EPA through environmental chair Diane Lapson, arguing that cleanup of residential buildings at 310 Greenwich Street and 80 North Moore Street had not gone far enough. Lapson cited ongoing respiratory and other health conditions among residents and urged ultrasonication testing over visual inspections. By September 2002, the EPA had announced eight contracts for asbestos cleanup across the downtown area, covering the ZIP code encompassing Independence Plaza North. Health authorities, including the World Trade Center Health Program, have stated there is no known safe level of asbestos exposure.