Mamdani Accuses Former N.Y.C. Leaders of Lying About 9/11 Air Quality

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday accused previous New York City leaders of lying about air quality safety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, resulting in residents and workers developing serious illnesses years later.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” he said at a news conference at City Hall, surrounded by politicians, relatives of those who died on Sept. 11 and advocates for the health of those now suffering from illnesses that surfaced years after the attacks.

“As the years pass and the human toll grows, we reckon with the cost of Sept. 11 whenever another New Yorker is stolen from us too soon,” Mr. Mamdani said at the event, where he announced the release of more than 170,000 pages of documents related to toxic air quality around the site of the felled towers.

Mr. Mamdani declined, when asked repeatedly, to say who he believes lied to the public and what exactly they lied about. But in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, city and federal officials, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor at the time of the attacks, and Christine Todd Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reassured New Yorkers that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe.

But the documents, which The New York Times reviewed in advance of their release, revealed various instances in which carcinogens were present in the area for months after the attacks.

An audit from November 2021, based on information provided by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed that there were elevated levels of the carcinogen benzene near ground zero that month, as well as increases in the concentration of ambient asbestos on Staten Island.