New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani this week released close to 170,000 pages of municipal records in the lead up to the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
At Mamdani’s behest, a portal has been created for people to access the records, which offer details on the days, weeks, and months following 9/11.
The files were made available to the public yesterday, September 8, almost exactly 25 years to the day since hijacked commercial airliners were flown into the Twin Towers.
2,997 people died as a result of the terror attack, with thousands more suffering from a host of health issues in the years that followed.
Calls for the aforementioned files – which detail things like the city’s response to the attacks and the air quality air around the site of Ground Zero – to be released have been ongoing for years, with Mamdani now claiming that past leaders are to blame for the hundreds and thousands of citizens who fell sick.
Speaking at a press conference accompanying the release of the files, Mamdani made the bombshell claim that citizens had been ‘lied to’.
According to The Guardian, he said: “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 continued: “The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.”
Among the pages of the newly-released files is the revelation that asbestos was present close to Ground Zero for months after the 9/11 terror attacks, around the same time that people were being told that it was safe to go there.
Asbestos is a group of naturally occurring, heat-resistant minerals once widely used in buildings and products such as insulation, roofing, cement, floor tiles and fireproofing materials. While useful because of its strength and resistance to heat, asbestos is dangerous when its tiny fibres become airborne and are inhaled.
Prolonged or heavy exposure is linked to serious diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, often decades after the exposure occurs.
When the World Trade Center was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, developers commonly used asbestos in construction materials to strengthen and resist heat.
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, states there is no known safe level of asbestos exposure, linking it to causing ‘several types of cancer, and asbestos also causes chronic respiratory diseases’.
As per Abestos.com, the September 11, 2001 exposed an estimated 410,000 to 525,000 people to toxic dust, 90,000 of which were workers involved in the rescue, recovery and cleanup efforts.
“The horrific terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 stole the lives of nearly 3,000 people, including hundreds of first responders and city workers who ran towards danger to bring others to safety,” a message from 83rd Corporation Counsel Steven Banks reads on the new portal.
“In the years since, thousands more have become devastatingly – often fatally – ill from toxins and debris, though the true magnitude of the attack’s impact has yet to be fully realized,” his message continued.
“Every day, we remember the lives lost, the families that were irreparably shattered, and the city that bore the unimaginable. This year, on the 25th anniversary, we resolve to do more.
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