NEW YORK — On Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026 — timed with the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a tranche of roughly 170,000 documents showing city officials had air-quality concerns near Ground Zero even as the public was told the air was safe, according to BBC coverage of a Reuters report by Madeline Halpert.

Mamdani said the records show asbestos was found “nearly everywhere” they tested near the World Trade Center site where the Twin Towers collapsed in 2001.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said at a news conference with survivors, per BBC/Reuters.

U.S. health officials say illnesses tied to the dust and smoke from the collapses have claimed more lives than the attacks themselves. Thousands of people — first responders, downtown workers, and residents — have faced cancers and other conditions after breathing contaminants from the debris.

Lawsuit, 68 boxes, and a $34 million dump

The release resolves a lawsuit by advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, which sued the city for the records. City officials found 68 boxes of documents last year after previously saying they did not have them.

“Administration after administration has ignored those calling for answers and clarity,” Mamdani said, standing next to television host and 9/11 survivor advocate Jon Stewart. “We will do no such thing.”

Mamdani said City Hall will spend more than $34 million on the effort and that the documents show what the city “knew about the toxic air around Ground Zero, when they knew it, and how they acted to limit liability.” More pages are slated for release over the next year through an online portal.

Jon Stewart: buried for 25 years

At the Tuesday news conference, Stewart said the documents show the city did not recognize that downtown Manhattan air was toxic until October 2001.

“So to be fair to them, they only buried that information for 25 years,” Stewart said sarcastically, per BBC/Reuters.

The Harding Memo and liability first

Among the files is an October 2001 document known as the “Harding Memo.” An aide warned then–Deputy Mayor Robert Harding — serving under Mayor Rudy Giuliani — that the city could face as many as 35,000 legal claims over its post-attack response.

The memo warned the city could be sued because health advisories caused people “to return to the area too soon (causing toxic exposure or emotional harm).”

That is the through-line survivors have argued for a generation: officials managing claim exposure while the public was still being told the air was fine. Days after the attacks, city and federal officials — including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — declared air near the Twin Towers safe. Then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman later apologized for that declaration, saying the agency “did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had.”

For readers who distrust liability-first government: a document dump a quarter-century later is not the same as telling people the truth when they still had a choice about whether to go back downtown. The Harding Memo’s claim-count math sits next to safe-air messaging. Survivors and advocates forced the boxes into the open. City Hall’s $34 million portal is overdue paperwork — useful, long delayed, and still not a substitute for the warnings that never came in time.

Sources