WRGB Studios-Schenectady, NY — Just days before the 25th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 documents detailing the air quality at and around Ground Zero in the days and weeks that followed, along with City officials’ responses.
The release came after individuals with 9/11 related illnesses spent years trying to get several administrations to make the documents public, hoping it would help provide more answers. The information now indicates City officials ran tests which determined the air to be unhealthy, only to publicly say it was safe.
“It was like a crystal ball. It was literally everything that people have been seeing for 25 years within three weeks of the towers collapsing. But the City denied that they denied there was any health issue, and for years the Bloomberg administration denied there were any connection between exposure and illness,” Andrew Carboy, the attorney for 9/11 Health Watch says.
In part, Carboy says they hope the documents can help officials when responding to disasters in the future, especially when it comes to coordination and safety.
As has been reported, more people have now died after 9/11 (more than 5,000), compared to the day itself (nearly 3,000). For those who have contracted 9/11 related illnesses, the World Trade Center Health Program is set up to provide no-cost medical monitoring and treatment for certified WTC-related health conditions to those directly affected by 9/11 in New York.
In recent years, bipartisan members of New York’s Congressional delegation, including Democratic Nassau County Congresswoman Laura Gillen (NY-04), have pushed the Trump Administration to ensure the program is fully staffed and funded.
It’s one of several pieces of legislation and letters Gillen has signed on to in support of those suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, and now that these documents have been releaserd, she believes Congress should play a role.
“I think there’s more facts that need to be found. It may be appropriate to have Congressional hearings to determine what exactly was known when, what exactly the scope of the contamination and the toxins, what the radius looks like, why the public was misled, 1000s of lives have been lost that maybe could have not been lost if we had the truth, and to make sure that this kind of misleading conduct does not happen again, and American lives are always put first,” Gillen told CBS6 this week.
She said because the documents indicate the radius of unhealthy air is different than previously thought, potentially they need to look at changing eligibility requirements for the World Trade Center Health Program to ensure the right people are covered, and for the right illnesses.
You can watch the full conversation with Rep. Gillen here: