A watchdog group representing 9/11 survivors and first responders sued New York City on Friday over the government blocking the release of documents that may reveal what officials knew about the toxic air and health risks in Lower Manhattan in the months after the terror attacks.
The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by the nonprofit 9/11 Health Watch, whose 2023 freedom of information requests seeking records about the city’s response to response and knowledge of the health impacts of Ground Zero were repeatedly denied by city agencies.
Court records show Benjamin Chevat, the director of 9/11 Health Watch, requested correspondence from officials under former mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg — including an October 2001 memorandum from ex-Deputy Mayor Robert M. Harding cited in a 2007 article in the New York Times revealing details about when the city knew about toxic chemical exposure in the air.
The lawsuit is the latest move in a fight for transparency among 9/11 survivors who have for decades wanted to know exactly what — and when — the mayor’s office, city Department of Environmental of Protection and Office of Emergency Management knew about the health hazards in Lower Manhattan and Western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapsed. The administrations of five mayors — from Giuliani through Eric Adams — have fought to block their release.
Chevat said the city owes survivors transparency.
“There’s indications that there’s something they don’t want to reveal, and that’s after 22 years,” Chevat said.
The Center for Disease Control’s WTC Health Program, which was established by Congress in 2010 to provide medical care for those who were exposed, had more than 125,000 people enrolled as of March. Data from the CDC shows roughly 6,900 of those people have died, but not all the deaths have been directly linked to the World Trade Center.
“Had the city of New York actually been truthful at the time, it wouldn’t have taken it so many years to get this program going,” said Chevat said. “Even now we’re still struggling to make sure that the health program is sufficiently funded.”
The mayor’s office, DEP and Office of Emergency Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit.
The Uniformed Firefighters Association in 2023 said that the total number of firefighters who died from illnesses linked to 9/11 has officially surpassed the number of first responders who died on the day of the attacks. Union President Andy Ansbro on Sunday said 360 FDNY members have died since 9/11 from illnesses related to exposure to Ground Zero toxics, including 12 deaths so far this year.
“If the full scope of what was down there was more readily available, compliance may have been better, also there would have been more of a push to make sure everyone had respiratory gear and civilians would have stayed away [from Lower Manhattan],” Ansbro told Gothamist.
First responders at Ground Zero remember well when Christine Todd Whitman, the Environmental administrator under President George W. Bush issued a statement saying New York’s “air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink” just a week after the World Trade Center collapsed.
Whitman has since admitted she was wrong at the time, and the lawsuit seeks to find out exactly what city officials knew about the health risks for tens of thousands of survivors and responders who worked to clear the wreckage two decades ago.