Nearly a quarter-century after the towers fell, New York City has opened a digital archive of more than 170,000 government documents revealing that city officials privately knew the air around Ground Zero was toxic while publicly declaring it safe to breathe. The records, spanning multiple agencies and the months following September 11, 2001, expose a sustained gap between what was known and what was said — a silence that carried devastating, and in many cases fatal, consequences for thousands of New Yorkers. Released after years of litigation and advocacy, the archive arrives not as closure,
NYC releases 170,000 pages of post-9/11 air quality documents showing city knew of toxic risks
Thousands of New Yorkers exposed to toxic air and asbestos suffered devastating and fatal health consequences due to government concealment of known dangers.