Rudy Giuliani denies his administration hid information about 9/11 toxic dust, saying it followed federal assurances that the air was safe. New York's Department of Investigation is preparing to examine what city administrations knew about health risks.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration released roughly 170,000 pages of previously withheld city records on ground-zero air quality earlier this month. A 2001 memo to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding warned the city could face as many as 35,000 potential liability claims. Reports on the records said other documents showed officials had concerns about elevated asbestos levels even as the city publicly described the air as safe, with such statements continuing into Michael Bloomberg's administration in 2002.
A July 2025 City Council resolution mandated the inquiry, which remains preliminary; the department is entering a two-year, $3.8 million contract with an outside law firm. Giuliani said he would cooperate and was told about 10 months after leaving office that more information was known. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said on Sept. 18, 2001, that the air was safe; a 2003 EPA inspector general report found the agency lacked sufficient data to support that claim. A federal health-monitoring program reports over 9,400 deaths from illnesses linked to Ground Zero exposure, exceeding the attack death toll.
