New York City Council speaker pushes for $4.5M to fund study about 9/11-related toxins
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- For 25 years, it has been an unknown question: When did New York City officials first learn the air at the World Trade Center site was unsafe to breathe?
On Tuesday, City Council Speaker Julie Menin pushed for $4.5 million in funding to answer that question.
The money would fund a report about 9/11-related toxins by the Department of Investigation.
"Thousands of families, including my own, have been denied answers about what the City knew regarding the environmental toxins that sickened and killed our loved ones after 9/11. Nearly 25 years later, we are still in the dark. That is unacceptable," Menin said in a social media post. "The Council is fighting for funding in the budget to finally complete and release this long-overdue report because survivors and families deserve transparency, accountability, and the truth. "
Last year, the city's Department of Environmental Protection said it discovered 68 boxes of information about what first responders and 9/11 survivors were exposed to after the World Trade Center collapsed. Last week, a court decided the city acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" when it denied public records requests for access to those materials.
"The public is entitled to know what the City knew about the true state of environmental hazards in lower Manhattan and when it learned those facts, all the while assuring the public that air quality was 'safe and acceptable,'" said Andrew Carboy, an attorney representing 9/11 families under the banner 9/11 Health Watch.
The records concern risk assessments the city made for the reopening of Lower Manhattan in September 2001, and the city's knowledge of airborne toxic hazards, existing at that time.
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