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In February of 2002, as the work to clean up Ground Zero continued, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg suggested that New Yorkers who were concerned about the air quality in Lower Manhattan were worrying about nothing. At that time, the City's Department of Health was advising that residents could safely clean up dust from the debris with "wet rags."
"Every test that has been done says the air quality was in acceptable limits," Bloomberg said. "I think some people are just never going to want to believe that."
Days after Mayor Bloomberg made those comments, his top advisers received a memo that showed his administration was not nearly as confident—and that the growing calls from Congressmember Jerry Nadler and other lawmakers, who insisted that carcinogens like asbestos and benzene required a lot more than wet rags and reassurances, were worth heeding.
"Seemingly reputable scientists have come down on both sides of the argument," the memo stated. "However, If Nadler's concerns are justified, we are not informing people of the real health risks in Lower Manhattan, the City may face major public relations problems and is leaving itself open to a barrage of lawsuits. At the least we should discontinue telling people to clean their apartments with wet mops and rags."
This memo was one of the 170,000 documents that was released by Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration earlier this week that reveal how government officials—especially Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Bloomberg—deceived New Yorkers about the dangerous chemicals that were in the air in the days and months following the 2001 terrorist attacks.