I was there, in Manhattan, on Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet whenever the topic of that day comes up and I tell people I was there, they immediately start describing where they were when the terrorist attacks happened. Inevitably, it was someplace geographically quite far from the actual attacks. Still, they want to tell me all about it. All I can do is listen. It impacted them emotionally, too, but they have no idea what it was really like for those of us that were there.
Those of us who were there not only carry the emotional trauma of the day but now have to consider the potential health impact to our bodies that being there might have had. That's because a trove of documents recently released by health officials reveals the air quality in lower Manhattan
might not have been as safe as it was believed to have been at the time.
Understand, I am grateful to be one who survived and my heart goes out to any one who died or lost a loved one. Which is why when others start telling me where they were that day, I can't help but to think: "You did not see a commercial airliner fly into a building live and watch a colleague collapse to the floor sobbing. You did not see the debris tumbling to the ground only to realize it was not debris, it was people. You did not smell the unmistakable and unforgettable stench of death. You did not hear the screams of the crowds as the towers fell in a massive wave that swallowed the streets. You did not run from that wave of concrete, steel and glass in fear for your life. You did not hear panic when fighter jets appeared overhead, only for someone in the crowd yell: 'No! They're ours!' and the crowd then burst into cheers. Finally, you did not breath the dust-filled air for days afterward — air that burned your eyes, blinding you as you walked and stuck in your nostrils forcing you to wash out your nose when you got home."
I did. I was there.
The memories of that day haunt me even 25 years later and the last point in particular leaves me with deep regret over the fact that I was there because, now, thanks to those health documents as reported by The New York Times, I must consider the serious health effects I could face some day because I was there.
Evidence of asbestos
I was living in New York working for Reuters at the time. I'll be honest, I don't think about Sept. 11 often and the various videos and photos of the day that pop up on social media are hard to watch without the feelings of intense sadness and anger bubbling up all over again.
No one understands it quite like New Yorkers who were there.
But added now to those emotions is the unsettling news in a Sept. 7 article in The New York Times that revealed the air quality was likely more toxic than we were led to believe at the time.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani authorized the release of health records from the Sept. 11 timeframe to the public to coincide with the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the attacks. The New York Times wrote that its staff reviewed the documents that included more than 170,000 pages of air quality reports, contamination records and letters between city officials in the months after the attacks. The Times said, "The records were stored in 68 boxes in a city office, shielded from public view for more than two decades and, according to city officials, discovered only last year."
The records revealed that — despite reassurance to New Yorkers at the time that the air around the fallen towers was safe to breathe — some 10 months after the attack, "health officials were still finding evidence of asbestos as much as half a mile away, according to a sample of air quality records."
Look, this finding should not be shocking given my memories of how huge the devastation zone around the fallen towers was and all the dust there that made breathing difficult.
Not to mention the famous photo of the "dust lady" that showed an elegantly dressed-for-work woman covered in dust after having escaped the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. She is frozen in a statue-like pose with the look of shock set on her face. That woman, Marcy Borders, died in 2015 at age 42 after a year-long battle with stomach cancer.
Recently, a special memorial unveiling at police headquarters in lower Manhattan has the names of 469 officers added to the number of dead from the 9/11 attacks. The officers contracted illnesses while working the Ground Zero site in the months after the attack, and later died from those illnesses, according to New York Daily News.
Still, I hoped for years that I was shielded from the worst of the toxins from lower Manhattan because I lived near the Upper West Side of Manhattan at the time, putting me about 4 miles north of Ground Zero.
Spending time in lower Manhattan
But being a reporter, I did have to go to lower Manhattan from time to time after the attack to interview people and write follow-up stories.
Also, I lived in Manhattan another three years after the attacks before returning to Michigan. During those years, my friend and her husband had bought an apartment in lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from Ground Zero. They researched it and were assured the air quality was safe to live there.
So I would regularly meet them at their apartment and we'd go for dinner at a restaurant in that neighborhood. Often, we'd come back to their apartment and sit on the balcony drinking wine. And, breathing in that air that we believed was safe.
The Times article said the documents it reviewed are limited and offer a fraction of the air quality reports taken around Ground Zero. Over the next year, the Times article said that Mamdani's administration will "review, redact and publicize many more papers, found in municipal and insurance offices, that relate to the environmental toxins brought about by Sept. 11."
So I will watch closely for more news on this topic. In the meantime, I exercise regularly, I quit my habit of socially smoking cigarettes years ago, I limit alcohol intake and try to eat healthy. I get regular physicals, too, and so far, I have not had any symptoms that would indicate concern.
But this New York Time's report on this 25th anniversary of that dreadful day did make me realize something I have never told my primary care physician — at key piece of information that I need to share with her the next time I get a physical: I was there.
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer at USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: I lived in the aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, and now I fear health impacts
