What's In The News? Mini #404A

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

An all-new season of the Hulu Original Series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus.

SPEAKER_3 (0:37)

Four years ago, we were just making TikToks, but it feels like there are no friendships left in mom talk.

SPEAKER_2 (0:42)

You act like you're better than everyone, you're not.

SPEAKER_3 (0:45)

I can't trust anyone in this group.

SPEAKER_2 (0:46)

She's just dead to me.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

There's so much the public doesn't know.

SPEAKER_2 (0:50)

Watch the new season of the Hulu Original Series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Madigan (1:00)

Hi, I'm Madigan and you're listening to Your Angry Neighborhood Feminist, a podcast that explores the world through a personal feminist perspective.

Hello, everyone, welcome back to another mini episode. This week's mini episode is definitely going to be a 25th anniversary of the September 11th Attacks Edition, as that is going to be the through line for all of my topics this week. But to start us off, I want to get with the biggest story regarding 9-11 that came out this week, and that is that 170,000 pages of documents, including air quality reports, contamination records, and correspondence among city officials in regards to 9-11, were released to the public. These documents reveal that government officials lied to Americans about the safety of the air surrounding Ground Zero, leading to a number of deaths that just about doubles the number of deaths on September 11th, 2001 itself. Most of these deaths were due to blood and lung cancers, or heart and respiratory diseases.

These documents have been stored away in 68 boxes in a New York City office shielded from the public for the last 25 years. There has been legal resistance against allowing the public to view these records for 25 years. However, even with 170,000 pages, this is only a small fraction of the air quality reports that were taken around Ground Zero in 2001 and in the years following. Also, while the report includes various internal memos, it's assumed that many are absent. And apparently the existence of all of these files was only discovered last year. I find all of that extremely fishy.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani directed his administration to release the records to the public, timing it with the 25th anniversary of the attacks. The push for the release of these documents also came from the advocacy organization Health Watch, who sued in order to force the publication of the documents. Mamdani said in a news conference on Tuesday following the announcement that these reports would be released, On Friday, we will mark 25 years since the worst tragedy ever to befall our city, the darkest day New York City has ever known. And yet, the devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled. People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.

So now, let's pause and go back 25 years to when I was but a little 9-year-old at my Catholic elementary school, and the world changed forever. I'm not going to go over the events of the day, as I think most of you should be well aware of the basics at this point, so I'm going to jump into the immediate health effects after the attacks. When the Twin Towers fell, building materials, electronic equipment, furniture, and more was completely pulverized and spread throughout the area of the financial district in lower Manhattan. The dust from the collapsed towers was described as wildly toxic, according to an air pollution expert, and much of the thousands of tons of debris was, I'm going to use that word again, pulverized into the concrete, which is known to cause something called silicosis upon inhalation. Experts were aware of this at the time. The public was not. Apparently, on top of that, there were more than 2,500 other containments in the air, including 50% non-fibrous material and construction debris, 40% glass and other fibers, 9.2% cellulose, and 0.8% asbestos, along with detectable amounts of lead and mercury. There were also unprecedented levels of dioxins in the air, along with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons due to the fires that burned for three months following the attacks. These substances are carcinogens, which can damage the kidneys, heart, nervous system, and or liver. Though many civilians were affected by the poor air quality, a large concentration of rescue workers were particularly affected. First, there was a study in 2006, five years after the attacks, which showed that first responders were losing 12 years of lung capacity. Then, another study was published in April 2010, which showed that out of 5,000 rescue workers surveyed, all of the workers studied had impaired lung functions, with an average impairment of 10%.