Around this time of year the phrase “never forget 9/11” gets invoked at the commemorations of the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, when 2,996 people died in a multipronged terrorist attack in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that would upend the world as we knew it.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the world and the nation rallied around a wounded New York City and city residents also embraced each other. Impromptu wanted posters of people looking for their lost loved ones were everywhere.
What people did not know at the time after the attack was that the toxic air in lower Manhattan that the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said was “safe to breathe” would eventually kill thousands more people than died in the terrorist attack…