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Instead, it's clear that that isn't the case. Plenty of research, including studies on firefighters and other first responders on 9/11 and the days after (and plenty of anecdata from doctors around here) have borne out that the health effects from being around Ground Zero for the first couple of weeks after 9/11 was much deadlier than simply breathing in mild air pollution.
(In addition, while I didn't live here at the turn of the century... what air pollution? Manhattan doesn't have a collection of coal power plants near Wall Street. It doesn't have more ICE cars than most other cities; it probably had fewer ICE cars per square mile than an ordinary Wal-mart parking lot in the suburbs.)
9/11 resulted in building collapse throwing something like 1-2 million tons of debris into the air, which then fell and was on fire in a huge pile for 100 days.
Concrete, drywall, glass, asbestos, you name it.
This is nothing like regular car/heating/power combustion exhaust which is well understood, regulated, and result of reasonably efficient conversion of mass to energy.. at least by comparison.
About 400 tons of asbestos was thrown into the atmosphere around Manhattan when the towers fell.
The distinction is that the strongest evidence is among responders, workers, residents, and others who were directly exposed, rather than showing that cancer suddenly increased across all of NYC.
Realistically if you want the level of professionalism and coverage a site like Stat produces you are going to have to pay for some of it. The alternative is the “free” internet which is increasingly worthless slop.