28,000 kids poisoned by lead - and no one seems to care

From the Daily News:

He had to be backed into a corner by this newspaper and the Department of Justice, but Mayor de Blasio is now correctly having the city use standards set by federal health experts to protect children from lead-paint poisoning.

City Hall’s assurances that only 19 children living in the Housing Authority have been poisoned by lead was devastatingly misleading. Health Department records obtained by the Daily News show 820 NYCHA kids since 2012 ingested quantities of lead sufficient to cause neurological damage. Citywide, nearly 28,000 children did.

They and their families have to live evermore with the tragic reality: lead poisoning in NYCHA, and beyond, is a far greater public health menace than the mayor has been willing to admit or act on, leaving it to special ed teachers to administer to minds forever stunted.

The coverup consists of two sins, one in the headlines and one behind the scenes.

Shouldn't this be a criminal investigation at this point? The FBI has been investigating a payment made to a porn star for more than a year but no one is sinking their teeth into this?

Why it's important to research history

From the NY Times:

since 2015, most of the Red Hook fields have been closed because of lead contamination in the soil. A $107 million cleanup by the New York City parks department has been delayed, leaving residents, coaches and parents anxious and confused.

“We need our fields back,” Mr. Bazemore said. “But safe.”

Problems started in 2012 when the parks department and the city’s health department learned of a dissertation by an environmental scientist who identified close to 500 lead-smelting sites around the country. One of the smelters once stood in Red Hook, right across the street from the housing projects and right on top of some of the playing fields.

In the late 1920s and ’30s, Columbia Smelting and Refining Works operated on the corner of Hicks and Lorraine Streets, leaving lead in the soil that would eventually become Fields 5, 6, 7 and 8 — the same fields that Mr. Bazemore and generations of children once played on. The parks department and the health department tested the soil in 2012, finding lead levels four times the safe limit on the surface and nearly 10 times the limit further underground. They quickly closed them. A concrete pad to guard against the lead was laid down. The fields and grass were hydroseeded.

In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency did further testing in the surrounding fields and found more elevated lead levels, causing Parks to close the fields for a four-phase cleanup that has yet to begin.

Work was set to start this spring on Fields 5 through 8 — the worst of the bunch and closest to the housing projects — but has now been pushed back a year because of delays in the construction bidding process. A contractor is now being approved and work should be completed by fall 2020, when a 12-inch buffer of clean fill will be topped by a drainage layer and then synthetic turf.

Just think what we could avoid if the city consulted historians once in a while. Or at least looked at old maps...

Glendale landlord hoards tenants' trash

From CBS 2:

For tenants in one Queens building, it’s a living nightmare.

They claim their landlord hoards their trash and that the smell has caused a cascade of problems, CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported Sunday night.

Kathleen Midlaw is literally bugging out inside her Glendale apartment. It’s infested with gnats.

When she invited CBS2 to the building, Sanchez sensed the root of the problem — a horrible stench coming from the basement

Garbage, huge bags of it, were stacked up, wall to wall in the basement of the building on 65th Place. Midlaw and her neighbors blame their landlord, Maria Hlawaty. Tenants say she has been hoarding their garbage for years.

Moldy Sandy foreclosure still not cleaned up

From CBS2:

A Queens family is still trying to recover from Superstorm Sandy.

As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, cancer survivor Joyce Zoller said she’s devastated after being ordered by her doctors and attorneys to move from her Queens home to Florida.

Not because her house is unsafe, but because she said the abandoned home next door is hazardous to her health.

“The mold, the smell, the vermin inside, birds flying all over, it’s a disaster,” said Zoller. “I don’t know how much more I can take. It’s my home and I can’t even live in my own home.”

CBS2 met with the Zollers in June of 2014 and learned their neighbor at 145-08 Neponsit Ave. had abandoned the property after Superstorm Sandy.

Black mold had been growing inside the home.

City records show HSBC Mortgage took ownership after it went into foreclosure, but as owners did nothing to clean up the mold.

A Department of Buildings inspector stopped by the house Thursday morning, slapping HSBC with another violation for failing to maintain the building, Sanchez reported.

HSBC has been issued multiple building code violations since Superstorm Sandy and faces more than $20,000 in fines.

Crumb rubber fields still haven't been replaced

From the Times Ledger:

The city installed more than 200 synthetic turf athletic fields that contain a substance known as crumb rubber, linked by some to certain types of cancer, in the past couple decades. But since putting a halt to the installation of these fields in 2008, the city said it has no intention of removing them until they need to be replaced from wear.

Made from ground-up car tires, crumb rubber can contain up to seven carcinogenic chemical compounds, according to the nonprofit health organization Environmental and Human Health Inc.

New York City Parks Advocates President Geoffrey Croft said there have been growing concerns around the country that excessive play on crumb rubber fields is linked to cancer.

While some are tracking cancer clusters in cities across the country trying to find a link, there has been much industry-sponsored counter-research suggesting data on exposure to the chemicals in the turf were insufficient to link attribution to cancer.

Queens has 35 crumb rubber fields.

The city Department of Parks and Recreation said it continues to monitor conditions at all of its fields regularly. If conditions of any particular field merit replacement, the department said it would go about its standard capital process to do so.

Artificial turf may cause childhood cancer

From CBS 2:

CBS2 first reported last January on concerns over artificial turf playing fields being a potential danger to kids.

Now in a CBS2 investigation, Carolyn Gusoff has found these fields may be linked to a growing number of cancer cases in young athletes.

Experts said the bad things in question include a number of chemicals.

“We know some of these chemicals do cause cancer,” said Dr. Robert Cohen of Northwestern Medicine.

Now, the issue is building steam — from New Jersey to Long Island and even New York City, where there are hundreds of similar fields.

“These are many years that children are playing on this surface, and they’re growing up on this surface, and now, we’re seeing throughout the country these cancer clusters,” said New York City Parks Advocates President Geoffrey Croft.

Croft said he has been petitioning the city to remove the 200-plus crumb rubber fields currently in local parks.

But the Synthetic Turf Council, which represents the companies that make the fields, insists the substance is safe. They cited 60 studies.

One of the studies cited was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which examined four crumb rubber fields in 2009 and found that harmful chemicals were “below levels of concern.”

But Long Island U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said the EPA study is in adequate.

“Common sense tells us that four fields is not an adequate sample in an entire country,” he said.

Israel insisted that the agency should do more testing.

“The only way we’re going to know whether these fields are truly safe or unsafe is for the EPA to get its act together, and update the study, and let the American people know so that they can make their own judgments,” Israel said.

In a statement, the EPA acknowledged its original study was limited, and that more testing needs to be done. But the agency did not commit to doing it.

Tuberculosis outbreak in Brooklyn

From DNA Info:

There has been an outbreak of tuberculosis among young Chinese immigrants in Sunset Park, according to a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene alert.

There have been 15 confirmed cases since June 2013, with seven of those identified since September, according to the alert. Health care providers were advised to look out for symptoms including fever, a cough lasting several weeks, night sweats and weight loss.

“While overall tuberculosis (TB) rates in NYC have declined steadily over the past two decades, the proportion of cases among persons born outside of the United States has increased to 84%, and local TB transmission continues to occur,” the alert read.

Most of those stricken with the disease have been young men who frequent Internet cafes and work in out-of-state restaurants.

You have to live in very close contact with someone for an extended period of time in order to pass TB along. Officials may want to look into the living conditions of the victims.

Pharmacies also filthy

From PIX11:

Pharmacies aren’t just for prescriptions anymore.

From anti-freeze to light bulbs, cough medicine to milk, they sell it all. But are they handling it all?

A PIX11 investigation uncovered filthy conditions inside city pharmacies, clawing through state records to expose conditions that could make customers sick.

Dirty grocery stores are everywhere

From WPIX:

From meat and produce, to cheese, eggs and milk, do how you know how clean your grocery store is?

An undercover investigation by PIX11 News revealed the city’s filthiest grocers, exploring all five boroughs and the markets that failed their state health inspections over the course of a year.

The state worked for months to give us those 5,000 pages of reports, which led us to your grocery aisles equipped with an undercover camera.

We found disgusting, unsafe and filthy conditions that easily could make your family sick.

Food carts are filthy

From the Daily News:

Funky fruit. Icky ice cream. Putrid pretzels. Toxic tacos.

Those are among hundreds of complaints made by nauseous New York street diners who pulled their heads from the toilet long enough to dial the city’s 311 line.

More than half of the 359 complaints received between June 2011 and June 2014 came from Manhattan, where critics charge the carts operate under lax, to the point of laxative, regulations.

“It’s very loose, the enforcement,” said Daniel Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership. “We’ve been asking the Health Department, and Consumer Affairs, and the police to get together with regulations on appearance and cleanliness.

The complaints relay graphic details of gastric distress: Everything from projectile vomiting to stabbing stomach pains to three days of diarrhea.

They described food handlers working without gloves, workers scooping spilled spices off filthy sidewalks, a bare-chested cook with his body hair wafting onto the grill.

Don't eat these veggies!

From the NY Post:

Herbs and vegetables grown in New York City community gardens are loaded with lead and other toxic metals, a startling state study shows.

Tainted vegetables — some sold in city markets — were found in five of seven plots tested, according to data obtained from the study by The Post through the Freedom of Information Law.

In the study, scientists used safety levels set by the European Union for lead and cadmium, since the United States doesn’t set a threshold for veggies.

Once in the body, lead can remain for 30 years, causing permanent learning disabilities, behavioral issues, hearing problems, heart disease, kidney disease, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and death.

Children, pregnant women and sick people are most vulnerable to lead poisoning, experts said.

Shoppers at a farmers market outside East New York Farms in Brooklyn — where a carrot was tested with nearly three times the safe amount of lead — were stunned by the study.

The Parks Department said gardens involved with the study have all received clean soil and compost.

Artificial turf may be unhealthy

From the Daily News:

It may be time to take a closer look at the artificial turf your kids play on.

An NBC News investigation into the fake grass raises the possibility that it leads to cancer, especially those of the blood.

Seattle soccer coach Amy Griffin has made a list of 38 U.S. soccer players who have been diagnosed with cancer, 34 of them goalies who have constant contact with artificial turf. Though no research has said the material causes the disease, Griffin believes the black crumbs made of synthetic fibers and old tire bits that get kicked up by regular play can get into players' bodies and be carcinogenic. Turf fields can get hotter than outside temperatures, too, causing concern that byproducts can seep into the air.

"I've coached for 26, 27 years," she told NBC News. "My first 15 years, I never heard anything about this. All of a sudden it seems to be a stream of kids (getting sick)."

The fake grass isn't just on soccer fields — it's also the surface for thousands of playgrounds, schools, parks and stadiums throughout the country. Officials like that it's cheaper than grass to maintain and can hold up year-round.

NBC's investigation did not come to a definitive conclusion that the material was safe, but did add fuel to the fire.

The Synthetic Turf Council, however, says that the evidence so far says it's perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, Forbes reports that the cost of maintaining artificial turf is actually higher than maintaining natural grass and purported cost savings are all a big scam.

LGA workers strike over lack of Ebola protection

From NY Magazine:

About 200 Air Serv employees at La Guardia's Terminal D have staged a strike amid concerns about the spread of Ebola. Air Serv workers are responsible for cleaning the cabins of aircrafts between flights.

The strike started Wednesday night and is supposed to last for 24 hours. The workers say they're regularly exposed to gross bodily fluids left behind by plane passengers, and they don't have the necessary protective gear to fend off Ebola.

Ebola? No problem!

From NBC:

Mayor Bill de Blasio says he's "very confident" the city's hospital system could handle an Ebola outbreak.

De Blasio touts the public health system in the nation's biggest city, the ability of its first responders and its ties to the leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

De Blasio said Monday his city has a "much more aggressive and coherent game plan" than other U.S. cities to fight a potential Ebola case. He says anyone who suspects he or she has Ebola should call 911 or rush to the nearest emergency room.

HA HA HA! NYC emergency rooms couldn't even handle swine flu a few years back.

Enterovirus now in NYC

From PIX11:

Enterovirus EV-D68 has been confirmed in more than one dozen New York children — with one case in New York City — the Department of Health announced Wednesday.

The children are located in the Capitol Region, Central New York and New York City. Other regions in the state also submitted specimens for testing, which can take up to a week to confirm.

EV-D68 is causes severe respiratory illness, which sometimes results in hospitalization, especially among children with asthma. Currently there is no vaccine or treatment for the virus.

A New Jersey child was also diagnosed Wednesday with enterovirus EV-D68.

Enterovirus may be headed here soon

From Metro:

The New York State Department of Health is calling upon parents to be aware of the symptoms of enterovirus EV-D68. More than 12 children across the state, near Albany and in Central New York, have been confirmed as having the serious respiratory illness.

The enterovirus is spread through close contact with infected persons, and the health department recommends frequent hand washing, avoiding contact with eyes, nose and mouth, avoiding kissing, hugging or sharing utensils with sick people and disinfecting surfaces. Prevention is especially important for infants and people with compromised immune systems or chronic conditions, the health department said.

Symptoms reported include fever, runny nose, sneezing, coughing,and bodyaches, according to the health department.

Beware of Chikungunya fever!

From WPIX:

The same insect that brought us the West Nile Virus is infecting people with a relatively new and painful illness.

It’s called Chikungunya fever, and it’s carried by recent travelers to the Caribbean where the virus is spreading at an alarming rate.

The mosquito-borne infection has surfaced in states across the country, including New York, which according to Senator Chuck Schumer’s office, has 30 confirmed cases. Three patients in the past six weeks were treated by Dr. David Hirschwerk, an infectious diseases specialist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island.

“We have confirmed one case from the CDC. The other cases are presumed, but not yet proven because testing isn’t back yet,” said Dr. Hirschwerk, who noted the unrelated patients all traveled to the Caribbean.

Senator Schumer is calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue an immediate health alert for medical professionals in New York and around the country.

Kindly shut up

From NY1:

New Yorkers are loud and clear about their number one quality of life complaint.

The city's 311 hotline received more than 260,000 calls about noise last year.

That's up 30 percent over the past two years, even though the city filed thousands of noise violation notices in 2013 related to noise.

Those notices can lead to tickets costing up to $350 for honking a car horn, or up to $8,000 for nightclubs playing their music too loudly.

Even with all those tickets, health officials warn that there are places in the city where noise levels stay above 85 decibels, which they say can cause hearing damage over a long period of time.

A tiny apartment could drive you nuts

From The Atlantic Cities:

...as New York City’s “micro-apartment” project inches closer to reality, experts warn that micro-living may not be the urban panacea we’ve been waiting for. For some residents, the potential health risks and crowding challenges might outweigh the benefits of affordable housing. And while the Bloomberg administration hails the tiny spaces as a “milestone for new housing models,” critics question whether relaxing zoning rules and experimenting with micro-design on public land will effectively address New York’s apartment supply problem in the long run.

“Sure, these micro-apartments may be fantastic for young professionals in their 20's,” says Dak Kopec, director of design for human health at Boston Architectural College and author of Environmental Psychology for Design. “But they definitely can be unhealthy for older people, say in their 30’s and 40’s, who face different stress factors that can make tight living conditions a problem.”

Home is supposed to be a safe haven, and a resident with a demanding job may feel trapped in a claustrophobic apartment at night—forced to choose between the physical crowding of furniture and belongings in his unit, and social crowding, caused by other residents, in the building’s common spaces. Research, Kopec says, has shown that crowding-related stress can increase rates of domestic violence and substance abuse.

For all of us, daily life is a sequence of events, he explains. But most people don’t like adding extra steps to everyday tasks. Because micro-apartments are too small to hold basic furniture like a bed, table, and couch at the same time, residents must reconfigure their quarters throughout the day: folding down a Murphy bed, or hanging up a dining table on the wall. What might seem novel at the beginning ends up including a lot of little inconveniences, just to go to sleep or make breakfast before work. In this case, residents might eventually stop folding up their furniture every day and the space will start feeling even more constrained.

Mold still a major problem

From CBS 2:

Life after Superstorm Sandy includes a health hazard that is sometimes pesky, sometimes serious and continues to keep many out of their homes.

Now some are saying the city should be doing more to help get rid of it.

It’s the fungus you don’t want to find at home, yet Derek Casey is one of the many stuck with mold after Sandy’s waters flooded his Rockaway condominium, leaving him wondering if the government will ever come and help remove it.

“The mold is here and we’re what eight weeks later and it’s still growing. We should have had it removed by now,” Casey told CBS 2′s Sean Hennessey.

Casey’s uncertainty is spreading along with the mold.

“I’m very concerned about what we cannot see more so than what we can see,” he said.

City Hall is being accused of not doing enough.

A new survey by the New York Communities for Change said 65 percent of Rockaway residents still have mold or paid for its removal and that “..mold has been growing in thousands of households.”

The problem is so prevalent the survey said more than a third of the homes in the Rockaways have mold.