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From
QNS:
A Rego Park man who runs his own maintenance company faces criminal charges for allegedly pouring mercury into a Queens family’s air conditioning unit after getting one too many complaints about the malfunctioning system.
Yuriy Kruk, 48, of Alderton Street owns and operates the A+ HVAC and Kitchen Corporation. According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, a Jamaica Estates family contacted Kruk during the summer of 2015 to perform various repairs to their home.
Prosecutors said the victim repeatedly complained to Kruk that the second-floor air conditioning unit wasn’t working properly. Kruk replied that the system needed to be replaced, and in July of 2015, a new unit was installed.
Soon after the unit’s installation, law enforcement sources said, one of the victim’s noticed drops of a silvery liquid on the floor near the air conditioning units, and the same liquid dripping out of the vents in which Kruk had worked.
Members of the Fire Department’s Haz-Mat Unit responded to the home after receiving a 911 call and determined that the substance was mercury — the highly-toxic liquid metal. The family of three, which includes a husband, wife and their son, complained of having symptoms of mercury poisoning — including joint pain, headaches and lethargy.
All three family members were tested and found to have elevated levels of mercury in their bloodstream, Brown said.
From the
Times Ledger:
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is seeking input from the community on a plan to clean up 210 cubic yards of contaminated soil at the Long Island Rail Road substation in Bayside.
Through its Voluntary Cleanup Program, the DEC collaborated with the LIRR and the state Department of Health to develop the Proposed Decision Document, which the department said would be available to view at the Bayside branch of the Queens Library.
According to the document, the soil in and around the electrical substation, at the corner of 216th Street and 41st Avenue, contains mercury and arsenic left behind when the LIRR removed and replaced mercury rectifiers used to convert alternating current to direct current with non-mercury solid state components in the early 1980s.
Mercury has been found in the shallow soil near the loading dock on the west end of the building, and soil contaminated with arsenic has been found in the transformer yard near the eastern end of the building.
According to the report, the contaminants have affected the shallow soils but not the groundwater.
From the
Times Newsweekly:
Fearing that she might again be facing a bout with lung cancer, Anne Maitrano-Hernandez and her husband began pulling up the carpet of Summerfield Street home on the advice of her doctor, who suggested that they remove anything that could be carcinogenic.
Elevated mercury levels were found in the soil of the garden in front of the cottage previously occupied by Anne Maitrano-Hernandez and her husband. Elevated mercury levels were found in the soil of the garden in front of the cottage previously occupied by Anne Maitrano-Hernandez and her husband. But when they pulled up the rug in their dining room, they found another potentially serious problem: a broken mercury thermometer sandwiched between the floorboards. To this day, Maitrano-Hernandez has no idea how it got there.
She and her husband first moved into the small cottage they rented from Ernest and Georgeta Deitel on Summerfield Street near Myrtle Avenue in 1997. The building cannot be seen from the sidewalk, as it is located behind a two-family home and a garage.
Upon moving in, Maitrano-Hernandez told the Times Newsweekly, she heard from neighbors that the site was once used as a factory and, later, a dance hall; there were rumors that thermometers were once made on site, but there was no known evidence on public record to confirm that as its former use.
In recent years, Maitrano-Hernandez developed a host of health problems, and her husband developed unexplained tremors. Sensing a possible connection between their home and illnesses, Maitrano-Hernandez called the Department of Health in June to conduct an inspection for mercury contamination.
The results were startling, as the DOH report obtained by the Times Newsweekly showed that levels of mercury well above federal safety levels were found through the residence, prompting the agency to take action.
After advising her and her husband to leave the premises, in July, the DOH served her landlord with a order to clear the premises within five days and to have a licensed environmental professional conduct further testing on site and abate the contamination.
