After Sandy's deluge, mold and dust are the threats
25
November, 2012
From
his perch on top of his father’s house in Breezy Point, N.Y., Ken
Court can see an array of health disasters in the making.
“There
are asbestos roofs that have collapsed near the ocean,” says Court,
a 52-year-old roofer. “There is a lot of dust. You see people
walking around with masks on. You use the hand cleaners all day
long.”
Breezy
Point sits at the tip of the peninsula jutting into the waters south
of Brooklyn where Jamaica Bay, New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean
come together. Much of the close-knit, blue-collar neighborhood was
destroyed when Superstorm Sandy hit three weeks ago – swamped in
the storm surge, roofs ripped by flailing winds or burned to the
ground in a six-alarm fire that took out block after block of homes.
Now
it’s one of the last places left without power or clean water, with
no ETA on when either will be restored. And as Court works day in and
day out to clean up the mess, he sees long-term trouble wherever he
looks.
"You
should really wear masks. I remember that everyone in 9/11, when they
went there to help, they got sick,” Court told NBCNews in a
telephone interview.
Asbestos
and other chemicals from the collapsed World Trade Centers created a
pall of dust that persisted in lower Manhattan for months after the
Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Firefighters, police and other rescue workers
are eligible for federal compensation for the illnesses they have
developed since the cleanup – most recently 50 different types of
cancer.
People
who were in the area have higher death rates in general than similar
populations, and were especially likely to develop respiratory
diseases and asthma. Asbestos can cause a rare type of lung cancer
called mesothelioma.
While
the dust caused by the Sandy cleanup isn’t nearly as bad, Court
isn't taking chances. Asbestos is only a problem if it is kicked up
in dust and breathed in – but he’s seeing plenty of dust being
generated as wrecking crews pile up and remove the debris. "Those
corrugated roofs on the houses down by the ocean – they’re all
asbestos,” he said.
The
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene advises on its
website that "While Sandy has not caused problems with outdoor
air quality, indoor dust, mold, fumes from temporary heating sources
and the use of strong cleaning products can be irritating to the
eyes, throat, and lungs. Dust can also be produced by repair and
debris removal. In addition, debris removal and repair work can lead
to injuries of various types.”
Kate
Sisk. at her summer home at 21 Jamaica Walk in white jump suit trying
to remove the fiberglass in the crawlspace before mold starts to
grow..
What
concerns Court most, however, is mold. His 79-year-old father, Rod,
has emphysema and needs supplemental oxygen. “We got a foot of
water up into the first floor. We are just ripping everything out and
starting fresh,” said Court, who grew up in Breezy Point and who
now lives in Port Jefferson Station on Long Island.
“Right
now I have men ripping out the tile. We can’t take a chance with
mold with my dad,” Court added. “Now that we took up the tile
floor, it’s all wet under there and it’s black.”
Health
officials say Court’s doing the right thing. Anything that might
turn moldy should be removed or cleaned with a bleach solution. Mold
spores can cause allergic reactions or asthma in people who are
sensitive to them.
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done many studies on
the health dangers that linger after hurricanes, but the CDC's parent
agency, the Health and Human Services Department, is not making
federal officials available to talk about Sandy's aftermath.
Still
no clean water
Despite
the flooding that swamped water treatment plants, poured into subway
tunnels and flushed raw sewage into rivers, most of New York City’s
tapwater supply remained clean. But Breezy Point’s water pipes were
damaged so badly that the water still isn’t safe to drink,
according to local authorities.
“Breezy
Point Cooperative is in the process of re-establishing its internal
drinking water system and the City will meet with the Breezy Point
Cooperative to ensure that it can safely and reliably provide potable
water to its residents," the New York health department said in
a statement.
“DO
NOT drink the water from the faucets. Do not use this water to cook,
wash yourself or wash food, make ice, brush teeth or for any other
activity involving consumption of water,” the Breezy Point
Cooperative web site advises. It’s not even okay to boil it –
meaning chemicals could be contaminating the water, also.
Andrew
Juhl, an ecologist and oceanographer at Columbia University, has been
testing the waters around New York City for years and knows well what
could have seeped into the broken water pipes at Breezy Point.
“With
the hurricane there was this enormous flood of water that came into
the city and flooded sewage treatment plants and also damaged pipes,”
Juhl told NBCNews. “It is possible that there was a lot of sewage
released. We don’t really know. No one was out sampling at that
time.”
His
tests the days after Sandy hit showed lots of bacteria in the water,
however – enough to where people shouldn’t touch the water
without washing afterwards.
“We
measure Enterococcus,” he said. It’s found in the guts of
warm-blooded animals, including people. “If you find it in the
environment, you know it was recently in the body of a warm-blooded
animal.” While enterococci are not themselves a big threat to
health, if they’re in the water, so are other germs.
These
include anything that the people and animals in the area contribute
to sewage, from hepatitis to parasites such as Cryptosporidium and
Giardia lamblia that may cause diarrhea and stomach cramps.
One
thing that people may fear is cholera, but cholera isn’t commonly
found in New Yorkers, and so it’s very unlikely to be in the sewage
or water.
“The
most common illness that people get is gastrointestinal problems,”
Juhl says. “They get nausea, diarrhea, cramping, skin rashes, eye
infections -- that kind of thing.”
You
don’t have to drink the water to get ill – people who touch the
water can touch their eyes, mouths and noses and become infected.
Juhl’s team sampled flooded basements in Queens and found the water
was teeming with bacteria commonly found in sewage. They also found
germs all over dried-out storm debris.
“The
stuff we sampled up in Rockland County had been sitting around dry
for a week and it still had really high (bacterial) counts. That
actually surprised me,” Juhl said. “We haven’t done that kind
of sampling before and we don’t have a context for it. Maybe there
are really high counts there all the time.”
Nonetheless,
it could make people handling it sick. “They should wear gloves.
They should wear face masks. They should make sure they clean
themselves really well before they eat. We don’t know what the
specific threat is. l would be prudent,” Juhl advises.
Court’s
doing just that. “Most people are wearing protective equipment when
they are working in the basements,” he said. “You wear boots.”
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