Industrial hygienist Monona Rossol, safety officer and President of  Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc., returns to discuss how artists and residents can protect their health when living in formerly industrial spaces. There has been a long history of artists moving into abandoned industrial areas where they can find large spaces at cheap rents, but these environments may pose serious health risks.

Call 646 829 3985 with your questions or leave a comment below.

Event: Monona Rossol will be teaching a health and safety course for artists and art educators at University of Massachusetts, Amherst from July 11 through 15. 

Update: Monona answered all listener questions on this page. See her answers below!

To Michael from Greenpoint: The Nuhart Plant is Superfund site currently undergoing a state remedial investigation. As a fellow resident, I urge you read up on what is going on over there. Sometime in this Fall there will be a public comment period for residents to vocalize and collaborate with the DEC as to how the clean-up should be done. There is a 60,000 gallon of phthalate plume sitting under Nuhart, and two separate TCE plumes on the Clay St side of the building. Community input will be crucial to force the developer to clean it up as extensively as possible to protect GP residents and future residents. I'm not trying to scare you but that site is very serious and the more people that get involved with the clean-up process the better protected we'll all be. Here's a couple of articles to get you caught up.

Kim M from Greenpoint: Kim, very interesting. The question Michael asked was about drums in the basement of the Harte Company building on the corner of Franklin and Clay.  Those drums are probably secure since if they were leaking, that would be an immediate issue that would be easier to address that plumes under the area..

The connection between Nuhart and Harte is not clear. And the TCE and phthatate plumes underground are clearly from years of disposal and spills, not from current leaks.  I also note that a landmarks group is interested in the Harte Company building. Please contact me at actsnyc@cs.com if you have any information about the drums currently on the property so we can answer that part of Michael's original inquiry.

To Laurie from Tribeca: Laurie, my bad, I was relying on a Consumer Reports study done about 2010.  I've been doing some surfing and standards have changed and filters are much better.  New York water has only a bit too much lead, so the Britta's 14 % reduction will certainly put it into a better range. But I will be checking more data because the filters that do really well on lead and metals do not provide data for their efficiency on organic chemicals.  It is the same with the data in the link you provided. This seems to be the same issue we have with charcoal respirator cartridges.  There are specific cartridges for formaldehyde, acid gases, organic vapors, and metal fumes.  Each of these won't work for the other contaminants.  And when they combine all these filter media into one cartridge, it won't last long since there is less of each type of activated charcoal. What is needed is a really comprehensive study of filter performance with all of the common contaminants and information

To Marissa Gonzalez from Manhattan, NYC: Marissa, I wish there was a free service to do this. You can complain to the NYC health department and to the Department of Environmental Protection, but it is my guess they will not do anything to help. If you contact me off this forum at actsnyc@cs.com, I'll give you the name of a local industrial hygienist who can do this kind of testing. Sometimes it is worth it to spend the money to document a problem. Ba assured that I get no financial reward for recommending this person or any other. Good luck. This must be so frustrating for you.

To Michael from Greenpoint re: comment TO NOAH: Michael, Actually, EPA can even make your grandchildren liable for cleaning up your environmental messes long after you are dead. The problem with Greenpoint is the pollution is not from a "spill" it is from many "spills" over many decades starting in the 1800s and dumped by many different ships and companies. As for why they can't protect us, that's sort of our fault. We didn't insist that our representatives give the EPA the power to protect us. This country has bought into the small and powerless government theory for a long time. EPA, OSHA, CPSC, and even FDA, are pretty weak agencies without enough budget, power or number of inspectors to come even close to protecting us.

miswartwin from Greenpoint: There's no budget to clean up all this stuff. The whole country is peppered with sites, many worse than the ones we have here. The cost of remediating them all would wreck our national budget. And when you read enough about the sites to do get cleaned up, it is almost always those in areas where the local residents make enough noise and get politically involved.But Greenpoint has another limiting issue. This spills are under billions of dollars worth of property. The usual remedy of digging up the contaminated earth and replacing it with clean soil is not really an option. Something new will have to be tried such as oil-eating soil bacteria. Currently, ventilation for basements similar to radon systems are being used in some cases.

To Gregory from The Bronx: Gregory, Amen, I say! Sellers will have to give back the dough if they misrepresent the property. If they don't disclose, they must depose.

To Gretchen Aguiar from windsor terrace: Gretchen, Make sure you have a carbon monoxide (CO) detector. The standard household CO detectors do not alarm at levels that protect your health. They alarm at 100 parts per million (ppm) after 90 mnutes of exposure when the EPA says that 9 ppm is unhealthy for sensitive people. But there are special detectors on the market that will alarm at 9 ppm. If you can't find one, I'll help. CO is your primary issue over a garage. But where there is CO, there are other nasty chemicals from the internal combustion engine. If your detector shows no problems, you probably don't have a lot to worry about. But if it goes off repeatedly, you need to address this with the coop and maybe a lawyer. The garage must have some kind of ventilation that keeps all this from getting up into the building.

MIscellaneous from NYC wrote, "To the current caller complaining about the chemical smell from the upper apartment: Call 311. The City will get after them. Also, you can report it to the State.

To Miscellaneous from NYC: Oh how I wish I had your confidence. 311 is likely to refer her to the DEP or the Heath Department, both of which are not likely to do much. And just who in the State do you propose to complain to? This is a local matter.

To Noah: Many of these messes occurred LONG before there were laws to stop it. Spend some time reading general books about the Industrial Revolution and how the practices established in the 1800s continued through to the middle of the 1900s. EPA wasn't established until 1970, long after a lot of the damage was done. And even today, EPA doesn't have the budget or the power to stop many polluters before they do damage.

To Brian from Manhattan: Brian, Very good. These are only the people who have been caught. So not finding your building amoung the violators is not a guarantee. For a reveiw of the standard, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website also has good information.

To E. from Gowanus, Brooklyn: Cement dust is somewhat caustic, usually contains some free silica and a little chromium. But the dust from making the cement is worse because they are heating and crushing the rock that will become the cement. If it were my house, I think I would start to try to collect some of that dust a little at a time until I had at least a half teaspoon of it. Then I'd call a lab and have it tested for free silica and chromium. The odor was studied and the amounts of chemicals was not found to be above that found in many other cities. Sad. It stinks.

Miscellaneous from NYC wrote, "Question: If you use a filter - Brita, Pur, etc. - how do you safely dispose of it if it contains lead and other contaminants?

To Miscellaneous: It is legal for householders to discard these filters in the trash without any special precautions.

To Matt: Bravo, Matt! That's a good website. But it only looks at the more recent pollution from chlorinate hydrocarbons from dry cleaning and metal industries. Starting in the 1800s and until recently, an estimate 30 million gallons of petroleum also have been dumped and spilled here. Another cool map is at: http://clhenrick.github.io/greenpoint_williamsburg_toxicity_map/

To David: David, Absolutely right. WNYC is having a week long emphasis on artists and their importance to the City. But there were residents, small business owners and others there first. Many of these environmental problems started way before experts knew there were hazards created by these contaminants.

To michael from Greenpoint: Michael, Your water is enclosed in pipes that start from the upstate reservoirs right to your tap and bath. Nothing from your current environment can get into your water from the outside. Your major water quality issue is the lead in some of those pipes on the way to your tap. A simple water filter does a pretty good job of removing this lead. I looked up that building, (Harte & Co) and there reportedly is a basement full of chemical drums. But since this is well-known, it is unlikely that the drums are leaking or contaminating anything. But I agree that an unoccupied building with a lot of chemicals is a potential hazard. And now a group of preservationists want to landmark it. Very interesting.