ScaryNY

« New York Times on Life in the Fifth Precinct | Main | Taxi cab crashes, ends up hanging over ledge »

August 9, 2004

Germs in the City

Two reports issued today remind us that we're surrounded by health hazards in the city. First, as earlier mentioned on the Scary Blotter, the NY Post took swabs from all sorts of places and cultivated the germs, and came up with some scary results. And second, the city council reminds us that hot dog vendors aren't the only source of dirty water in the city, releasing a report [pdf, 4.2 mb] about the amount of trash found on the city's seven public beaches.

The Post's report found e. coli, streptococcus, and all kinds of other agents on doorknobs in city offices, excercise equipment in health clubs, park water fountains, and touchscreens on MetroCard machines. According the the Post, which even tested the doors at the rival Daily News, the only germ-free place they could find is the observatory on top of the Empire State Building. Although much of the Post's report is the kind of "scare journalism" that permeates local TV news ("Are your favorite restaurants safe? The answer may surprise you"), the article reminds us that if you want to stay healthy, you have to take care to keep your hands clean.

The city council's report finds much larger hazards on the city's public beaches: "Tires, condoms, syringes, wigs and even a dead rat," says NY1. (Photos of each of these found objects feature prominently on the report's cover, and I've excerpted a table from the report that shows the objects found at each beach.) South Beach on Staten Island is said to be the worst offender. One swimmer describes the water there as "gooey," although the Parks Department says conditions at South Beach are improving. Are any of the beaches clean? The report says Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn and Wolfe's Pond Park in SI are the two cleanest. These findings take their place alongside an NYT article from June that suggests the city's pools are, not surprisingly, breeding grounds for germs and diseases, even though the pools are chlorinated. The CDC notes that chlorine can kill most harmful germs, but it takes time: "some germs such as Crypto...can survive for days in even a properly disinfected pool."

Some of the more iron-stomached New Yorkers might say, well, if there's just a lot of floating debris at the beaches, we shouldn't be too concerned, since a juice bottle isn't going to make you sick. But keep in mind two things: first, garbage on the beach leads to the perception that it's okay to dump garbage on the beach; secondly, let's not forget that back in the late 1980s, the beaches were closed for weeks after vials containing HIV-infected blood kept washing up on shore, a situation that had a severe economic impact on the area. I don't think any beach-goers, or even land-loving New Yorkers, want that to happen again.

So if we're not safe from biological agents at the office, the gym, the subway, the beach, or the pool, what are we supposed to do? Stay home? Well, maybe take some precautions...pick up some extra hand sanitizer, practice what the CDC calls "healthy swimming" at the cleaner beaches, and, seriously though, stay out of the city pools.

Want to take a more active personal role in beach cleanliness? City council recommends you take part in the 19th Annual International Coastal Cleanup, which will be held on September 18.

Update: Mayor Bloomberg has denounced the city council's report as grandstanding, and says attendance is up (although that seems evasive to me). So the Post finds an unsatisifed beach-goer to issue a retort to the mayor:

Sources: NYP (germs), NY1 (beaches), City Council (beaches)

categories: Health, Parks, Waterways
posted by adm at August 9, 2004 12:41 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://scaryny.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/17

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Germs in the City:

validate