2011 Northeast Regional Industrial Hygiene Conference & Exposition is Friday

This Friday is the 2011 Northeast Regional Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition held annually at Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  The title of this year's conference is "Emergency Preparedness - 10 Years Beyond & GHS - New Horizons".  According to the published program interesting topics include the "Fukushima Accident in Japan" by Dennis Quinn, CHP, DAQ, Inc. and the "Making a Difference: Sustainable Construction Practices at MTA & NYCT" by Thomas Abdallah, P.E. LEED AP, Chief Environmental Engineer, MTA New York City Transit.  We are looking forward to attending the Conference, and the Exposition Hall with the vendors is always like going to a class reunion for us.  We hope you get a chance to attend this event and hope to see you there. 

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EPA Warns New York City Residents about Dangers of Illegal Pesticides

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), last week, conducted an investigation of businesses in several New York City neighborhoods revealing dangerous and illegal pesticides are widely available.  Federal and state experts conducted 47 inspections and found 16 different types of illegal pesticides.  The pesticides were not registered by EPA and consumers have no way of knowing how dangerous they are, because they were not subject to testing requirements or manufacturing controls that are required in the registration process. In all, nearly 350 illegal products were collected from the businesses in just three days.  Store owners and vendors found with the illegal pesticides were given a warning and told why selling these products are dangerous and illegal.  Separate but related criminal investigations conducted by EPA with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the U.S Attorney’s Office, U.S. Customs, the U.S. Postal Service and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office produced similar results and several charges were made against individuals last week, resulting in 12 arrests.

EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck said, "I encourage all New York City retailers to check their shelves and make sure all their pesticides have the required EPA labels.  Consumers should be careful to look for the EPA registration number printed on product labels, and to follow the directions for use, storage and disposal.  If a pesticide product does not have an EPA registration number, it should not be purchased.”
“The sale of illegal pesticides poses a direct threat to the health and safety of our community. In the cases charged by our Office, that threat was particularly imminent in the Chinatown neighborhood,” said District Attorney Vance. “Some of these illegal products look and smell like cookie crumbs, making them dangerously tempting to children.  Some of the other products are so toxic that one small vial can kill an adult male.  It is my hope that our collective criminal and civil law enforcement actions will prevent future injury or death.”
The inspections, which took place the week of September 12, targeted stores in neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.  Among the items confiscated were various rodenticides, mosquito repellants and mothballs.  These items will be safely destroyed.
Under federal pesticides law, all products sold in the United States that contain pesticides must be registered with EPA.  Before a pesticide product is registered, the producer of the product must provide data from tests done according to EPA guidelines, to ensure that the product does not make people sick.  EPA then examines the ingredients and the way in which the product will be used, and assesses a wide variety of potential human health and environmental effects associated with use of the product.  Distributors and retailers are responsible for ensuring that all pesticides distributed and sold fully comply with the law.
Pesticides have been linked to various forms of illnesses in humans, ranging from skin and eye irritation to cancer.  Some pesticides may also affect the hormone or endocrine systems. In many situations, there may be non-chemical methods to control pests.   EPA recommends considering and using these methods as part of an overall pest management strategy.

EPA has created an illegal pesticides fact sheet in multiple languages, which it will be distributing to businesses and community organizations in the targeted neighborhoods.
In a separate series of actions earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice charged two New York City-based individuals, who together had distributed and sold thousands of packages of illegal pesticides in recent months, with misdemeanor violations of federal pesticide laws.  The Manhattan District Attorney’s office also charged 10 retail sellers with selling dangerous and illegal pesticides and with reckless endangerment.  Agents seized many more illegal pesticides from the individuals during their respective arrests.
For more information on pesticide regulation and enforcement, please visit the EPA’s Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/region2/pesticides.

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Judge Stops Changes to Manufacturers Trust Company Building

Marble Columns Required Protection from the Poly, Spray Glue, & Duct Tape.

This article in the New York Times regarding "Judge Stops Changes to Manufacturers Trust Company Building" brought back some memories for me.  Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company (MHT) was one of Future Environment Design's first and largest clients.  Over the time we worked with MHT we removed alot of asbestos containing materials, including troweled-on amosite asbestos containing reflectance material on the first and second floors of 510 Fifth Avenue, New York.  This building was the location of our most profitable and successful projects.  We actually discuss this project in our initial asbestos project designer classes (reviewing the original asbestos drawings and discussing problems with amosite asbestos and negative air units).  MHT wanted to perform an energy efficient upgrade to reduce the amount of electricity they were using to light the first and second floor 510 Fifth Avenue.  In addition, New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee had landmarked the building, so the general contractor (Adelhardt Construction Corp.) had to figure out how to maintain the appearance while also saving electricity.  Under that landmark interior was troweled-on amosite asbestos containing reflectance material.  As the asbestos consultant for MHT, we designed the asbestos removal portion of the project.  The entire project ended with an extremely happy client that had a payback period of 1-2 years and the project came in under budget by at least 1 million dollars.

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Bedbugs and Lice Make Comeback.

Image via WikipediaIt's interesting  how certain news stories can just freak you out a bit.  For some its blood, for others it could be molds.  Well for me its bugs...in particular very small bugs.  Like bedbugs and lice just really gets me itching.  So when a story like the one in Newsday discussed the current bedbug and louse issue, it was all I could do to prevent myself from scratching like crazy.  Recent news stories have bedbugs present at the Waldorf Astoria (where else would you stay if you visited New York City), at  Lincoln Center (I guess they like ballet) and the Central Islip Library (they also like to read..or maybe they are really bookworms?).  This shows that bedbugs have evolved, additional proof of this is that these bedbugs are
resistant to DDT and malathion, products used in the past to kill them.  The article makes interesting reading and other articles have discussed how to avoid bedbugs while traveling or specifically discussed about bedbugs not being a public health emergency.  The primary reason being that bedbugs are not known to spread disease.  They just want to feed on us (ok, just writing that creeped me out...itch, itch, scratch, scratch).  

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Future Environment Designs Sponsors Asbestos Video

Future Environment Designs sponsored this video to assist with Keeping Your Family Safe by being aware about the dangers of Asbestos.  Realize New York State and New York City asbestos regulations are some of the strongest in the country and both regulate residential asbestos isnpections, removal, and monitoring.

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Riggiing Contractor Cleared Of All Charges

Mr. William Rapetti's trial ended on Thursday with a not-guilty verdict by the judge that heard the case.  This ends the first of the construction trials that the construction industry is watching, the other two being the Deutsche Bank Fire and the other crane accident.  Mr. Rapetti and his company Rapetti Rigging Services were acquitted all charges.  Unfortunately, he and his company, along with other companies on the project, the building owner and New York City, still must face several civil lawsuits in regards to the accident.

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NYC DEP Plans Increase In Enforcement On Asbestos Investigators

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The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) released plans to increase the scrutiny of Certified Asbestos Investigators.  As discussed in the New York Times article linked above, NYCDEP has hired two additional inspection monitors to review the work of the Certified Asbestos Investigators and plans to nearly double the number of office audits it conducts each year, to 75, up from 40; the agency will check the records and activities of nearly 15 percent of the 543 asbestos investigators it certifies, and perform 500 spot-check field inspections.  What caused this increase in oversight of the Certified Asbestos Investigators?  Mr. Saverio Todaro's guilty plea to federal environmental crimes, fraud and making false statements.  In our refresher classes we have discussed Mr. Todaro's case, who operated an environmental inspection and testing company, and acknowledged that he had submitted clean asbestos and lead test results for at least a decade without performing any tests.
Not only has Mr. Todaro's case caused increased scrutiny of Investigators, it also has exposed our industry to reckless statements such as "The city environmental agency regulates private asbestos inspectors, who play an important role in what has long been viewed as one of the more corrupt sectors of the construction industry."  I don't think the New York Times has accurately portrayed our industry.  Our industry like many others has individuals that will do anything for the money.  However, we have many individuals and companies in our industry that do not give into this weakness and perform their jobs in accordance with the regulations.  We provide our clients with an important service and help them protect their properties and the people who use the property.  I am very disappointed with the NY Times, in painting our industry with such a broad brush stroke based on the guilty plea of a few individuals.

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Spring 2010 Future Focus Posted

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Future Environment Designs has posted its Spring 2010 newsletter finalizing our coverage of the revisions to the New York City asbestos regulation Title 15.  This issue we discuss the changes to the work procedures/practices.

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Future Environment Designs discussion "The Pollution Within"

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In 2006 we discussed in our blog Future Environment Designs: "The Pollution Within" from Plattsburgh, NY about an article we read in National Geographic about all the different chemicals we have inside our body.  Its interesting that on November 7, 2009 that the New York Times Op-Ed Columnist by Nicolas Kristof (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html) wrote "Chemicals in our Foods and Bodies".  Specifically discussing the issues with bisphenol A (BPA), its a synthetic estrogen used in plastics.  Some of you might even know that Suffolk County, New York has banned it.  BPA has been linked to a number of illnesses from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike (not conclusively).  So all of this still begs the question when are we going to do complete research on the chemicals we use to determine whether by themselves or multiple chemicals together cause or can cause illnesses or cancers.

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EPA Announces Agreement with NYC Schools on PCBs in Caulk

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EPA announced an agreement with New York City on the handling of PolyChlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in caulk.  In our blog post http://futureenv.blogspot.com/2008/04/pcbs-in-caulk-making-headlines.html and in our Autumn 2008 Newsletter (http://futureenvironmentdesigns.com/archives.htm?ID=4311505&s=16687015)
we fully discussed this issue.  This press release announces that NYC has entered into an agreement with EPA to develop a program in handling these materials.  The agreement should help protect children from being potentially exposed to PCBs in window caulk.

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NYC DEP Posts New Forms for Asbestos Projects

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New York City Department of Environmental Protection has posted new forms on their website that are required as part of the new asbestos regulations that started going into effect in October 13, 2009.  Today, all the new asbestos rules (work procedures and practices) went into effect.  Additional operational changes go into effect November 16, 2009, including the use of the Project Monitor’s Report (required to be submitted to NYC DEP by an NYS Asbestos Project Monitor within three weeks of successful clearance air monitoring) and the new ACP 9 form -variance application (NYS Asbestos Project Designers are required to file this report).  These new forms are designed to be used with the new electronic filing system "Asbestos Reporting and Tracking System (ARTS) that has been in effect for projects more than or equal to 1,000 feet since October 13, 2009.

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