Riverbank State Park & Other Harlem, NY Environmental Problems Notes

Marketing language.  In the early 1990's the City of New York put a the Riverbank State Park park where folks come to exercise on top of an open sewer.  I went to many community board meetings and bought up the problems of the open North River Waste Water Treatmet Plant sewer. At one of the meetings about the health concerns from exercising on top of an open sewer a woman responded, 'yes, my building is full of cancer.'  Another woman who was chairing the meeting said 'yeah, I know, my building is full of cancer too but this meeting is about Coke or Pepsi in the park.'

Harlem is no longer majority Black so I keep posting this information in the hopes that the people who do live there will take into consideration the need to clean up the areas environment. The initial research on the subject of the sewers is posted on this blog. 

Harlem's Sewer Problem, Did It Get Any Better? 

Here's some of the other problems or potential problems I presented and updated awhile back for the current residents of Harlem to consider and fix.

Earthquake Dangers

Earthquake Fault Lines: Running down 125th Street through some of Harlem’s mass transit routes, including an elevated subway, is an earthquake fault line. Many old buildings need to be fortified or torn down and rebuilt using the 3D printing technique known as "contour crafting."

In 2003 it gave us a reminder of its presence. It’s been reported that there is also a fault line under 145th Street too. 

Most of the buildings on the streets of Harlem are brick or stone and are not strong enough to withstand a major earthquake.  Given Harlem’s population density and mass transit system, there needs to be a well known and understood civic plan for addressing a large earthquake with special attention paid to an earthquake under the ocean that could produce a tidal wave that would run up the Hudson and East Rivers and flood the valley portion of Harlem. 

The New York City Area Consortium For Earthquake Loss Mitigation has detailed maps and information.  For example, their map of soil strength shows that where the mall is about to be built is on soft soil, which is most vulnerable during an earthquake.  When you click on the map, notice how much of Harlem is soft soils.  Most of the firehouses are located in masonry buildings.  During a 5.0 or greater earthquake, this is a problem.

On Saturday, October 27, 2001 at 6:16 am et the New York Daily News online reported that a minor earthquake shook New York. 

"A magnitude-2.6 earthquake hit under Manhattan around 1:42 a.m., said Dr. John Ebel, director of the Weston Observatory at Boston College, which monitors seismic activity in the Northeast. "That's more than a tremor. That's a small earthquake,"  Ebel said.

"The last significant natural seismic event to strike the city was a magnitude-2.4 earthquake on Jan. 17."  That's two in the year that had the additional vibration pressure of the falling of the World Trade Center.

What needs to be done: Use 3D printing in the contour crafting technique hemp plastic exteriors to hold buildings together and make them waterproof in case of...

Flood Dangers

Harlem, Below Sea Level,  At The Beginning Of Global Warming:

The typography reveals that much of Harlem is located below sea level.  On the west side, you can drive your car right into the river if you want. Both ends of 125th Street could become flooded and the area’s population located in central Harlem could be under water in a short amount of time. Scientists have already warned about a massive tidal wave that could come from the falling of rocks from the Canry Island Volcano.  It could take out most of the east coast.  

Since the Wall Street and Mid-Town areas are closer to the ocean, they may flood first, which, as we learned during the falling of the WTC, would mean few if any resources available for Harlem residents other than themselves.

Global Warming is already anticipated to reclaim coastal cities so action must be taken now to secure these areas.  Like in Holland, dikes or dams need to be built to help keep the ocean in the ocean and the land on the land. The best reference book I read on the subject is THE RISING TIDE:  GLOBAL WARMING AND WORLD SEA LEVELS by Lynne T. Edgertorn, Natural Resources Defense Council.

Rodent Disease Transmission

Rodent and Roach Transmission Of Disease: 

History is full of examples of rodent transmitted diseases taking out a large portion of a population, i.e. bubonic plague.  The millions of rats in Harlem and the South Bronx could infect their populations with a large array of diseases, beginning with Hanta Virus.  Information needs to be shared on both the risk and solutions available.  The CDC and NIH can contribute the materials needed to control the rodent population.

It has been reported that roaches contribute to asthma. 

As we learned from the West Nile Virus, rodent transmission is not the only concern.  We need to be aware of what animals we are interacting with and how to best interact with them.

What needs to be done. Fortify our bodies through nutrition, attention to symptoms and of course medical marijuana to reduce the stress.  Research ways to boost our immune systems to life in this, the nuclear age of mutant virus, et. al.  We can overcome many illnesses without toxic vaccines, with clean environmental standards to minimize the impact of......

Respiratory Problems

Air Pollution And The Link To Respiratory Problems Is Obvious. 

Clean air is a remote concept in Harlem, and that needs to change.  Though only a few miles wide and six miles long, she is surrounded by heavily trafficked highways, has had tons of residual pesticides spread within her houses and parks, has been exposed to industrial dry cleaners leaking poisons into her soil, and has severe roach and rodent problems.  Toxic mold has been found in Harlem, which can also affect respiratory health. 

According to the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, "Disparities are staggering: children who live in Harlem or Hunts Point are five times more likely to be hospitalized than children in upper-income neighborhoods, according to a Health Department study. Lincoln Hospital recorded 14,300 asthmatic visits in its emergency room last year."

The majority of Manhattan’s bus depots are in Harlem. Of course we can shift to a Tesla style energy system for transportation quickly.

I failed to get a solid answer on what’s coming out of those stacks on top of the sewer. 

In an area with high unemployment, jobs could be quickly created to clean up the environment and help the people get and stay healthy.  For example, it is cheaper to clean up the environment than it is to treat the many sick people who have environmentally induced cancers, respiratory problems, etc.

NYC Made The Golden Rule Illegal!!!

"NEW YORK - Twenty-two New York City churches have been ordered by the city to stop providing shelter to the homeless."

When I left NYC 10 years ago not even I knew that the City would stoop so low as to make the golden rule, 'do onto others as you would have others do onto you,' illegal. Have they no shame? Instead of empowering the churches to take on the task for 5 days of service, it shuts down the beds for the days that they can provide service.

I know the elections are fixed (zero votes for Obama during the '08 primary in many Harlem districts) and maybe that is the reason they govern so ruthlessly with no regards for the victims of their policies. Poverty pimps need poverty to pimp which requires a level of disillusionment. Turned away from a church, qualifies. It helps pump up the sense of helplessness they need to stay in business.

New York use to be a beacon of hope. In this economic crisis, where we have no clue who will be homeless next year, it's a potential nightmare, one already for some.

With the feds heads you know where, NYC government is free to hurt who they want from traffic harassment, to beds for the homeless, to murder by wrong address or color.

Remember, the feds could not have lied on 9/13/01 that the air was safe to breathe and the water safe to drink without the consent of the NYC government. They knew the EPA was lying. They had the air quality readings from the sewer system and the City's EPA. If you care, check out World Trade Center Illness, which is a direct result of government policy to put NYC on lockdown rather than evacuate.

Based on results, the NYC government does not have the best interests of the people of New York at heart, especially those most in need. That's not a new revelation, just a restatement of a fact. Like Prison, Inc., the system is looking for more customers and this is one way to do it.

What needs to happen is an upliftment of the term 'community activist.' Folks working for little to no pay to make their community a better place, like what Barack Obama did in Chicago in the 90's, should be empowered to do good.

This should be expanded to include homes, like what Mother Hale did in Harlem in the '80's and 90's. She took in who she could for as long as she could. More families and friends could take folks in for less money than is spent on big institutions.

The government lies and says the problem is money. Talk about pretend not to know. The resources the government is putting into destroying lives for interacting with the hemp plant should be re-directed into a fund to help us solve our problems now.

If NYC got 20% of all recreational hemp sales, the conversation would be about what to do with so much extra cash. Plus, planting hemp, with its 6 foot root system, would aerate the soil of many of the toxins still left from the exploded World Trade Center. For more on hemp please visit the USA Hemp Museum.

I hope the Obama adminstration is wise enough to unconditionally end hemp prohibition and begins solving problems with the income from America's #1 cash crop.

The way to solve the problem of homelessness, is to provide homes for folks without. It's that simple and with computers, it can be a piece of cake.

Asthma attack: Harlem's toxic trucks targeted - truckers fined!

Somebody please tell me they are kidding!!!

"UNDER ASTHMA ATTACK

HARLEM'S 'TOXIC' TRUCKERS TARGETED

By DOUGLAS MONTERO and SAMUEL GOLDSMITH

November 17, 2007 -- Smoke-belching truck tearing through Harlem are being ticketed with heavy fines for leaving a trail of toxic dust that has elevated the area's asthma rates to alarming levels, authorities said yesterday.

Over the past two weeks, 110 trucks have been slapped with fines that start at $750 for first offenders, and $1,300 for those caught a second time."

They're kidding right about the problem being the toxic trucks?

It is not the truckers who should be fined. It is the fools in charge who had created a toxic environment and are trying to blame the working people for the problem. If these are the folks making deliveries in this underserved area, what message is that sending?

If we had been using hemp biofuel or magnetic energy, there would be no air pollution from trucks. Our government has made clean burning hemp biofuel illegal and starved Bruce DePalma's invention, the N Machine that works with a Faraday Motor to create clean, free, sustainable energy. Instead they keep us on toxic energy and decide which will be the next war project.

I left Harlem screaming in '98 because the poverty pimps, no matter how many times I spoke with them, how many street corners I stood on for hours at a time giving out flyers, or rallies at Riverside Park, the leadership was/is stuck on stupid, evil or both if they are blaming the truckers for Harlem's asthma problem.

They would take their own families to Riverbank Park to swim on top of an open sewer because it was politically correct to support the best park in Harlem. It was like the movie JAWS beach scene on the 4th of July weekend.

Federal, state and city policy has legislated Harlemites to death, literally.

1. Harlem is surrounded by 5 open sewers, North River, Wards Island,Tallmans Island, Hunts Point and Bowery Bay. Hunts Point is where they make the fertilizer.

At Riverbank, they have added a new $55 million air treatment process that removes the odors. Does it remove or empower the toxins?

I remember being in shock at the environmental poverty pimps working to keep the conversation on odor and flow rather than the mutating germs and other toxins released from the open windowed sewers. (More information posted next blog entry).

2. Harlem is surrounded by high traffic highways on 3 of 4 sides.

3. The Harlem valley is a sink for a lot of the toxins in the area.

4. There are large rat and roach problems that could help cause asthma.

5. Some of those building are over 100 years old with mold, lead and other toxins.

6. World Trade Center dust was not cleaned up in Manhattan anywhere but in the hole. That toxic dust has to be impacting by now since the incubation time is 5-15 years, though the first person to die from WTC Illness passed in February, 2002.

7. Plus increased stress after the greatest inside job ever, 9/11, and they want to blame the trucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think they should check out the above list before giving the truckers grief.

Or maybe the fines are about greed. Like the environmental disaster could have been about the genocide necessary for clearing Harlem out to make way for modern times.

World Trade Center Illness Manifested

USA Today Reports:

"Felicia Dunn Jones, shown here in a 1991 photo with her family, has been declared the 2,750th victim of the World Trade Center bombing."

"A woman who was enveloped in toxic dust from the World Trade Center on 9/11 was declared the 2,750th victim of the terror attack yesterday - after the city medical examiner did an about-face and linked the noxious plume to her illness.

The reversal means Felicia Dunn-Jones, a civil rights attorney from Staten Island who died five months after 9/11, will be (was) recognized at the World Trade Center Memorial.

It also opens the door for the families of others who fell mortally ill after contact with Ground Zero dust to demand they be included on the list of victims and at the memorial.

"I would hope they would review all the police who got sick, including my son, and put their names on the memorial," said Joseph Zadroga, father of NYPD Detective James Zadroga, who died of lung disease last year. "They belong there just like her."

Today her name was added to the list of those who died as a result of exposure to World Trade Center dust. She is not the only one as the list of folks who have died from WTC dust is unknown.

What we are now calling “World Trade Center Illness” (or syndrome or cough) - sickness that results from exposure to the toxic dust of the WTC - can manifest as squamous cell cancer (SCC) or mesothelioma asbestos lung or stomach CANCER and other diseases resulting from the toxic synergy resting from exposure to many known toxic substances.

Get ready to heal a whole new crop of diseases.

Most of what I've looked at over the years has been information on known cancers from exposure to the chemicals on the list of toxins.

Both cancers, squamous and mesothelioma, result from chronic chemical, petroleum by-products or asbestos exposure. Exposure increases risk, and folks have been exposed to large quantities of toxic material for years now.

We have to stop pretending not to know. Since September 11, 2001, folks in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been breathing, eating and drinking the dust from the World Trade Center.

The toxic soup contained transformer oil contaminated with PCB's, polyvinyl, chloride, copper, furans, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, dioxins, asbestos, mercury from the computers and lights, thousands of gallons of jet fuel, and what the National Resources Defense Council - NRDC also defined as “small hazardous waste generating entities.” Add to that an estimated 50,000 personal computers with four pounds of lead each, pulverized, and that is 200,000 pounds of lead released into the atmosphere.

I'm still researching.

Chronic asbestos and petroleum by-products’ exposure can cause cancer.

Folks have been exposed to known carcinogens, and we need to deal with this situation now.

People in New York were told “We need you strong.” Rather than evacuate the area, the city was put on lock down, and the EPA report was manipulated by the White House to reflect minimal danger in the dust. There was no choice but to consume the toxins.

From WTC Volunteer Albert Davis’ book (As told to Terri Suess ) on his experience, GETTING TO GROUND ZERO:

“The bottom line was there was a shortage of masks. I was able to get one box of matching masks and filters and delivered them to where they were needed, near the “Hole”.

They were gone in an instant.

I thought of asking rescue workers for their masks when they came out of the site to take a break so the next rescue worker could use it. No one else thought that idea would work so I abandoned it.”

Here’s more supporting documentation for my concerns.

SQUAMOUS CELL CANCER Health Central reports about SCC: “Other risks include genetic predisposition… chemical pollution, and overexposure to X-rays or other forms of radiation.”

From Skincancer.org “Squamous cell carcinomas may also occur where skin has suffered certain kinds of injury: burns, scars, long-standing sores, sites previously exposed to X-rays or certain chemicals (such as arsenic and petroleum by-products).”

SCC can happen internally due to breathing petroleum by-products. I am dealing with this on a personal level now, which is the catalyst for these observations.

My mother-in-love, Edith Akuna, 69, worked for General Motors in Van Nuys, CA in the 1980’s. Her job on the finishing line was to put the stickers on new cars, approving the engine worked. She also pumped gas into the cars for part of her time there. To do her job, Edith breathed the chemicals off the new, 'starting for the first time' cars for years. After developing respiratory problems, she was put on complete disability about 12 years ago. Edith, who was otherwise healthy, died of SCC, the kind that results from chemical exposure.

SCC is usually a skin cancer. Because she breathed the chemicals, the SCC was on her internal organs. She had a mass that went from the top of her neck down her right lung, a second tumor lower on her lungs and one on each kidney.

As the doctors were explaining the nature of squamous cell cancer I thought, ‘chemicals, like what the folks consumed on 9/11?' I made the connection between WTC Illness and SCC because the transformer oil and the thousands of gallons of jet fuel, plus the pulverized plastics (petroleum by-products and other chemicals) are what folks in at least part of the tri state area have been consuming, like Edith did at her job.

We know based on Edith's job description and interviews with co-workers that petroleum by-products are on the list. Of course they have not released the list. They said they'll get back to her son. That was two years ago.

The problem of WTC Illness is not just SCC.

MESOTHELIOMA ASBESTOS LUNG & STOMACH CANCER

Another dangerous element from the dust is the asbestos. Asbestos inhalation increases ones risk for Mesothelioma Asbestos Lung Cancer.

There was, as estimated by the NRDC, between 300-400 tons of asbestos released into the air, pulverized, when the buildings fell. From the mesothelioma-net.org site:“ Pleural mesothelioma or cancer of the lung lining is the most common form of mesothelioma cancer. Peritoneal mesothelioma is stomach lining cancer and is the next most common form of mesothelioma.”

From U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Agency Fact Sheet - September 13, 2001;

“Asbestos fibers are found in nature and float easily.

Nearly everyone is exposed to asbestos at some time in their lives. It becomes a health concern when asbestos fibers are breathed in at high concentrations over a long time period. As a person’s exposure to fibers increases, either by breathing more fibers or by breathing fibers for a longer time, that person’s risk of disease also increases. It can take anywhere from 10 to 40 years for someone to develop a specific illness after their exposure. Disease is very unlikely to result from a single, high-level exposure, or from a short period of exposure to lower levels.”

But the asbestos was blown into buildings, into fabrics that people interact with, and though the WTC area has been cleaned up, much of the surrounding area has not and the dusty material was transported in open trucks.

More from the CDC on September 13, 2001. “What are some things that can be done to limit exposure? For the general public, the further an individual is from the site of dust generation, the less exposure there will be to high levels of asbestos. The best advice is to avoid or limit dust exposure as much as possible.”

People were told that the dust was limited to lower Manhattan. That was just not true. Paper was found from the WTC as far east as Long Island. If a piece of paper could travel that far, imagine how far the dust traveled, based on prevailing winds.”

CONCLUSION George Carlin told a joke about how what use to be called “shell shock” is now “post traumatic stress disorder.” His point was adding more words to describe a situation is not always a good thing. We need to call the next phase of world trade center illness what it is - C A N C E R or toxic synergy.

Regular cancer screening and treatment needs to be available at no cost for all exposed.

Research needs to be done on how to effectively deal with these cancers. Consider “Sharks Don't Get Cancer : How Shark Cartilage Could Save Your Life” by William I. Lane and Linda Comac.

Also look at hydrotherapy, medical marijuana, stress reduction and the need for a healthy diet.

I am not a medical professional. I am a tough minded optimist. I lived in New York from ’72-98. I live in Arizona now. I LOVE NEW YORK ETERNALLY (and the tri-state area –it’s a total package).

Caroline Myss in her book “Anatomy of the Spirit : The Seven Stages of Power and Healing” has a concept “Wisdom Erases Karma.” It’s time to wise up on this issue. Please let me know what you think and share this information with those who can help address the upcoming WTC cancer and other health issues crisis.

We are overcoming now.