Adams Administration is ‘Very Proud’ of the Way NYC Responded to the Worst Air on the Planet
City Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol testifies at a NYC Council Hearing this week, probing the administration’s response to last June’s toxic air quality. Photo courtesy by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit.
By Bob Hennelly
Representatives of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration told a New York City Council panel investigating its response to last month’s hazardous air days created by 400 wildfires in Canada that it was — “very proud of the city’s response within the constraints of the forecasting and information” it had at its disposal at the time.
Several of the City Council panel’s questions zeroed in on the potential health impact on the portion of the city’s 300,000-plus workforce that had to continue to work outside on June 7, as the ambient air quality index went well above 400 AQI, the worst of any major city in the world. According to the American Lung Association at a 300 AQI everyone should shelter in doors.
City Council members pressed for details on the city’s mask supply, the locations of the city’s air monitoring stations, its outreach to the city’s growing homeless population, as well as to the undocumented asylum seekers.
AQI measures several types of air pollution, including levels of particulate matter along with ozone, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide on a scale from 0 to 500. Anything up to 50 is considered "good" air quality with anything above 300 being classified as "hazardous." New York City typically registers in the 15 to 40 range.
New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol testified the city was entirely reliant on the air quality monitoring by New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s meteorologists, which he said had a “remarkable team” but that “forecasting air quality is very difficult and scientifically complex” that generates little lead time.
“We did not have a forecast on June 5 or 6 telling us there was going to be a problem so, we were amplifying the advisory — which is what we do up to dozens of times a year — where we have a level of 100 [AQI] which is really fine for almost every New Yorker. It’s unhealthy for some groups,” Iscol told the panel. “It’s just above the moderate category.”
In addition to Iscol, the administration was represented by Corrine Schiff, Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Health [DOHMH] and Beth DeFalco, deputy commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection. The officials recounted the city’s multiple advisories over Notify NYC, the distribution of over 100,000 masks and three press conferences to spread the word about the potential health hazards from what they described as an “unprecedented” air quality event.
The July 12 hearing was convened by the Council’s Oversights and Investigations Committee, Health Committee and its Environmental Protection, Resiliency & Waterfronts Committee. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams also participated in the hearing.
On the evening of Tuesday June 6, the city registered an AQI of 218 in the Bronx prompting Mayor Adams to issue a statement urging “New Yorkers limit outdoor activity to the greatest extent possible. Those with pre-existing respiratory problems, like heart or breathing problems, as well as children and older adults, may be especially sensitive and should stay indoors at this time."
Council Member Gail Brewer (D-6 Dist), chair of the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, praised the city’s Department of Central Administrative Services [DCAS] for issuing guidance for what city agencies should do to keep their workers safe, but noted that compliance was uneven and, in some cases, non-existent. She noted that the issue of air quality was of particular concern to New Yorkers who had lived through 9/11 when the U.S. EPA “gave us really bad information.”
Brewer credited the Parks Department for looking out for workers on June 7 who suffer from 9/11 WTC-related health issues, but noted that the Department of Transportation had workers out on the highways while the FDNY went ahead and held its annual Medal Day outdoors “even though the air was very poor quality.”
Brewer asked Iscol to account for what she saw as troubling inconsistencies with how the city’s agencies responded.
Iscol said while the city did issue guidance for its agencies, it was up to the leadership of those agencies to determine, based on their individual missions, how they handled the hazardous air conditions. “The health of our workforce is of paramount importance,” he said.
Brewer told Work-Bites after the hearing that she was concerned that Iscol repeatedly told the Council that they needed to query the mayor’s office or the leadership of individual agencies about how they responded to the air quality crisis.
“For him, [NYCEM Commissioner Zachary Iscol] to say on my last question that he does not know what agencies like the Department of Homeless Services, or the DOT were doing to protect their employees [during this air emergency] — I thought that was strange,” Brewer said. “He said the mayor’s office knows — the agencies know. At the very least we should keep city workers safe who are probably out in the environment more than private sector workers. I feel terrible about that. It’s shocking that the one entity that’s supposed to be in charge during an emergency does not know how our agencies are communicating about the risks to the health and well- being of our city workers — it’s just shocking.”
Council Member Shahana Hanif (D-39), who has an autoimmune disease, pressed the panel for details on what advisories the city promulgated for the municipal workforce as well as the private sector with regards to working remotely when possible, something Hanif said she and her staff opted to do.
“I am just raising this because I live with an autoimmune disease and the issue of reducing unnecessary exposure to adverse environmental conditions is naturally very important to me particularly through what we have seen during COVID and sort of the revival of the movement to work from home,” Hanif said. “This is a larger conversation about the health of workers for the long haul.”
In the initial phases of the pandemic, close to 400 municipal workers perished from a myriad of essential titles ranging from police detective to auto mechanic.
In his response to Hanif, Iscol said he did not have any specifics on what the city communicated to its workforce or advised private employers and suggested the Council check with the mayor’s office.
“I don’t know what the case was with other agencies — we actually did robocalls for our entire workforce so much so that I thought it was a telemarketer that was calling repeatedly,” DEP’s DeFalco volunteered. “We did that in addition to emails and supervisors speaking to people directly because we have an emergency response — critical employees that have to stay on the job and then those that can work from home.”
Iscol also said the administration consulted with its own subject matter experts — and that formed the basis of the guidance that was circulated to all of the city's agencies about worker safety.
“The guidance for workers, including city workers, parallels the guidance for individuals, so when the air quality is very poor the recommendation is to limit time outside and to limit strenuous activity outside,” Corrine Schiff, Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Health [DOHMH] testified. "So, for office workers they are already indoors, so that is not a major concern. For the city workforce that works outside, especially for our essential workers, there are ways to mitigate some of those risks — so, to encourage breaks, to provide workers with high quality masks and those are the kind of recommendations we provide our sister agencies that have the responsibility to figure out how it applies to their workers considering the kind of work they do.”
Iscol further told the Council panel that the “best evidence” of the city’s “successful response comes from public health data which saw emergency room visits involving breathing complaints just 100 visits above seasonal averages on a day with the worst air ratings in a city of more than eight million people.” Without the city’s efforts, Iscol said “that number would have been much higher.”
Michael O’Hora, a Pace University law student interning with the Environmental Justice Initiative, testified that the city’s failure to suspend construction at a brownfields site adjacent to the Jacob Riis Houses, a NYCHA development in the East Village, during the hazardous air days, “worsened” air quality and exposed workers and the public housing residents to arsenic, lead and other contaminants.
Joel Kupferman, the executive director of the Environmental Justice Initiative, told the panel that the Council should study the laws in place in California that give regulators the power to suspend construction work.
“The Canadian wildfires have made it particularly clear that the city needs a robust response plan to events such as these,” said Council Members James Gennaro, who chairs the Council’s Environment Committee. “Fine particles —that is fine particulate matter 2.5 microns are the main pollutants in wildfire smoke and pose the greatest health risk as the small size enables these particles to penetrate deeply into the lungs and bloodstream. Many studies have shown an association between exposure to particulate pollution and sever health risks.”
“Unlike our West Coast sister cities who routinely deal with wildfire smoke and its harmful effects due to drought and long wildfire seasons, New Yorkers were not prepared for the poor air quality that arose during the week of June 4,” Public Advocate Williams said. “A COVID 19 pandemic should have prepared us to deliver speedy and accurate communication around this issue. Instead, there appears to have been a failure to respond on all levels of government — not just city, but at the state, and federal level.”
Charlene Obernauer, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, told Work-Bites last month that society was failing its essential workers.
“Everything that was put out was about going indoors. But what if your work was outdoors?” Obernauer asked. “And we are not even scratching the surface of what the non-union workforce is experiencing on the job. This is exactly the same group of people that responded throughout the pandemic who were now working outside without protection and without any information about what they should be doing, how to stay safe and it’s the same issue with air quality while not having access to the proper PPE.”
Obernauer continued, “Nobody talks about the fact that an N-95 doesn’t cover wildfires — they’re not adequate for all workers that might require a higher level of respiratory protection — a half face or full-face air purifying respirators, even powered air purifying respirators like we were recommending for healthcare staff during the pandemic.”
NYCOSH’s executive director said that even as workers face the occupational health fallout from the climate crisis, over the last ten years “a lot of labor unions have shut down their health and safety departments.”
Said Obernauer, “We need to scale up. We imagine this is going to be happening more frequently. We need to get our act together as a city and as a state.”