You actually can’t live in a modern major city without being constantly poisoned.
It’s impossible.
The government could stop this. Or at least most of it. It wouldn’t be very difficult. The Constitution obviously prohibits both the government and private entities from releasing poisonous chemicals onto other people’s property, or into public areas. So the companies doing this could easily be charged with crimes.
More likely, you’ll get charged with a crime for complaining about it.
The state is quietly investigating roughly 100 blocks in and around Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal to determine how many are contaminated with cancer-causing vapors and other hazardous substances, The Post has learned.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation began its probe in September following public outcry over reports it waited nearly two years to alert the public that cancer-causing vapors nearly 22 times the amount considered safe escaped from polluted soil and into a popular shuffleboard club.
Records show recent air-quality tests inside the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club on Union Street have since come back as “safe” once steps were taken to reduce harmful fumes by venting underground contaminants — but many other properties in the testing area, where thousands of people live and work, continue to show high traces of toxicity.
One building, which DEC refused to publicly identify, had air levels of the chemical trichloroethylene, or “TCE” — an industrial solvent linked to cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments — 450 times above acceptable levels, according to tests taken last year.
Similar tests conducted in 2023 at 543 Union St., a massive 19th Century-era building occupied by 22 businesses, also found TCE fumes on site dozens of times, including one reading 255 times above “safe” levels.”
Many other neighborhood buildings are former manufacturing sites that saturated soil with toxic coal tar.
Over the past century, much of the coal tar – dubbed “black mayonnaise” by longtime residents — also seeped into the canal, which is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways and undergoing a massive federal Superfund cleanup.
DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Maher insisted his agency is committed to working with Gowanus-area property owners to get buildings tested and then “mitigate” any potential contaminants.
“We are all in on this community,” Maher told The Post. “We’re doing a lot of really important work and are really excited about the progress we are making.”
However, residents said they’re disgusted with the DEC’s and other government agencies’ lack of transparency — and terrified for their own health.
“This should be about cancer prevention and making sure people aren’t breathing in this stuff and getting sick,” fumed Seth Hillinger of the advocacy group Voice of Gowanus.
“[But] the state is doing just the opposite of what they should be doing to get the word out. There’s no signage anywhere — no warnings” telling the public a building tested toxic.
But how can this be?
The government cares a lot about my health. I know that because they shut down my entire country and tried to force me to take an untested genetic therapy injection to stop me from getting the flu.
They also banned smoking and raised the legal smoking age to 21.
Keeping people safe is their top priority. We know that.
Seth Hillinger (right)