A second cluster of Washington Heights residents have been hospitalized because of Legionnaires’ disease. The prior outbreak in the same geographic area in July of this year resulted in numerous persons being hospitalized and one person dying. The New York City Health Department has implicated a cooling tower at the Sugar Hill Project as the source of the second outbreak. The department has directed the Sugar Hill Project to disinfect its cooling tower for the second time. This second direction by the health department points up a major weakness in the current legislative scheme. Many of the cooling towers that are being sanitized and monitored because of the regulations and legislation passed in 2015 are not being properly treated. Proper sanitation of a cooling tower requires compliance with various national standards. It will be interesting to learn if the company which monitored the Sugar Hill Project’s cooling tower followed these national procedures. This firm has represented clients who contracted Legionnaires’ disease from a cooling tower atop the Opera House in the Bronx, as well as a person who contracted the disease from cooling towers at Co-OP City. In both instances the cooling towers were not properly maintained.
New Washington Heights Outbreak was last modified: October 8th, 2018 by