E. Village family in toxic ordeal
Dad: 8 months of lead removal in vain
An East Village family is trapped in a lead-poisoning nightmare after a monthslong abatement project failed to remove all of the deadly substance from their home, the father says.
Garvey Rich said workers spent eight months getting rid of the toxin from 32 spots at the home after his toddler son tested positive for lead in July 2019 and The Post exposed the family’s travails.
The lengthy removal process finished in July. Then a city Housing Preservation & Development inspector checked the work, performed by a private contractor hired by the landlord, in early August — and found lead still in two places, Rich told The Post on Sunday.
“One inspector said, ‘Well, let me just test for lead while I’m here.’ He tested, and right away, he said, ‘There’s lead there. There’s lead there,’ ” Rich recalled.
Lead was found in the kitchen windowpane and a bump on the living room wall, said Rich, 55, whose son, Aristotle, 2, has suffered from developmental delays.
“It’s an old window frame. They should have just taken it out, knowing that all the window frames had lead,” Rich said.
Then a few weeks later, another HPD inspection suggested there might be more lead in the home’s floor — a place no one bothered to look before, he said.
A judge issued an order Friday saying more abatement work must be done, starting Monday and finishing within five days.
Rich said that in addition to being forced to move in with friends during the work, he and his wife are worried sick about Aristotle.
“We might have lead in the floor. Our child is 2,’’ lamented the freelance marketing consultant. “It’s absolutely a crazy living situation. I’m completely frustrated.”
The Post first reported the family’s plight as part of a story on the damning results of an investigation by city Comptroller Scott Stringer into the city’s failure to hold landlords accountable over lead issues.
Landlords technically face stiff fines — $2,000 for each finding of lead in an apartment — and the threat of having to pay for the city abating it through a court order.
But that’s only what’s on the books.
As the Stringer probe found, the city had not once slapped a violation against a landlord for failing to remove lead, suggesting there was little real incentive for anything to be done about the problem.
The report also revealed that the city had been using outdated standards on lead levels, so nearly 12,000 children who tested dangerously positive for lead had not been addressed by the Department of Health.
The city has said it has fixed all of the problems addressed in Stringer’s report.