Sicky mouse
City pests found swarming with drug-resistant germs
THE CITY IS bringing its war on rats to the 10 most-infested NYCHA developments, Mayor de Blasio announced Tuesday.
At each development, the city will be dumping dry ice into burrows where rats hide — hopefully causing them to suffocate within in a few hours.
Hizzoner took an up close look at the dry ice extermination at Brooklyn’s Bushwick Houses — though at least one rat escaped the poisoning attempt, skittering away despite NYCHA workers’ best efforts to stomp on it and kill it with a shovel.
Sitting behind a sign declaring “Watch Out Rats!” de Blasio said coming upon the rodents has become a too-common part of New Yorkers’ days.
At the 10 developments, NYCHA will use concrete to cover dirt floors in basements that have allowed rats to burrow freely.
The city is also giving out tiny trash cans that they’re hoping residents will use instead of full-size cans, so the trash will more easily fit into garbage chutes.
Resident Marisol Robles said she’s come across some “ferocious” rats. “It’s like a rabbit had a baby with a wolf,” she said. THAT MOUSE scurrying through your apartment kitchen is even ickier than you thought.
New York City house mice carry bacteria that can make people sick — including gastrointestinal disease-causing bacteria like C. difficile, E. coli and Salmonela, according to two new studies from the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
“We found a whole series of bacteria that are associated with human disease,” Dr. Ian Lipkin, a senior author of both studies, said. “And many of these bacteria had evidence of antibiotic resistance chain.”
That means if the bacteria — found in the mouse droppings — makes a human sick, it could become tough to treat.
“If you’ve got mice in your kitchen, and they’re soiling your food, that’s a way in which you can become infected,” Lipkin said.
Researchers studying the bacteria collected 416 mice from residential buildings at seven sites across four boroughs of the city, over the course of the year.
“This is not something that’s restricted to any one socioeconomic group, any one geographic area,” he said of the stomachturning findings.
A second study looked at viruses in mouse droppings — finding 36, including six new viruses.
None of them are known to infect humans.
Mice living in Chelsea had more viruses than others — some of which may be a throwback to the area’s blue collar days, Lipkin
said. “You can think of this as the legacy of the meat market,” he said. While humans can’t pick up those viruses, the C. difficile, E. cola, Salmonela and other bacteria found in the droppings can make someone very sick — and can even be fatal.
For that reason, Lipkin warned people to steer clear of any potential contamination of food.
“When you walk by restaurants that list a B or a C,” he said of Health Department grades posted in windows, “you probably want to give it a pass.”
And forget about the “five-second rule” of promptly eating something that fell to the floor.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said.
“And I would extrapolate the same here — you know, there’s no such thing as just a few mouse droppings. If food is contaminated, if surfaces are contaminated they should be cleaned with the appropriate products, and the food discarded.” A FORMER fund-raiser for Mayor de Blasio who has been probed by the city over his political contributions and contracts resigned abruptly from his construction firm this month and was tossed off a prestigious city board, the Daily News has learned.
Husam Ahmad (with de Blasio, below), whose family and employees have donated at least $58,975 to de Blasio’s campaigns, stepped down as the CEO of HAKS, a firm he founded in 1991, according to an April 6 company newsletter.
In February Ahmad was also officially removed from his role as a board adviser to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, a nonprofit that helps bankroll city initiatives. De Blasio appointed Ahmad to the fund in 2014.
The mayor’s office said Ahmad had been suspended from the board since October 2017 after questions were raised about activity around his work practices.
Ahmad’s lawyer, Howard Rubin, declined to comment.
High-profile trial lawyer Alex Spiro also confirmed to the Daily News that he was recently retained by HAKS and Ahmad’s brother, Shahid Akhtar, who quit as the firm’s chief financial officer.
Hiring the lawyer and Ahmad’s resignation are indications that the city Department of Investigation’s probe is heating up.
But Spiro denied any allegations against Akhtar and declined to comment on the HAKS probe.
Law enforcement agencies opened a investigation into HAKS and its sister company, SIMCO Engineering, nearly two years ago and raided the firms’ Manhattan offices in August 2016.
The Department of Investigation declined comment.
HAKS has received more than $365 million in city contracts in the past two decades. SIMCO has gotten $9.1 million in city contracts since 2012, records show.
Investigators have been looking into their political contributions and into SIMCO’s status as a minority and disadvantaged business, according to disclosures the companies have filed with the city.