investigation<\/a> found that Harlem Hospital ignored its own cooling tower maintenance plan in the weeks before the outbreak when it failed to conduct rapid, weekly tests for Legionella. The public hospital was at the center of a previous outbreak in 2021 when health officials determined that the facility had not properly managed one of its cooling towers in accordance with local law.<\/p>\nMiller, the Harlem resident, was shocked to learn that the hospital failed to follow its own management plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople go about their day-to-day work, taking their children out and stuff, and you subject people to something like that?\u201d Miller said. \u201cThat is horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Avant said he has gone to Harlem Hospital for medical care before but will likely choose another hospital next time he\u2019s sick.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIf you won’t take care of little things, how can I trust you to take care of me?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He and Miller are a part of a group of over 50 victims who plan to file a lawsuit against NYC Health and Hospitals and a private company called Skanska, which oversaw construction of the lab building, for failing to manage their cooling towers.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Skanska declined to comment on the litigation but said the company has worked with the health department since the outbreak to ensure its cooling tower is in compliance with the health code.<\/p>\n
This is concerning that the health department has backed off a very important tool.<\/p>\n
Mark LeChevallier, water management expert<\/p>\n
In addition to not conducting the weekly rapid testing, staff at Harlem Hospital did not act when the hospital’s cooling tower system showed low levels of disinfectant that could have indicated a problem, according to records obtained by Gothamist and reviewed by independent experts.<\/p>\n
Adam Shrier, a spokesperson for Health and Hospitals, said hospital staff interpreted the disinfectant levels as normal and that they were not required to conduct weekly rapid testing because it is not mandated by the city\u2019s regulations.<\/p>\n
In response to questions about Harlem Hospital\u2019s failure to follow its maintenance protocols, Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s press secretary, Joe Calvello, said the administration \u201cwill work closely with NYC Health and Hospitals and the NYC health department to minimize the potential outbreak of Legionnaires’ moving forward.”<\/p>\n
Councilmember Lynn Schulman, who chairs the Council\u2019s health committee and helped pass new legislation after the outbreak last year to increase testing requirements, said she would not comment \u201con the day-to-day operations of internal compliance matters of other agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Why have your plan?\u2019<\/p>\n
Public health experts expressed alarm that the hospital did not follow its own cooling tower maintenance plan.<\/p>\n
Cooling towers are complex machines that require daily monitoring, water management experts said. The equipment functions as part of a building\u2019s air conditioning system by circulating cold water that absorbs heat. But that warm water can grow and spread dangerous Legionella bacteria if the system isn\u2019t properly managed, especially in the warmer summer months.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s health code requires building owners to develop and follow detailed protocols tailored to their facilities for preventing the legionella outbreaks.<\/p>\n
On paper, Harlem Hospital\u2019s plan, which was drafted with the help of an outside water management company, met all the requirements of city regulations and included an additional regimen of weekly rapid tests between June and September.<\/p>\n
But the hospital did not conduct the tests. And the health department determined that the facility\u2019s failure to follow its maintenance plan did not constitute a violation, even though the health code requires building owners to manage their cooling towers in accordance with their individualized maintenance plans.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aTo have elements in the plan that you could decide, \u2018Well, I don’t really need to do that.\u2019 Well then why have your plan?\u201d said Mark LeChevallier, a water management expert with over 30 years of experience working for American Water, a national utility company. \u200a\u201dIt\u2019s pretty obvious that the [cooling tower management plan] was not an active tool that they were using to manage the cooling tower.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harlem Hospital<\/p>\n
Google Street View<\/p>\n
Both Health and Hospitals and the health department said the rapid tests, also known as qPCR tests, can be unreliable because they detect both living and dead bacteria. But water management experts said the tests could have detected an increase in the presence of bacteria if conducted on a weekly basis, potentially alerting staff members before the outbreak started, and that the hospital should have followed its maintenance plan.<\/p>\n
LeChevallier said the health department\u2019s decision not to issue a violation could send a signal to other building owners that they don\u2019t need to follow their specific maintenance plans, as long as they meet the minimum requirements in the city\u2019s regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is concerning that the health department has backed off a very important tool,\u201d he said. \u201cThe health code could never cover every cooling tower in New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene did not respond to questions about how it interpreted the language in the health code requiring building owners to follow their cooling tower maintenance plans, even if they exceed the requirements of the city\u2019s regulations.<\/p>\n
Tailor-made maintenance plans<\/p>\n
Legionnaires\u2019 outbreaks tend to be hyperlocal events. The cooling towers on the hospital and the public health lab spread the deadly bacteria in the immediate vicinity. Those infected lived largely in five Central Harlem ZIP codes.<\/p>\n
Prevention, therefore, also requires solutions that are specific to each cooling tower and the environment around it, water management experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201dIf public health is your objective, then you have to understand your context,\u201d said Annette Davison, a water systems and risk expert based in Australia.<\/p>\n
Acidity, temperature and a range of other factors can lead to contamination. But Davison said adequate maintenance can catch early warning signs and prevent Legionella from growing to dangerous levels.<\/p>\n
\u201dYour management plan has to be specific for your site,\u201d she said. \u201cOtherwise, it’s no use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooling tower guidelines from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes the importance of having and closely following a management plan<\/a>.<\/p>\nEntrance to Harlem Hospital’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Pavilion.<\/p>\n
Emily Nadal<\/p>\n
The health department said it\u2019s impossible to know which cooling tower was responsible for infecting Miller, Avant and other victims. Bacterial samples collected from the hospital and the construction site were identical.<\/p>\n
Miller, 72, said she has not recovered completely since contracting Legionnaires\u2019 disease and that the illness has left her unsteady when she walks. The disease is especially dangerous for elderly and immunocompromised patients. Miller said she was healthy before catching Legionnaires’, but the disease had her bedridden for a week and then hospitalized for another five days.<\/p>\n
Ilana Wolk, Miller\u2019s attorney, said the hospital put the public in danger by failing to follow its own protocols. She said she represents other clients sickened in the outbreak who have experienced cognitive impairment or had to stay in nursing homes as they recovered. She said the planned lawsuit would seek compensation for medical expenses as well as for the physical harm that victims experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI think when you look at the scale of what happens here, it was obvious that there were failures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer\u2019s Legionnaires\u2019 disease outbreak in Central Harlem has changed the pace of life for many of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-188125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}