By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
The bacteria that causes Legionnaires\u2019 disease was discovered at a Forest Hills police station earlier this month, though the amount of bacteria found didn\u2019t pose a real threat, officials said.<\/p>\n
The NYPD and the city\u2019s Department of Health confirmed that legionella was found in a cooling tower at the 112th Precinct on Austin Boulevard. <\/p>\n
However, the level of contamination found was below harmful levels, and there are no concerns for public safety or confirmed cases among officers at the 112th.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no risk to public health or the workforce there and no one has gotten sick,\u201d the health department said. \u201cIt is also safe to drink the water and shower there.\u201d <\/p>\n
The bacteria was found during a routine check of the precinct\u2019s cooling towers, and officers in the precinct were notified of the discovery on Sept. 2, according to an NYPD spokesperson. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to be proactive and let people know,\u201d the spokesperson said, adding that the \u201clevel two\u201d contamination was not high enough to require the NYPD to disclose the discovery by law.<\/p>\n
The health department said that the NYPD is \u201crequired to disinfect and clean its tower as part of NYC Legionnaires\u2019 regulations,\u201d which the department did last week. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese actions follow our regulations and are a textbook example of how they are designed to proactively monitor and identify the presence of bacteria growing inside cooling towers and mitigate it before it becomes a risk,\u201d the health department said. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, an outbreak of Legionnaires\u2019 disease in the Upper East Side in Manhattan killed 11, including a prominent former Queens judge. <\/p>\n
City Councilmember Lynn Schulman, whose district overlaps with the 112th and who chairs the Council\u2019s Committee on Health, pushed a bill that recently went into effect that increased the frequency with which the city was required to check for Legionnaires.<\/p>\n
She told the Eagle this is a prime example of the legislation working. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were able to find a small problem before it became a big problem,\u201d the lawmaker said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach The bacteria that causes Legionnaires\u2019 disease was discovered at a Forest Hills police station earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-343399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343399","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=343399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}