Inspections for the Legionella bacteria in New York City’s cooling towers sank to a record post-pandemic low in the months leading up to an outbreak of the disease in East Harlem that has so far killed three people, according to a Gothamist analysis of publicly available health data.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene blamed a staffing shortage for the decline.
The agency has the authority to test water in cooling towers and issue violations to owners who fail to comply with prevention measures. After a Legionnaires’ outbreak that sickened 138 people and killed 16 a decade ago, city law requires building owners to test for Legionella bacteria every three months.
In 2017, the first year of inspections, the agency inspected 5,200 cooling towers and issued over 48,000 violations to building owners.
This year, the department is on track to complete less than half that number of inspections – just 1,167 as of June, according to data provided by the health department. It’s a record low, not counting 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic disrupted city services. And the number of violations this year is set to hit an all-time low. As of April, the department only issued 269.
The data also shows year after year of declining enforcement. After rebounding to 4,400 inspections in 2022, the agency has conducted between 22% and 30% fewer inspections and issued fewer violations each year.
Chantal Gomez, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the decrease in inspections was due to a lack of inspectors at the agency. She did not respond to questions about the severity of the shortage.
The current outbreak that started in late July has sickened 73 people, three of them fatal.
The 2017 laws require building owners to register cooling towers and inspect for Legionella bacteria. The law, however, does not indicate how often the city must carry out its own inspections.
Cooling tower inspections, according to city experts, are a critical defense against outbreaks of the deadly disease.
Acting Health Commissioner Michelle Morse told WNYC on Wednesday that the ability to inspect cooling towers after the outbreak helped the city stop the disease’s spread in Harlem. However, she did not elaborate on whether more regular inspections could have prevented the outbreak.
“From my perspective, there is of course always more that we can do to advance our prevention efforts, and this is why investing in public health is so important,” she said.
A review of cooling tower registration and inspection data shows that about 1,900 of the 4,928 registered towers in the city have not been inspected by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since 2023 and 85 have no record of inspection by the city.
Those towers cool apartments and other large buildings by circulating water through air conditioning systems. The water returns to the cooling tower warm and is evaporated as vapor.
Without proper inspection and treatment, that warm water can become a hotbed for deadly Legionella bacteria. Inhaling infected vapor can lead to Legionnaires’ disease, which causes cough, fever, chills, muscle aches and difficulty breathing.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
