“No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws. The allegations in this case of Whitman’s reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking,” –Judge Bates
Do you really want the government to be in control of your air?
NYPD, the mayor and one member of the City Council, as to their excessive natures, now want supreme control of your air. Well, they want control of New York City at the moment, southern states hang in, you could be the next sting for illegal air monitoring.
Did the NYPD get 3 minutes to present their case for controlling all air monitoring that occurs in New York City? No, ho hum, it went on and on and on…
We, the nation, have watched in horror as the NYPD stung the nation and the world on behalf of the Republican National Convention and “illegal” guns and now this.
The blame indeed goes to the current mayor and not the one before. This is the mayor that gave George W. Bush over $250,000 for both of his presidential campaigns.
A federal judge ruled that because the NYPD kept the illegal guns they knew were illegal when they illegally purchased them outside of their realm of jurisdiction, in the southern United States, the illegal activity was legal. Huh? Yeah, because they didn’t sell their illegal guns their illegal activity was legal. Stay tuned for reargument.
Talking about dumb law? Here is a New York City law that doesn’t get enforced.
“You may not smoke within 100 feet of the entrance to a public building.”
Dumb, right? I mean that the law doesn’t get enforced.
Rest assured some dumb laws do get prosecuted. For instance, if you knowingly and purposefully buy a Dunkin Donut or you try to monitor the air in your own apartment to find out why you are spitting up blood then you stand to get detailed and detained for hours and worse get a ticket.
(disclaimer: I have never eaten a Dunkin Donut and am a tiny bit, but I full heartedly believe if someone knowingly wants to eat some transfat (oh and they will because 0% doesn’t mean zero), then they should knowingly be able to eat some transfat). While we are still allowed to freely monitor the air we breathe, I was able to scientifically do a true test of the air conditions in my apartment. I found up to 4-5 million ml small particles, 4-5 million small particles in a room that has no activity in.
Me? frightened about the measurement ? No. I am frightened that the City nor my building owner nor his marketing director nor HUD have been able to help me though they had strong evidence that I was suffering. The building people not once let me know they were trying to find the source of the smoke. In fact, they gave me work order to report the apartments. Never once did they investigate or give evidence to me of that investigation. They said can’t be done overnight to my landlord. And to me they wrote “Please be patient.” In the eighth month of my suffering no more than that. The City did go through the motions of an SR email and email and call from Tobacco unit relaying that they were following up consolidated complaints. They said they were issuing warnings. That it takes a very long time because of the law. I researched and found that they had no real arm when it came to enforcing the law on building owners that have more power than they do. See Starrett City fiasco. see Lobbyist, Major Law firms and even Reverends. That’s scary.
The only departments of the City that I did not hear from were the fire department (three months ago) and the Department of the environment (same). I received a flat no ma-am from 911. The only reason why I heard from the Tobacco unit is because I complained to 311 about them. Yes, the only one who really had a beef with my plight was the Sanitation department and they were quite responsive. Magic mops abound around here.
Do you know that the average household has about 100,000 to 400,000 ml small particles running around in their air undetected? That the goal is get that small particle number down to a 10th and still keep working on it if you want to remain healthy? I found only about 45 minutes in the monitoring of the air in another part of my apartment, under my bed, where the small particle measurement was the lowest, 98,000 ml at about 4:40am, the remaining time at that spot measured 450,000 ml. And of course, that just happened to be an evening when the multiple nonstop smokers were not in the apartment above me and to the side of me.
When measuring the “community contributed” air of my apartment, I went for the first bases, spots in my apartment where I have experienced incredible toxicity, which unfortunately is everywhere. Still everything has its layers and degrees.
This air monitoring guy told me that people can’t usually detect cigarette smoke, the particles are so fine, but monitoring equipment can.
In researching how I could best make my own air cleaner I came across the company, 3M, that produces the filter, Filtrete. They also produce an air cleaner. In their video demonstration they use the cigarette for its visible smoke and fine particle qualities to test the abilities of two air cleaners.
In my case I can see the most pervasive smoke, I can feel it and smell it. I know when it’s happening and usually where it came from. It is burning up my nostrils and my lungs. At night, I sleep with a respirator on and I wear the respirator whenever I am at home during the day. That respirator gets full of the smoke after about 30 minutes. If I drag my finger across the inside of my front door, floors, windows, my furniture, all of my belongings, the finger wreaks of tobacco. After I clean the floor of my apartment with vegetable based Murphy’s Oil within 30 minutes it is back to tobacco and dust again. The same is true after I take a shower.
Too bad this government isn’t visionary. A visionary law would be a new smoking issues law, called “Smoker Responsibility.”
In the “Smoker Responsibility” law all tenants must not smoke in illegal areas, must cure their living area when sharing common walls, halls, floors, ceilings with others and maintain responsible conduct while in public.
Responsibility to cure living areas
If you smoke in your apartment you must seal your apartment and use an effective air cleaner. Note: Can’t afford it? Sure you can!
Energy efficient box fan for $11.99 and a Filtrete filter for $15. [home depot]
How much will this air cleaning costs you? $15-20 a month (hey non-smokers are paying it because of you!)
Want to find out exactly what it costs? Plug the fan into a kill-a-watt (Geekboy purchased this from buy.com for $29.99 less $10 google shopping).
Sealing rooms? Well it can be loads of trouble and sometimes little result if you don’t scout out the walls, floors, ceilings. Still baseboards can be sealed easily and inexpensively. Since you are the one leaking smoke into everyone else’s apartment, sealing baseboards in smoker’s apartment could be very effective for your neighbors.
Just use removable caulk.
Other advantages of caulking in holes, cracks, baseboards besides smoke passage, food smells go away and so do rodents and roaches (if you stuff with steel wool).
Signage
All illegal areas must be marked with “no smoking area” signage per wall on each floor, stairwell, elevator and laundry. The “no smoking area” signage must be produced of materials that are substantial and visible and attached to nondestructible wall. Type and graphics must be legible and the “No Smoking” message in Red ink and English and Spanish language.
Written Notice
Written notice to all tenants of the Building must be snail mailed. These notices must be of the same official importance as other New York State lead and fire safety legal notices. It must be returned and signed by each tenant as to understanding as the form’s written description of what an illegal smoking area is, and acknowledgement that if caught smoking in these areas a fine of $2,000 for the violation will be levied against the tenant.
Responsible Conduct in Public Places
The smoker’s responsibility in public places is to stand within the boundaries of a designated smoking area. The smoker may not walk freely on the streets or parking lots or avenues or bus lines, or subway station tunnels or escalators or any other unbounded city area with a lit cigarette. Point blank, no!
Let the tobacco companies and the City chew on “Smoker’s Responsibility” for a change.
P.S. Keeping tabs on a few of the many daily civil rights infringements we in the City suffer from our current mayor.
“The NYPD failed to differentiate between unlawful behavior and behavior that is not only lawful but should in fact be cherished and protected. Today the public can finally bear witness to that failure.”–San Francisco
“Your everyday person out there with a camcorder is never going to know about the rules, it completely opens the door to discriminatory enforcement of the permit requirements, and that is of enormous concern to us because the people who are going to get pointed out are the people who have dark skin or who are shooting in certain locations.”–Christopher Dunn, ACLU
“Rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.”–Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the New York City film office
source: New York Times, June 29, 2007
“Just so you feel better I am as white as a lily and when the NYPD told me I could not take a photograph during the Republican National Convention I said I had a right. They told me I had to get inside the pig pen. I said I would not. They said well you have to keep moving. So I took pictures as I walked and three of them were following me until I gave them the slip. Ho Hum…boring.”–bubblegumvision
