NYC Air Quality

[RIP - VTEnviro]

:rotfl:

NEW YORK - The gas-like odor that hung over Manhattan's streets was gone Tuesday, but city officials were still trying to pinpoint its source ? and eyeing New Jersey.

Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection, said Tuesday that his agency was pretty sure the source of the smell was along New Jersey's industrialized waterfront, just across the Hudson River from New York.

"The way we tracked the dispersion of the smell and the prevailing winds indicates that it came from New Jersey, somewhere near Secaucus," Sturcken said.

The strong odor, detectable from Manhattan's southern tip to well past Central Park, led to some precautionary evacuations, and about a dozen people were taken to hospitals complaining of difficulty breathing, Fire Department spokesman Tony Sclafani.

There was no indication that the air was unsafe, though, and no indication of terrorism, city and federal officials said.

"It may just be an unpleasant smell," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a midmorning news conference Monday.

Complaints about the odor also came from Bergen and Hudson counties in New Jersey, but no air sampling was done there because the state Department of Environmental Protection had no specific locations to test, spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said.

Sturcken said that the odor could have been caused by mercaptan, the chemical added to normally odorless natural gas to make it easily detectable, but he added, "Nothing has been confirmed."

"We're left with a mystery, although we know it's not harmful," he said.

 

[Guest]

VTE --

I read this in the news as well.

I am surprised EPA has not started jumping up and down, especially since the source of the odors are unknown.

Do you know anything more about this other than what has been printed in meda ?

JR

 

[Hill William]

I think its just Jersey's traditional funk.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

No I don't.

I grew up in an NY suburb and we used to make fun of Jersey all the time. I couldn't help but laugh at reading this. The industrial areas by Seacaucus and such absolutely stink.

 

[FusionWhite]

I worked as an engineer in the Kentucky Division of Air Quality for about 7 months right after school. I worked closely with the inspection branch and got to go out with the inspectors a lot. The Kentucky regulations say that a smell is out of compliance if the smell could be detected when 1 part of stinky air is mixed with 7 parts of clean air. To test this we had what I called a "smell-o-scope". It was a plexiglass box with an activated carcoal chamber and two nub's you had to cram up your nose. Then you had to walk around the area and breath in through this box while adjusting a slide to get the appropriate 7 to 1 ratio.

The first time I watched an inspector walk around a rendering plant with that stuffed up his nose I laughed so hard I had to sit down. I bet NYC has better smell-o-scopes then that.