Clouds of thick black smoke are wafting into a luxury Upper West Side apartment building, leaving residents worried for their health.
“This impacts the health of hundreds of people,” Steven Katsman, a resident of 808 Columbus Avenue, between West 97th and West 100th streets, told the New York Post.
For the past two months, Katsman claims that two neighboring Chetrit Group-owned apartment buildings — 788 and 792 Columbus — have been spewing offensive gases from their oil-burning boilers.
Katsman and his family live in the 29-story building’s penthouse — putting them into direct contact with the smoke.
“We’re trying to sleep in other places when we can,” Steven Katsman’s wife Jackie told the Post. She added that she’s suffered from a chronic cough, fatigue, nausea and headaches for weeks.
However, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection has inspected the offending buildings, and said that the smoke is connected to their conversion from oil to natural gas, as heating oil will be banned after June 30. [NYP] – Christopher Cameron