By Rich Calder, New York Post
The state is quietly investigating roughly 100 blocks in and around Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal to determine how many are contaminated with cancer-causing vapors and other hazardous substances, The Post has learned.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation began its probe in September following public outcry over reports it waited nearly two years to alert the public that cancer-causing vapors nearly 22 times the amount considered safe escaped from polluted soil and into a popular shuffleboard club.
Records show recent air-quality tests inside the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club on Union Street have since come back as “safe” once steps were taken to reduce harmful fumes by venting underground contaminants — but many other properties in the testing area, where thousands of people live and work, continue to show high traces of toxicity.
One building, which DEC refused to publicly identify, had air levels of the chemical trichloroethylene, or “TCE” — an industrial solvent linked to cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments — 450 times above acceptable levels, according to tests taken last year.
Similar tests conducted in 2023 at 543 Union St., a massive 19th Century-era building occupied by 22 businesses, also found TCE fumes on site dozens of times, including one reading 255 times above “safe” levels.”
Over the past century, much of the coal tar – dubbed “black mayonnaise” by longtime residents — also seeped into the canal, which is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways and undergoing a massive federal Superfund cleanup.
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