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Know Your Rights
Source: New York Daily News
Subject: Health Justice & Access
Type: Media Coverage

Doctors' Wheezy Answer: Cut Mold

Asthma
specialists want the city to crack down on mold and other housing code
violations that are triggers for the disease.

Forty
doctors wrote to Mayor Bloomberg, Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden and
Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan asking for stricter enforcement of mold
removal.** They also want pest
infestations reclassified from "hazardous" to "immediately
hazardous."

They say
housing code violations for mold, which contributes to asthma, have doubled in
the past two years.

"The
vast majority of our asthma patients – at least 80% – live in apartments rife
with asthma triggers," said Dr. Bob Morrow of Montefiore
Medical Center
in the Bronx. Hospitalization rates for kids
in "Asthma Alley" – North Brooklyn, East Harlem and the South Bronx – are more than 10 times higher than the rest
of the city, the doctors say.

Health
Department officials said they’ve met with several asthma groups.

** This
appeal was organized by Make the Road
New York
as part of the organization’s ongoing Healthy Homes Initiative,
with the support of doctors from partnering hospitals, including Woodhull Hospital
and Wyckoff Heights Medical
Center.