Volunteering on Staten Island: Health of residents still in danger


This past weekend, we ventured out to Staten Island with my son Wyatt, Lis Wiehl, and her daughter Dani. We met adult with Nat Candido, a theatre manager for “Imus in a Morning” on a Fox Business Network and some-more recently, a owner of Operation Shove it Sandy.  

We happily volunteered a time and met some Staten Island residents whose cars, homes and lives were literally incited upside down by Hurricane Sandy – and in many cases sojourn that way. Nat and his organisation have been operative tirelessly to assistance these people correct their flooded homes, discharge supplies, and recover some emergence of a lives they had before.

We went door-to-door, handing out kits full of my Greening a Cleaning product line. As we walked around a neighborhood, we was overcome by a stink of mold – and who knows what else – inside homes, and in a atmosphere outward too. As these people continue to humour a romantic fee of Hurricane Sandy, we have no doubt they are physically pang as well, either with a dangerous cough, a slow headache, or other symptoms they’ve nonetheless to realize.

In their stream state, nothing of a homes we visited are fit for tellurian habitation; and yet, some residents have nowhere else to go. The propitious ones have been jumping around from place to place, vital with unblushing friends and family members and accumulating a simple essentials (like clothing) as they go along.

Operation Shove it Sandy has been a illusory apparatus for Staten Islanders, assisting them rip down walls and, in many instances, providing them a shoulder to cry on. But what these people unequivocally need is somewhere else to live while their homes are easy – a chateau giveaway of mold, unprotected fiberglass insulation, asbestos, and other dangerous conditions. Breathing in these toxins can means large health concerns, from wheezing and skin exasperation in a brief tenure to lung infections and cancer in a prolonged term.  

Some of a people we met told us that during night there’s a red heat in a skies above Staten Island. Whether this scary materialisation is generated by particulates floating in a atmosphere from rotting homes or some other source, we can’t suppose this colored atmosphere is primary for breathing.

Whenever a vital disaster strikes and hundreds of millions of dollars is donated to charity, we can’t assistance though consternation accurately where this income goes and how quick a people spiteful accept a assist they so desperately need. After witnessing firsthand a drop on Staten Island, we can contend for certain that 6 weeks after Hurricane Sandy, assistance has not arrived quick enough. And as people’s homes continue to deteriorate, we guarantee we this: their health is next.

Staten Islanders are survivors. Through their measureless strength, we know they will overcome this disaster and correct their communities, with a assistance of people like Nat Candido and his organisation of volunteers.

Support their efforts by donating supplies, income or your time: www.facebook.com/operationshoveitsandy.

Deirdre Imus, Founder of a site clinging to environmental health, dienviro.org, is President and Founder of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Centerâ„¢ during Hackensack  University Medical Center and Co-Founder/Co-Director of a Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer. She is a New York Times best-selling author and a visit writer to FoxNewsHealth.com, and Fox Business Channel. Check out her website during dienviro.org. ‘Like’ her Facebook page here.

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