Chipped paint with dangerous concentrations of lead has been raining down from the elevated subway tracks that run through Bushwick for years — yet the MTA has dragged its feet in fixing the problem despite public outcry, according to a group of locals, elected officials, and union painters.
Salvatore Polizzi, owner of Tony’s Pizzeria near the Knickerbocker Avenue M train stop, said the issue has been a major concern for years and that he first tested the paint chipping off the J/M/Z tracks in 2020, sending in samples from the areas around Knickerbocker, Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues, and Myrtle Avenue-Broadway. The chips, he said, came back with a dangerously high concentration of lead, about 63,000 parts per million (ppm), substantially above federal legal limits of 5,000 ppm considered hazardous to human health and requiring abatement.
He shared his findings with local elected officials and the MTA, but said the transit authority has failed to address the issue for three years, even as local children continue to be exposed to dangerous levels of lead.
“Unfortunately, not much has come since that day in 2020,” Polizzi said at a press conference at a plaza next to the Knickerbocker Avenue station, a popular hangout spot. “The same material is on these tracks, we are in the same position we were then. The MTA has dragged its feet, it continues to tell us that work will be underway.”
Today, it is widely understood that lead is hazardous to human health, especially for young children, who are at risk of brain damage and stunted development if exposed to large amounts of the toxic material. The sale of lead-based paint for consumer use has been banned since 1978, and today commercial paint cannot contain more 90 ppm of the material.
Those restrictions were not in place when the elevated train lines were first built. The tracks and stations along Myrtle Avenue are some of the oldest in the system, built in the 1880s and operated by private railroad companies…
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