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Message from the Environmental Health & Safety Officer

Winter is approaching, and Â鶹Çø’s Environmental Health and Safety Department (EHS) would like to offer some tips so you and your family can enjoy the holiday season safely.

EHS’s mission is to ensure that all residents have a decent, safe, and sanitary environment. In that vein, this issue of Healthy Happenings discusses gas stoves, how to detect and report gas odors, and general winter safety tips.

As always, residents, employees, and any member of the public can submit environmental health and safety concerns via . And if you have questions about this or any environmental health and safety matter, please email ehs@nycha.nyc.gov.

Wishing you and your family a festive winter season!

Patrick O’Hagan, Â鶹Çø’s Environmental Health and Safety Officer

Safe Stove Installation at Â鶹Çø Developments

To ensure the safety of all Â鶹Çø residents, the policy concerning the installation of resident-owned gas ranges was updated as of May 1, 2023. Residents who installed gas ranges before this date are allowed to keep them. Â鶹Çø performs inspections to ensure the ranges are installed correctly. If a range is not installed properly, the resident must take corrective action by hiring a qualified installer. If you need assistance with obtaining a qualified installer, please contact your management office.

Reporting Gas Odors

Use your senses to identify a potential gas odor:

• Smell – an odor like rotten eggs
• See – as a white cloud, bubble in water, blowing dust, dying plants
• Hear – a roar, hiss, or whistle

Even if the odor isn’t very strong, you should still leave the area immediately (a gas leak is an emergency). And to prevent explosion of the gas, do not use any electronics or cell phones, ring a doorbell, touch appliances, or smoke or light matches.

Once you are safe, call 911 to report gas odors. You should also contact your natural gas provider at 800-75-CONED (Con Edison) or 718-643-4050 (National Grid).

Gas Stove Safety Tips

• Make sure all stove burners are turned completely off when you’re done cooking and before you leave your home.
• Your pilot light should always be on. Blowing out the pilot light doesn’t stop gas from escaping and can be dangerous.
• Call a professional if you need to move or replace a gas stove.
• Don’t step/sit/lean on, or place any objects on, the flexible connectors attached to appliances.
• Keep children away from gas appliances.

Improve Indoor Air Quality

Understanding indoor air quality is important, since people spend an average of 90 percent of their time indoors. Indoor air quality can be impacted by building occupants and their activities/behaviors, consumer products, soil gases, temperature, moisture, humidity, heating/ventilation systems, and outdoor air coming into your home.

To improve the air quality in your home:

• Eliminate or reduce sources of indoor pollution.
• Improve ventilation by bringing in fresh air to dilute indoor pollutants and exhaust them to the outdoors.
• Use filtration and supplemental air cleaning to help remove pollutants from the air.

Â鶹Çø residents who smell an unusual odor should submit a complaint at . EHS’s Indoor Air Quality Oversight Team will then conduct an investigation to determine the odor’s source.

Winter Safety Tips

To keep your family safe during the winter storm season:

• Have an evacuation plan and a designated meetup point in case you must leave your building.
• Prepare a kit for emergencies lasting several days that includes:
  • First-aid kit
  • Flashlight
  • Battery-powered or crank radio (and extra batteries for it)
  • Charging cables for cell phones
  • Bottled water (one gallon of water per person per day in plastic bottles or jugs)
  • Ready-to-eat foods that do not need a refrigerator
  • Personal care items such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, and skin wipes
  • Extra blankets and warm clothing
  • Medications and medication list
  • Important documents (such as insurance cards, immunization records, or other health information) in a waterproof bag
  • A listing of important phone numbers (e.g., physician, pediatrician, pharmacist, counselor, and veterinarian)
• Involve your entire family in planning and practicing how to stay healthy, informed, calm, and connected during an emergency.
• Talk to your children so that they know you are prepared to keep them safe.

• Never use the oven or stove to heat your home. Doing so could lead to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, causing severe illness and potentially death.

• Electric space heaters can also be very dangerous. Never leave space heaters unattended, and turn them off when you leave the room, leave your home, or go to bed. Space heaters should be placed on the floor at least three feet away from flammable materials such as blankets, curtains, and newspapers. Plug them into a wall outlet instead of an extension cord.

• Never use a space heater that doesn’t have the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) mark, which shows that the product has been safety tested. 

• Sign up for  to get emergency alerts from the City. Notify NYC is the City’s official source of emergency information, including weather emergencies and subway and road closures. Download the Notify NYC app for mobile devices or visit , call 311 (for Video Relay Service: 212-639-9675; for TTY: 212-504-4115), or follow NotifyNYC on X. 

• During an emergency, follow instructions from on-scene emergency responders or monitor NotifyNYC and local radio, television, and internet news services for the latest information, including information about emergency shelters. 

• If you lose heat, submit a work order ticket using or by calling the Customer Contact Center at 718-707-7771.