The legacy of 'Sandy cough' and why mold is still a major problem after storms

Dr. Mitchel Rosen was across the country for a work conference when Sandy slammed his New Jersey home. He remembers watching TV reports on the damage as he waited for intermittent phone calls from his family back home in Middlesex County.

When they finally did get in touch, they had one request.

“Batteries,” said Rosen, director of the Center for Public Health Workforce Development at Rutgers University. The widespread power outages meant those little canisters of electric charge were in high demand.

“So, I bought a lot of batteries and put them in my suitcase and flew home,” he added.

Rosen knows better than most how critical it is to get power back after a destructive storm like Sandy. He’s trained hundreds of people on how to beat back one of the most tenacious consequences: mold.

Creeping, furry fungus colonized tens of thousands of homes in the areas hardest hit by Sandy, according to estimates from community groups. Storm recovery cost billions of dollars, and an individual home with a major mold problem may have cost as much $25,000 to remediate, according to a report by New York City advocacy group ALIGN. Homeowners and renters alike endured long waits and headaches over red tape as they navigated the remediation process.

A handful of buildings still bear the scars — from a Bronx firehouse with mold-damaged walls and ceilings to a Brooklyn NYCHA development where residents have filed hundreds of mold-related lawsuits. Many more sat unremediated for months or even years after Sandy, posing health risks to children, elderly residents, people with asthma, and the immunocompromised.

In the weeks and months after the storm, doctors, residents, and contemporaneous news coverage all reported a smattering of respiratory symptoms among storm survivors, called “Sandy cough,” “Coney cough,” or “Rockaway cough,” depending on who you asked and where they lived. Because these symptoms often weren’t severe enough to send people to the hospital, data on the phenomenon is hard to come by — but health officials acknowledged it was a problem at the time.

“Providers in the Rockaways have identified patients with respiratory symptoms that they have attributed to viral respiratory infections, exposure to respiratory irritants due to cleanup work or exacerbations of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD],” the health department’s Dr. Jay Varma told the Amsterdam News, adding that many of those affected had pre-existing respiratory issues.

As New York City continues to confront a changing climate and the prospect of more frequent intense storms, are we better prepared to fight off fungal invaders? Experts say yes, sort of, pointing to recent changes to the law and to homeowners’ understanding of the seriousness of mold. But they add that the city needs to do more to protect its most vulnerable residents against the ravages of flooding and the mold that follows.

“We learned a bit from Sandy,” said Michael Schmeltz, an assistant professor of public health at Cal State East Bay who studied the city’s response to the storm as a graduate student in New York City. “We have the recovery and the emergency response down. But we really need to focus on that preparation.”

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