Environmental Scientists Raise Air Quality Concerns about Jail Project
A report from a team of environmental health scientists at New York University is raising questions about the health impacts of the ongoing construction project to build the world’s tallest jail in the Civic Center neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.
Construction is now expected to begin on the 335-foot structure in 2027 (the year it was originally supposed to be completed) and continue through 2032. Among Lower Manhattan residents, the plan to demolish and rebuild the former Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC) has become a flashpoint, largely because of the environmental and health hazards that years of demolition and construction could impose on the surrounding community. Once the project is finished, local leaders anticipate decades of crowding on local streets as staff and support personnel report to the new facility each day. Moreover, critics and skeptics argue that the project will cost billions more than its projected budget, which already has jumped from $2.73 to $4.18 billion.
Concerns about excessive levels of dust and other environmental pollutants resulting from the demolition of the MDC were supposed to be addressed by the oversight of an independent environmental monitor, the firm Excel ICM. This process relied on a constellation air-sampling stations positioned around the perimeter of the MDC site, located on White Street, between Baxter and Centre Streets.
But an analysis by Tri Huynh and Antonio Saporito, PhD students in Environmental Health Sciences at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, found that during a representative sampling period (2023), most of the data was missing from two of these monitors, while a third reported only partial data for three months. Just one collected most of the information it was supposed to for 11 out of the year’s 12 months.
“In addition to a lot of missing data,” Mr. Saporito said at the June meeting of the Environmental Protection Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1), “the concentrations that were being used to measure the safety of the community and the workers is the 150 micrograms per cubic meter standard.” This refers to a controversial yardstick used by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), known as PM10, which allows for coarse, inhalable particulate matter that is 10 micrometers or less in diameter, such as dust or smoke. The EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard allows up to 150 micrograms per cubic meter of this material in a 24-hour period, provided this threshold is not surpassed more than once per year on average over a three-year period. But other environmental watchdogs, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) argue that this standard is too lax. The WHO recommends a tighter limit of 45 micrograms per cubic meter, while CARB’s limit is 50 micrograms.
“The 150-microgram standard is much higher than what the WHO and the California Air Resources Board state in order to protect human health,” Mr. Saporito said. “So while no exceedances were noted, the threshold was high and there was a lot of data missing.”
Mr. Huynh noted that the WHO standard was surpassed at the MDC for 22 days in 2023, eight days in 2024, and 18 days in 2025. He added that the Excel ICM team had recommended adding more air sampling stations to the site, and launching a second level of monitoring for particulate matter that measures 2.5 micrometers or smaller (about one-thirtieth the diameter of a strand of human hair). These particles (labelled PM2.5, and quantified as micrograms per cubic meter) are considered the most dangerous category of air pollutants, because they are known to travel into and fasten to the surface of deeper parts of the lung, where they are associated with tissue damage, lung inflammation, and multiple types of cancer. “But these recommendations were not added to the contractor’s plan,” Mr. Huynh said.
When Mr. Saporito and Mr. Huynh submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the City’s Department and Design and Construction (DDC), which is overseeing the MDC construction project, asking for the raw data from its air monitoring stations, “that request was denied as the DDC said they did not have the raw numbers And we were informed there is no right to appeal this decision.”
A spokesman for the DDC responded, “the City takes air quality concerns very seriously and has a robust monitoring program in place on the Borough Based Jails project across each of the four sites. DDC and the dismantle contractor attended regular meetings during that phase of the project with the community and responded to various questions on data and monitoring. DDC is also in the process of onboarding an Independent Monitor for the current construction phase, who will attend public meetings with the community.”
The DDC argues that the PM10 is the standard endorsed not only by the federal EPA, but also by a range of State agencies (Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health) as well as City agencies (Department of Environmental Protection and Office of Environmental Remediation) for air monitoring at remediation sites.
The DDC further points out that the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, uses the PM2.5 standard “to reflect regional air quality, with these smaller particles traveling greater distances within the ambient atmosphere and remaining in the atmosphere longer than larger particles. PM10 concentrations, however, generally reflect the contribution of larger particles attributable to local sources.”
The DDC spokesman directs concerned residents to review data from demolition phase of the MDC project online at https://www.nyc.gov/site/borojails/project-updates/manhattan/environmental-monitoring-report/manhattan-environmental-monitoring-report.page
At the June 25 monthly meeting of CB1, Environmental Protection Committee chair Alice Blank said that the City’s Borough-Based Jail team was “listening to this report about the health impacts and is really trying to work with the community much more aggressively on ways to mitigate the situation at this site.”