Garbage Grinders and Public Health

Once again a news story underscores the potential public health benefits garnered through the use of food waste disposers. This time it is the NY Sun which focuses on rising asthma rates in Bushwick. The study cited points to poor housing as a major causal factor.

In Bushwick 12%! of the area's residents have been hospitalized for asthma treatment and the community group, Make the Road by Walking, cites poor housing conditions as the cause. The group has proposed a "Healthy Homes Act" which would "reclassify asthma triggers such as mold, mice, and cockroaches as 'immediately hazardous' violations required by law to be fixed within 35 days."

As we have been pointing out all along, the use of disposers will have a dramatic effect on reducing the vector problem that is cited in the asthma report. It is just one of the compelling reasons why the Council should act expeditiously in the passage of the grinder pilot program.