Canarsie station would be hazard, residents say

BY Erin Durkin
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Monday, March 30th 2009, 4:00 AM

Canarsie residents are fighting a plan to build a medical waste facility they charge could be hazardous to their health.

CMW Industries is planning to build a medical waste transfer station on Farragut Road, to move waste such as mercury and formaldehyde between hospitals and labs and out of state disposal facilities. Waste could be stored at the site for as long as 10 days.

Residents worry that an accident could expose them to dangerous chemicals, and that 35 daily truck trips will add to air pollution.

CMW officials insist their concerns are unfounded.

"I think it's horrendous," said Sylvia Jones, who lives four blocks from the project site. "It will jeopardize everyone's health within this area, and my health too, as a 76-year-old woman."

CMW is waiting for a permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation that both sides agree is likely to be granted.

An administrative law judge threw out a bid by Assemblyman Nick Perry and Councilman Charles Barron to block the application.

"It's just an inappropriate place," Perry said, noting there are homes a block from the site and a school a block and a half away.

Opponents say their neighborhood is already burdened with too many polluting facilities.

"This smacks of environmental racism," Barron said. "We have bus depots, we have transfer stations, we have so many environmentally hazardous facilities in our community. We don't need another one."

"One accident on one of those trucks and all that medical waste will be spilled in our community."

But owners said the station would pose no danger.

"They're literally taking boxes from one truck that have been fully sealed at a doctor's office and moving them to another truck," said Jeff Baker, a lawyer for CMW. "

"The concept that there's any kind of a risk to the community is ridiculous," he said, adding truck traffic to the facility would not be enough to significantly add to air pollution.

That's little comfort to Jewel Brown, 47.

"I'm an asthmatic," she said. "I'm very concerned about my health ... the traffic, the pollution - it's going to be very heavy."

Perry said if the DEC approves the permit, he will ask for an injunction to stop the facility because it violates zoning law.

"We are prepared to go to court," he said.

Queens’ own crime-scene cleanup crew

by Lee Landor , Editor


Ron Gospodarski, left, founder of Bio-Recovery Corp., and employee Manny Sosa clean up after a natural death in the Bronx. (photo by Lee Landor)

Death is a dirty job. No one knows that better than Ron Gospodarski, a volunteer paramedic and founder of Bio-Recovery Corp., a trauma- and crime-scene cleanup company that deals with the gruesome grime that most people never get — and usually don’t want — to see.

The 47-year-old Woodside resident started his company in 1998 after realizing there was a gaping void in the area of bio-hazard abatement. At the time, Gospodarski was working as a paramedic and as operations manager at the Queens District Attorney’s Office.

“I never knew who cleaned stuff up,” Gospodarski said, noting that emergency medical personnel and police officers often leave a crime or trauma scene even messier than it was when they arrived. Curious and concerned, the microbiologist did some research and found there was no one responsible for cleaning things up.

Seeing the opportunity to provide a much-needed service and to start his own business, the Buffalo native opened the first bio-recovery company in the New York City. His primary aim: offer help to victims and families who have suffered a loss and can’t bear to deal with cleaning up remains. Another important goal he aims to achieve is increasing awareness about the presence of companies such as his.

“I feel bad for these people,” Gospodarski said. “I really, truly do.” The city does not provide services in this area, he noted. What’s worse is that it doesn’t even inform those who need cleanup services that they have options, that companies like Bio-Recovery exist. According to Gospodarski, the Police Department and offices of the medical examiner and district attorney said it would be a “conflict of interest” to refer such companies.

Spokespeople for both the Queens District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said crime-scene cleanup does not fall under their jurisdiction. A spokesman from the NYPD said referring businesses would be a conflict of interest. “We’re not in the business of promoting other businesses,” he said.

“Is that really caring about people?” Gospodarski asked. Without the help of city agencies, how exactly does one go about advertising death-scene cleanup services? The truth is, “Nobody wants to know about you until they need you,” Gospodarski said. “People just don’t want to deal with reality,” but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be informed, he added.

But sometimes reality is harsh. That Bio-Recovery technicians know well. They were called in to clean the aftermath of the May 2000 Wendy’s Massacre in Flushing. Five employees were killed and two were seriously wounded during a robbery planned by a former employee of the fast food restaurant and its manager.

Gospodarski, along with 65 certified bio-recovery technicians, finished the $30,000 cleanup two weeks after it began; the entire restaurant was contaminated with bio-hazardous chemicals.

Typically, cleanups range from one to three hours, utilize one to three technicians and cost between $600 and $2,000. Bio-Recovery can get up to 10 jobs some weeks, and none others, according to Gospodarski.

Bio-Recovery has cleaned everything from accident, suicide and homicide scenes, to hoarder houses, anthrax outbreaks and sewage backflows. The company specializes in the cleanup of microbial contamination and other bio-hazards.

In addition to the Wendy’s Massacre, Bio-Recovery was responsible for cleaning up after several other high-profile Queens crimes, including two in Howard Beach: the June 2005 beating of Glenn Moore by Nicholas “Fat Nick” Minucci and the February 2008alleged murder of ex-cop Raymond Sheehan by his wife, Barbara Sheehan.

In January, Gospodarski and his crew went to clean up the bloodied Springfield Gardens home of 86-year-old Vivian Squires, who was slashed across the neck while fighting off an intruder who tried to smother her to death.

“You’re sort of like a voyeur,” Gospodarski said. “You get to see what others want to see, but don’t get to.” Crime scenes are only fascinating until they become a reality: people think they want to see the gruesome aftermath of an unbelievable crime, but once that actually becomes a possibility, they shy away from it, according to Manny Sosa, a 29-year-old technician who has worked with Bio-Recovery for nearly 10 years.

While he and his fellow technicians — all certified by the American Bio-Recovery Association — view the cleanups simply as their jobs, they fully acknowledge that they’re dealing with human life. At a recent cleanup in the Bronx, where a woman died of natural causes and was found five days later, Sosa was emptying drawers filled with contaminated clothing and other items. “You’re throwing someone’s life away,” he said as he filled a large black garbage bag. “It’s pretty sad.”

Still, overall, “We’re more pragmatic about it. We take it ... for what it is,” Gospodarski said. “To us, it’s really just a job again.”

The Bio-Recovery technicians must detach themselves while they work. That way, they’re able to remain focused and judgement-free. “It doesn’t matter to us who they were, where they came from,” Sosa said. “We just do our job.” This is a job he does not talk about outside of work: “I try not to attach myself to any of this. Work is work — when I leave here, I don’t want to discuss people’s personal privacy. I’m invading people’s space just by being here,” he said.

One of the most important and difficult things about this job, according to Gospodarski, is interacting with those who hire him. “You have to build a rapport and friendship” to earn their trust, he said. Acknowledging that they’ve been through a trauma and treating them, and the victim, with respect is key.

In this job, it’s not enough to have a tough stomach: “You have to be a people person,” according to Gospodarski. “If you put the people factor first, you can’t go wrong.” Because he’s done just that, Gospodarski has earned Bio-Recovery its good reputation, he noted. And that, he said, “is more important than any dollar sign.”

According to a spokeswoman from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New Yorkers can call 311 for information on safe clean-up or access detailed guidelines on the department’s website, nyc.gov/health.

Bio-Recovery Corp. technicians are available 24 hours a day in New York, New Jersey and Southern Connecticut and can be reached at (877) 246-2532, (718) 729-2600 or (516) 766-3366. For more information about the company, email info@biorecovery.com or visit biorecovery.com, where Gospodarski’s crime-scene cleanup blog can be accessed.

New Yorker finds niche cleaning up grisly scenes

Shanghai Star.
RON Gospodarski has made a career cleaning up after other people ?their blood, brain matter and body parts.

Gospodarski owns Bio-Recovery, a business that cleans crime, trauma and biohazard scenes in New York City and surrounding areas.

An emergency medical technician in the city for more than two decades, Gospodarski established Bio-Recovery nine years ago as an outgrowth of his old job, in which he would be among the first to arrive at a messy scene of tragedy.

“People would ask us who we could get to clean this up and we never knew anyone,?said Gospodarski, 43. “I did some research and found out no one was doing this here so I figured, let’s do something.?

His company, based in Long Island City, New York, charges customers US$600 and up, depending on the job. Families and property owners find him through funeral directors, the telephone book and the Internet. The police are forbidden to make such referrals.

Gospodarski and more than a dozen employees ?all with backgrounds as firefighters, police officers or in other emergency services ?arrive at a scene after the police finish collecting evidence.

Dressed in chemical-resistant blue suits, full-face respirators, gloves and boots, they meticulously scrub away blood, brain matter and other body fluids and parts following suicides, homicides and other traumatic events.

Tough task

“We’re helping people during a tragic time when they’re left with something like this,?said Gospodarski, who has a master’s degree in biology. “We’re there to do a job and we can’t get too emotional, because that gets in the way.?

Gospodarski, who says he works 10 to 15 hours a day, has cleaned up after stabbings, hangings and fatal work accidents.

Toughest to take, he says, are suicides of young people.

“You’re usually in their bedrooms and you’re looking at pictures of them and you see how they live and you think: ‘What would make someone go this far to do this?”’

Bio-Recovery has cleaned up after some of New York’s most sensational and headline-grabbing murder cases.

In 2000, the company cleaned a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in Flushing, Queens, where seven people were shot execution-style inside the walk-in refrigerator. Five died.

Human nature

By the time Gospodarski’s group arrived, the entrance to the restaurant had been transformed into a shrine, adorned with votive candles, flower bouquets and sympathy notes.

Inside, the food contents of the walk-in had been left to spoil and the walls and floor were splattered with blood.

Bio-Recovery scrubbed and disinfected the apartment above the Carnegie Deli in New York’s theatre district following a highly publicized triple homicide in 2001.

Gospodarski’s group also helped clean up after letters containing anthrax were received at the New York offices of ABC News and the New York Post.

“We’ve run the gamut and we’ve seen everything,?he said. “I wouldn’t say I’m desensitized to this, but you do get used to it.?

The grim and gruesome job has its rewards, he says.

“The greatest satisfaction of the job is when the families call up and say thank you and that we really made a difference,?he said. “We get calls from the poorest to the richest who say that we’ve done a wonderful job and we appreciate it. That means a lot.?

The job also gives some insights into human nature.

He recalled being stopped by an onlooker as he cleaned up a building in Manhattan’s East Village where an elderly person had died of natural causes and body fluids dripped through six apartments before the corpse was discovered.

“It’s inevitable; someone will stick their head in and say, ‘Are they going to rent this?”’ he said. “It’s amazing.?

Norovirus sickens 59 at assisted-living facility

LYNBROOK, NY — An outbreak of norovirus, a highly contagious gastrointestinal infection whose eradication requires extensive cleaning of surfaces, sickened 59 individuals at the Atria Tanglewood assisted-living facility, according to WCBS-TV.

Due to the nature of the virus to easily spread, the facility imposed a three-week quarantine on itself to ensure its containment, the story stated.

It is not uncommon for such illnesses as norovirus to sicken people living in close proximity, especially those susceptible to illness like the elderly, the story noted.

Noroviruses are also sometimes known as "winter vomiting viruses" or "Norwalk-like viruses," and symptoms include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, the story added.

Behind the scenes as a crew takes on the city's dirtiest job

BY Robert Dominguez
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER



Manny Sosa has already spent a good hour on his hands and knees, steaming and scrubbing and finally getting the best of a stubborn stain on a kitchen floor, when he calls out to his supervisor.

“I got the blood up,” says Sosa, his voice muffled through a hazmat helmet and respirator. “But the skin’s not coming off the tiles.”

“Waddya expect?” answers Ron Gospodarski. “The body was decomposing for a week.”

This is clearly no ordinary cleaning job, and the men spending a sunny day in a Manhattan apartment casually getting rid of a horrific mess are not your average custodial workers.

Like the characters in the movie “Sunshine Cleaning,” opening Friday, Gospodarski’s Queens-based company, Bio-Recovery Corp., specializes in cleaning up the grim and gory aftermath of crime and trauma scenes — everything from murder to suicide to a bloody home accident.

Or, as they’ve been hired to do on this day, tidying, straightening and ultimately sanitizing a one-bedroom rental in Chelsea where the tenant keeled over, died in the kitchen — and was found seven days later after neighbors complained of the smell.

The body of the tenant, a single man in his 40s, was removed days earlier. But the stench of death lingers, thanks to a huge and unsightly stain — a crusty, dark-brown puddle of blood mixed with other bodily fluids on the floor where the man was found.

“You can see the outline of the body,” said Sosa before the cleanup. “He was there so long, some of his hair and skin is stuck in it.”

“This is nothing,” says Gospodarski. “I’ve had jobs where the body fluids seeped through the floorboards and walls of a building for six stories, and then they had an insect infestation. And the suicides are the worst, especially when they use a shotgun.The blood splatters all over, and you’ll find pieces of brain and skull on the other side of the room.”

It may be a dirty job, but Gospodarski and Sosa are glad to do it. Bio-Recovery Corp. is one of only a handful of such companies in the New York area, and the pay is good — not surprising, given the morbid nature of the business.

Gospodarski, 47, is a former New York City paramedic who founded the company in 1998 after realizing there was money to be made in cleaning up the crime and trauma scenes he covered.

“A business owner who had a shooting or stabbing in front of his place would ask who was going to clean up the mess,” says Gospodarski. “The city is supposed to do it when it’s on public property, but they don’t.”

He says he can earn anywhere from $650 to $2,000 for a day’s work, depending on the complexity of the job and how much waste has to be disposed of.

A bag of medical waste, for example, costs $75 to throw away at a dump, while an old mattress soaked with body fluids can cost several hundred dollars to get rid of properly.

“We never turn away business,” says Gospodarski, noting that things have slowed down during these rough economic times.

“In a city like New York, you’d think there’d be no shortage of jobs for companies like us. But the problem is that families or landlords can’t afford to pay for a service like ours.”

Even during boom times, there are the potential health hazards. Bent over the stain and brandishing a high-pressure steam machine, Sosa has to wear a hazmat suit, helmet and respirator to protect himself from inhaling dangerous microbes released into the air by the steam.

“You have to assume that every body had a disease like HIV, TB or hepatitis,” says Gospodarski. “But the biggest danger, of course, is getting a puncture wound from a needle whenever we clean up a drug den.”

Bio-Recovery was involved in cleaning up buildings and offices in New York and Florida exposed to anthrax soon after the 9/11 attacks. But a typical job consists of being hired by a building to clean and sanitize an apartment where someone has died, or by a family that wants to clean out the room of a recently deceased relative.

Other times, they’re paid to remove the immense clutter of junk and garbage left behind by a pack rat who’s been evicted from an apartment.

But that’s tame stuff compared to the job a couple of years ago that left even these seasoned pros gagging in disgust.

“A guy died sitting on a toilet,” recalls Gospodarski, who clearly enjoys telling war stories “He had been there for days, and the toilet was clogged. When Manny reached in to clean out the mess, he came up holding the guy’s intestines. Even I couldn’t take the smell.”

“Yeah, once you bring something up out of the water that’s been there a while, it can smell pretty bad,” adds Sosa.

There are occasions, says Gospodarski, when the job can be emotionally draining. He and Sosa, 29, who joined the company four years ago, have cleaned up after several high-profile crimes, including the multiple murders in a marijuana den above the Carnegie Deli and the shootings in the basement freezer of a Wendy’s restaurant in Queens.

“You definitely need a strong stomach for this line of work,” says Gospodarski. “But you also need to be compassionate and a good listener. We’ve been in homes where a teenager killed himself and the family is devastated, and they reach out to us just to talk.”

It’s also important to be respectful of the dead and nonjudgmental, especially in a city like New York, inhabited by all kinds of people — with all types of lifestyles.

“Sometimes you uncover secrets of how people lived — really crazy stuff no one would believe — but you need to overlook that and just do your job,” says Gospodarski.

“It’s bad enough for a family when someone dies. But they shouldn’t have to find out something they don’t need to know about.”
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When the Worst Happens, He Cleans Up

Today's NY Times answered a question I've often asked myself. Who cleans up after gruesome murders and grisly deaths? The answer in Andrews Jacob's piece is Ronald Gospodarski, a former paramedic who runs a company called Bio-Recovery Corp, in Long Island City.

"I've had guys left dead for months where fluid seeped down six floors and everything had to be torn out...you can't leave one drop of blood or body fluid or the place will stink." He went on, explaining a $3000 technique used on the most dreadful of deathscenes, where superheating an entire apartment kills every odor producing microbe. But mostly they just use industrial strength cleansers and wear protective gear.

One of the hardest crime scenes Gospodarski had to clean up was a house in the Bronx used for Santeria, the South American religion that involves ritual slaughter of animals. Amid razor blades, animal hoofs, bottles of poison they unearthed what looked like a clump of human hair. "I'd rather be dealing with a gunshot victim," said one worker, "I don't like this one bit."