Exclusive | NYC musicians hire private lab to test for toxic Gowanus Canal vapors after landlords silent treatment

These Brooklyn musicians are playing to deaf ears.Tenants at a band rehearsal space near Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal are taking matters into their own hands and pooling funds to hire a private company to test for cancer-causing vapors inside the building after the landlord refused to let state inspectors inside.The space — which has been the rehearsal home over the years to the likes of TV On the Radio, Coheed and Cambria and The Blue Man Group — sits just blocks away from sites that have tested positive for high levels of cancer-causing trichloroethylene (TCE).But the management company that operates the facility says that landlord Anthony Borruso hasn’t been “amenable” to requests for free testing being offered by the state “I can’t give any comment on that,” Anthony Borruso, who owns the property at at 255-261 Douglass St., told The Post when asked if he has refused to test or would be testing the site in the future.Some of the building’s roughly 75 tenants have since launched a GoFundMe campaign to pool more than a thousand dollars needed to run third-party tests.Nearby sites such as the Royal Palms shuffleboard club on Union Street have been found to have cancer-causing vapors roughly 22 times the amount considered safe.Another building, which the state has not publicly identified, had levels of TCE 450 times above acceptable levels.While the musicians’ fundraiser only amassed $820 of its $1,333 goal, the tenants moved forward with testing conducted by Exclusive Testing Labs and are now waiting on results.“I’m thinking about moving out … but it’s tough for a musician to find a new space,” said one tenant, who declined to provide his name to The Post out of retaliation fears.The musician told The Post that tenants put up flyers in the building to notify others of the fundraiser, but someone “tore them all down almost immediately.”“Getting cancer or some other lung disease, that would be my big concern,” he said.

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