City subway stations are a mosquito’s paradise
The subways are swarming with skeeters.
The warm, wet summer and mild winter created a bumper crop of mosquitoes — and they’re breeding in the stagnant puddles of the steaming underground and sucking straphanger blood.
“I just wanna get home, I don’t wanna die on my way,” said Shayna Andino, 18, who claims she’s been bitten “at least 20 times” inside the 47th-50th Street Rockefeller Center station. “With Zika going around, it worries me,” she added.
Andino, who takes the B and D trains to work as a cashier at Duane Reade in the station’s concourse, pointed to three bites on her face and arms.
“You wouldn’t think that mosquitoes would get so out of control in the subway, but it’s a horrible problem here,” she said.
Stagnant water could be seen Friday pooling along the entire stretch of tracks at the station’s downtown B and D platform.
“I’ve seen a bunch more mosquitoes this summer than last summer,” said Jose Mendosa, 38, who works at a concourse flower shop.
“They’re hovering around all the time every day. Sometimes they get in my mouth and eyes,” said subway newsstand owner Syed Z. Abbas, 61.
And it’s not just a Midtown problem. A rider who commutes from the Court Street–Borough Hall station in Brooklyn said she “gets ambushed” on the platform.
“All of a sudden I’ll get three or four [bites] while I’m waiting for the train,” said the straphanger. “It’s always after I’ve boarded the train that I’ll look down and see the welts forming.”
At the Union Square station, riders worried about stagnant puddles.
“It’s dangerous,” said Carlos Garcia, 49.
Hans Tondereau, 36, who was waiting for the 7 train at Times Square, said he saw a girl getting bitten on an uptown 1 train.
“She was screaming. There are way too many mosquitoes on that train. Everyone should be concerned,” he said.
Big Apple exterminators report a major skeeter spike this summer.
“Service calls have more than doubled last year’s and we aren’t even in the busiest month of the season yet, which is August,” said Rest Easy Pest Control’s R.J. Huneke.
The subway system is likely infested with Culex pipien mosquitoes, which “are often found breeding in foul and stinky stagnant pools of water,” said Tom Daniels of Fordham University’s biological research center. The breed tested positive for West Nile Virus this summer, according to the city Health Department.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito — which carries Zika — isn’t found this far north, but the Asian Tiger mosquito is common in the city and has the potential to spread the virus.
‘There are way too many mosquitoes on that train. Everyone should be concerned.’
- Hans Tondereau, subway passanger
“Somebody could come into New York having the infection, get bit by an Asian Tiger and then spread it locally,” Daniels said.
On Friday, it was announced that four people were infected with Zika transmitted by insects in South Florida.
The city Health Department regularly sprays insecticide and larvicide throughout the summer to kill mosquitoes. The MTA sprays “if needed” inside subway stations, spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.
Following a Post inquiry Friday, stagnant water was drained Saturday morning from the Rockefeller Center station tracks.
Ortiz would not say if the MTA has a mosquito protocol in place; where, when or how frequently it sprays; and what it is doing systemically to remove standing water from its 660 miles of tracks.
Additional reporting by Khristina Narizhnaya