“We’re just here to make sure people know I’m drinking it,” Adams said after he and city Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan drank a glass of water inside an apartment at the Jacob Riis Houses. “The water is safe to drink,” he said. A lab, Environmental Monitoring and Technologies, based in Illinois, initially said it detected the dangerous heavy metal in drinking water at the housing complex, sparking a week of panic. But the lab has since retracted its test results and admitted it was the one that introduced the toxic compound into the samples, officials said. An Illinois-based lab has retracted the results of its tests to detect the heavy metal in drinking water and admitted to introducing the toxic chemicals into the samples. Twitter/@NYCMayor “The City intends to pursue all available legal options on behalf of the residents of Riis Houses and will look into how we can reimburse the residents for the expenses incurred over the last week,” Mayor Adams wrote in a statement. Twitter/@NYCMayor Adams later said in a statement that the city believes separate tests of the complex’s water that tested positive for the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease are also “inaccurate.” He also said the city is open to taking legal action against the lab. “The city intends to pursue all available legal options on behalf of the residents of Riis Houses and will look into how we can compensate the residents for the expenses incurred over the last week,” he said.
