The Non-Financial Ledger

Lead poisoning in children does not announce itself with a dramatic symptom. It is slow, invisible, and permanent. Once lead binds to a child’s developing nervous system, no amount of treatment returns what was taken. Lower IQ. Reduced attention span. Behavioral changes that follow a child into adulthood. This is the baseline reality for any child who grows up in a home with deteriorating lead paint, and it is the baseline reality for the families living in every apartment on the list embedded in Docket TSCA-02-2026-9274.

When the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene flags a residential unit for elevated blood lead levels in a child under six, that family has already been harmed. The detection itself is the record of failure. What happens next is supposed to be remediation, a structured, EPA-supervised process specifically designed to remove the hazard without making it worse. Lead abatement disturbs old paint. It creates dust. Done wrong, it can concentrate the very poison it is meant to eliminate.

This is why the law requires pre-notification. This is why the law requires a written occupant protection plan. Those documents are not bureaucratic paperwork. They are the physical record that a certified contractor assessed the space, thought through the risks to the people living there, and committed to a specific set of protective measures before a single tool touched a wall.

At every single one of the 22 sites documented in the first group of violations, spanning December 2020 through March 2023, Smash Bros Renovation Corp completed work without that documentation. No pre-notification to the EPA. No written occupant protection plan. According to the CAFO, the EPA only learned of Smash Bros’ presence at these sites because it asked the New York City Department of Health directly. The agency made a records request on May 31, 2022. DOH responded with 14 addresses. Then 7 more. Then one more surfaced when Smash Bros itself responded to an EPA Information Request Letter.

The families in these apartments were never part of that conversation. The source document contains no record of any notification to residents, no record of any protective measure confirmed in writing, and no record of any effort to inform occupants of the risks associated with the abatement work being performed inside their homes. What the record does contain is an admission, signed by the company’s owner, that all of it happened.

Then, after nearly a year of settlement negotiations and compliance assistance from the EPA itself, Smash Bros did it again. Between February 2025 and July 2025, the company conducted abatements at 5 more New York City residences, again without notifying the EPA, again during the period when federal regulators were actively communicating with them about their obligations under the law.

These were homes in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Buildings constructed in 1910, 1920, 1926, 1927. The kind of housing stock where low-income families and immigrants put down roots because rents are lower, because landlords ask fewer questions, because the apartments have the kind of square footage that is simply unavailable in newer buildings. The kind of housing stock where the paint in the walls is older than anyone currently living there.

Legal Receipts

The following statements are drawn verbatim from the EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Docket No. TSCA-02-2026-9274, filed March 19, 2026.

The company’s principal owner, Sady Maquilon, signed the agreement on March 9, 2026. EPA Acting Director Doughlas McKenna signed on March 17, 2026. Regional Judicial Officer Dana P. Friedman issued the Final Order on March 18, 2026.

Societal Impact Mapping

Environmental Degradation

Lead does not degrade. Once disturbed, lead dust from pre-war paint can settle into flooring, furniture, soil tracked through doorways, and HVAC systems. Proper abatement requires airtight containment, specific work practice standards, and post-abatement clearance testing by an independent inspector. The absence of an occupant protection plan means there is no documented record of whether any of these containment measures were implemented at any of the 27 sites where Smash Bros worked. The CAFO confirms zero occupant protection plans were filed for the original 22 sites. The post-abatement environment in those apartments remains undocumented in any federal record.

Public Health

The Centers for Disease Control has stated there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. The blood lead level threshold for concern in New York State is 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. Children flagged as having elevated blood lead levels, the specific condition documented at every one of the 27 sites in this case, are already experiencing neurological impact at the time of detection. Abatement is supposed to stop the exposure from continuing. Work performed without notification, containment records, or protection plans carries a real risk of worsening a child’s exposure during the remediation process itself, through improperly contained dust. The federal record in this case contains no evidence that any of the 27 sets of occupants were protected from that risk through documented procedures.

Economic Inequality

The 27 addresses in this CAFO span the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan. The buildings were constructed between 1899 and 1951. This is not a coincidence. Lead paint was used extensively in American housing construction until it was banned for residential use in 1978. The oldest and most deteriorated housing stock in New York City is concentrated in the neighborhoods where low-income families and communities of color live. These households are the least likely to have the legal resources or landlord relationships to demand compliance documentation, and the most likely to bear the long-term health costs of lead exposure, including lifetime earnings loss due to cognitive impacts, increased special education and healthcare costs, and reduced labor market outcomes for affected children. A $5,000 penalty distributed across 27 families works out to roughly $185 per household. Federal and state health agencies estimate the lifetime economic cost of lead poisoning for a single child at between $50,000 and several hundred thousand dollars.

Every Address in the Record

These are the verified addresses from the CAFO. All 27 are in New York City. All are in buildings built before 1978. All 22 in the first group had children with confirmed elevated blood lead levels at the time of abatement.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

For context: the EPA’s own civil penalty policy for TSCA violations allows for penalties of up to $37,500 per violation per day for knowing and willful violations. Smash Bros committed at minimum 44 separate violations across 27 sites (failure to notify plus failure to file occupant protection plans, at minimum one each per site). The company claimed financial hardship and submitted three years of tax returns to support that claim. The EPA accepted the argument and reduced the penalty accordingly.

What Now?

Smash Bros Renovation Corp remains a certified lead abatement firm. Certification No. LBP-F260467-1, granted February 29, 2024, is valid through March 14, 2027. The company is currently authorized to conduct lead abatement work in New York State under EPA oversight.

Under the terms of the CAFO, Smash Bros must, for one year following the order’s effective date: notify EPA Senior Enforcement Officer Demian Ellis by email at Ellis.Demian@epa.gov every time it submits a job notification, attach the occupant protection plan to that email, and submit completed Abatement Compliance Plan Checklists to the EPA within 21 days of each project’s completion. The company must also send checklists to Assistant Regional Counsel Suzanne Englot at Englot.Suzanne@epa.gov.

Failure to comply with these notification requirements triggers stipulated penalties: $100 per day for the first 30 days of delinquency, $150 per day from day 31 to 60, and $200 per day thereafter.

If you rent in a pre-1978 building in New York City and a contractor is performing lead abatement work, you have the legal right to receive a copy of the occupant protection plan before work begins. Request it in writing from both your landlord and the contractor. If they cannot produce it, the work should not proceed. Document the refusal.

For mutual aid and community organizing: The New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) and the Environmental Justice Alliance both provide resources for tenants facing environmental hazards in housing. Legal Aid Society offices in each borough can advise on tenant rights in lead abatement situations. The EPA maintains a public tip line at 1-800-424-4372 for reporting suspected TSCA violations.

Demand your city council member and state assembly member support mandatory real-time public disclosure of lead abatement projects in residential buildings. Presently, pre-notification goes to the EPA, not to a public database. The addresses in this CAFO were not publicly searchable at the time Smash Bros was working in them. They should have been.