New York Petition: Give the Health Department a Sauna Mandate
The New York petition: a health-department mandate to inspect, test, and close moldy gym saunas on complaint — addressed to New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Addressed to: Letitia James, Attorney General of New York, and the Governor of New York Part of: the national Mold’s Gym petition campaign — one ask, every state.
The petition
We, the undersigned residents of New York, petition the Attorney General and the Governor of New York to close the sauna loophole in New York law.
Whereas gyms are regulated in most states as businesses — registration, contracts, and fees — with no sanitation standard for saunas or steam rooms, and no agency clearly empowered to inspect one for mold, test one, or close one;
Whereas our nationwide research found no state that routinely inspects gym sanitation or mandates dry-sauna inspection or mold testing — the gap a Florida citizen hit in August 2024, when every agency he filed with, from the Attorney General down to code enforcement, told him there was no mandate to act on a sauna documented with Chaetomium, Aspergillus, and Nigrospora growing under a bench that had not been cleaned underneath in roughly twelve years;
We therefore ask the State of New York to:
- Create the mandate. Give the state or county health department explicit authority to inspect gym saunas and steam rooms.
- Inspect and test on complaint. On a member’s complaint, authorize inspectors to enter, inspect, and swab/test the room.
- Close what fails. Authorize closure of a sauna or steam room that fails inspection until it is remediated and re-tested.
- Publish the results. Make sauna inspection records public, as pool inspection records already are.
New York inspects the pool in the same building. It can inspect the sauna.
New York is the exception that proves the rule: New York City’s Health Code Article 165 already permits and inspects sauna establishments inside the city. This petition asks the state to extend that same common-sense mandate to every gym sauna in New York State.
File a complaint in New York today
You do not have to wait for this petition to win. If a gym sauna in New York is moldy now, file through the official consumer complaint route:
- Office: Office of the Attorney General, Letitia James
- Complaint route: https://ag.ny.gov/file-complaint (online form / phone)
- Office address: Office of the New York Attorney General, The Capitol, Albany, NY 12224-0341
- Phone: 1-800-771-7755
- AG website: https://ag.ny.gov/
Directory entry verified against the office’s own official site on 2026-10-14. Offices change hands — most recently in the 2025–2026 cycle — and this directory is refreshed after elections.
Sign it
Sign the New York petition
Add your name to the New York petition for a sauna inspection mandate. Your email is used only to confirm your signature and send petition updates — it is never published and never sold.
Signature recorded.
Thank you — your name is on the New York petition. Petitions are delivered to the attorney general's office with signer counts by city. The other signature that counts today is a filed complaint — the official route for New York is linked on this page.
In the meantime, the most useful signature is a filed complaint — and a report to us: the Report It center takes your account, evidence, and complaint history and turns it into a formal report that feeds the national record.