The Brooklyn Rail

Outside my apartment building, a large box truck idles its engine uninterrupted for hours and hours, waiting to offload hundreds of smiling parcels. I suppose breathing in carcinogenic particulate matter is but one price you and I pay for the convenience of e-commerce. Across my neighborhood, in the community garden where I spent much of the pandemic, the sweet scent of flowers and sounds of chickens clucking about mixes with acrid diesel exhaust and an annoying engine clattering. Despite my pleas, a private bus company treats the block like their personal depot. Several blocks away, in front of a preschool, three workers mix self-leveling concrete on the street. Every few minutes, several forty-pound bags of crystalline silica are dumped haphazardly into a hopper, creating large dust plumes that, from a distance, call to mind a toxic version of the white smoke from the papal conclave. The workers, the street, and the cars parked nearby are covered in a fine white dust.

To most New Yorkers, the above examples of air pollution are unremarkable because they play out on blocks across all five boroughs all day, every day. But while many look away, others, armed with nothing more than a cell phone, do not. Instead, they stop, push “record,” and document the polluting before them. Employees of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), New York Police Department, Department of Sanitation, and Department of Parks and Recreation are permitted to issue tickets for the infractions. Yet, about 99.9 percent of summonses issued for illegal idling last year were initiated by everyday lay people, not city officials. Lay people take the effort to document and report these seemingly mundane (alleged) occurrences to the DEP, careful to document each instance for what it is: an alarming violation of the 1971 Air Code and a threat to public and environmental health more broadly.¹ In 2024, lay complainants reported more than 124,000 vehicles for illegal idling and approximately 800 instances of failure to take necessary precautions to prevent toxic construction dust from becoming airborne.² These alarming numbers should not be surprising to anyone who has walked a few blocks in the Big Apple: pollution abounds, especially unnecessary vehicle idling. Far too often, however, pollution is viewed as a nuisance and not a serious threat. In this essay, I discuss several socio-political forces that enable illegal commercial vehicle idling—and air pollution—to continue in NYC and beyond. I conclude by invoking Friedrich Engels’s polemic term “social murder” to remind us of what is at stake when corporations, the government, and society let idling and air pollution fester: sick communities and bodies, ultimately leading to thousands of premature deaths.

Air Pollution and Our Collective Health

“Once upon a time, you could touch the air in New York. It was that filthy.”
—Jim Dwyer, “Remembering a City Where the Smog Could Kill,” The New York Times, February 8, 2017

In 1966, over Thanksgiving weekend, a thick smog enveloped NYC. While it wasn’t the first such event locally, it is perhaps the most well-known: it is memorialized in an episode of Mad Men and an infamous photo of NYC’s skyscrapers shrouded in polluted air graces the cover of a Vampire Weekend album. Cultural references aside, the smog is an important environmental health event because it sickened thousands and likely killed more than one hundred people.

The relationship between air pollution—from combustible fossil fuel engines—and health outcomes has been well-documented for decades. Like lead, there is no “safe level” (i.e., threshold) of exposure to air pollution.³ Studies show that short and long-term exposures to air pollution, including PM2.5 (fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller), nitrous oxide, and black carbon, are associated with respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and other adverse health risks as well as increased mortality. It is estimated that air pollution results in 7 million premature deaths annually,⁴ including some 100,000 deaths in the US.⁵ Not surprisingly, communities that are majority Black, brown, or low-income are more likely to experience air pollution than are whiter and more affluent communities. Further, historically marginalized and racialized communities experience an increased risk of air pollution–related health risks, which are compounded by structural inequities like inadequate housing, barriers to health care, and pre-existing health issues.⁶ Despite decades of progress across several major indicators of air pollution, NYC, which remains one of the most polluted cities in the US,⁷ is no different. It is estimated that, in NYC alone, each year PM2.5 kills an estimated 2,000 people, and leads to over 5,000 emergency department visits hospitalizations for asthma and cardiovascular and respiratory issues.⁷

Our city is rife with sources of air pollution: commercial cooking, heating and cooling units for buildings, and traffic, among others. To the latter, a 2024 Environmental Justice report commissioned by NYC wrote that, among mobile sources of air pollution:

Of particular concern is the pollution that results from heavy-duty vehicles, including diesel trucks, solid waste carting vehicles, and maritime traffic such as the New York City and Staten Island ferry fleets, responsible for a particular type of particulate matter (diesel PM) that can cause irritation of the airways, heart and lung disease, and lung cancer, and is especially dangerous for children and older adults.⁶

Sadly, PM2.5 from trucks and buses alone account for an estimated 170 deaths in NYC.⁸ Relatedly, the proliferation of last-mile warehouses and delivery vehicles to support our insatiable appetite for e-commerce represents a growing environmental health problem; two-thirds of last-mile warehouses are located in an environmental justice area, or “a geographic area that has experienced disproportionate negative impacts from environmental pollution due to historical and existing social inequities without equal protection and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.”⁶

Air Pollution Enforcement: Opportunists and Crackpots

A killer smog event in 1966 that enveloped NYC helped to catalyze federal, state, and local policymakers to introduce regulations to address rampant air pollution. At the federal level, the Clean Air Act of 1970 established emission standards to reduce—but not eliminate—air pollution from industrial and mobile sources.⁹ This landmark legislation has contributed to important gains in air pollution reduction and improved health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable populations.¹⁰ For example, in 2020, the EPA estimated that the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments would prevent 230,000 adult deaths annually.¹¹ And, if preventing premature death is not reason enough, the EPA touts the economic benefits of curbing air pollution: 65 billion dollars of pollution prevention inputs yields 2 trillion dollars in benefits, including improved health and increased economic productivity.

Locally, one year after the Clean Air Act was established, the City Council of New York City passed its own landmark legislation to curb air pollution. The 1971 Air Code is notable for two reasons: setting strict air pollution guidelines and permitting any person, in addition to city officials, to aid in enforcement.

It is the public policy of the city that every person is entitled to air that is not detrimental to life, health, and enjoyment of his or her property. It is hereby declared that the emission into the open air of any harmful or objectionable substance, including but not limited to smoke, soot, fly ash, dust, fumes, gas, vapors, odors … is a menace to the health, welfare and comfort of the people of the city and a cause of extensive damage to property…Any person…may serve upon the administration a complaint in a form prescribed by the administration alleging that a person has violated any provision of this code… (1971, “Local Law 49: Air Pollution Code.”)

The Commerce & Industry Association of New York Inc, which described itself as “The Voice of New York Business,” characterized the 1971 Air Code as “the toughest, most comprehensive air pollution code in the Nation.”¹² In the same memo to its members, it shared its primary concern with the new code was “the provision establishing a ‘bounty’ system under which private citizens could institute actions against alleged violators and share in any fines collected by the City.” It was egregious, they opined, that “opportunists and crackpots and … persons bent on harassment or revenge” could submit complaints against a company for violating the air code. Still, because the City did not provide information on how or to which agency to submit complaints, it is unlikely that any opportunists or crackpots submitted air complaints for almost fifty years. While businesses could breathe a sigh of relief because this section of the Air Code was rarely enforced, New Yorkers continued to breathe pollution.

In 2018, pushed by anti-idling activist George Pakenham, among others, City Council updated the Air Code so that lay complainants (a.k.a., opportunists and crackpots) were entitled to 25 percent of the paid fine and required that DEP make available online information about how to file a complaint. Thus, the Citizens Air Complaint Program, complete with its own idling violation submission portal, began. The rapid growth in air code violation summonses issued because of lay people-initiated complaints—from about 9,000 in 2019 to more than 124,000 in 2024—demonstrates the magnitude of the problem and the public’s interest in participating in environmental enforcement to hold polluters accountable. Importantly, the CACP provides a means for individuals to have agency to fight a seemingly insurmountable human and environmental health issue. And, while recording and submitting an Air Code violation is a reaction to air pollution in progress, each summons is, hopefully, also a step toward preventing future air pollution incidents. One issue of concern with the program, however, is the relatively limited participation of the broader public thus far: in 2024, for instance, thirty individuals submitted approximately 80 percent of all 124,000 complaints. Several cumbersome language, technological, and bureaucratic barriers persist that likely prevent broader participation, most notably persons from Black, brown, and low-income communities; nevertheless, about 25 percent of idling complaints were recorded in disadvantaged neighborhoods.¹³ Broadening participation should be an important goal of the CACP.

The Motives and Causes

It would be easy, yet short-sighted, to blame the vehicle operator (i.e., working class or proletariat) alone for idling. Having spoken to some commercial vehicle operators who idle unnecessarily, attended several New York City Council hearings related to idling, and reviewed comments on social media, including trucker forums, on the topic, certainly some illegal idling occurs because of lack of knowledge of local laws or apathy, often under the guise of operator (and, sometimes, passenger) comfort. In public health, we call such individual-level behaviors proximal factors, and much attention and resources are directed toward changing them. Yet, doing so is extremely difficult, both in terms of time and money. In 2020, for example, DEP and the Mayor’s Office spent one million dollars on the Billy Never Idles campaign, which featured rocker Billy Idol reminding drivers to “Shut it off”; notably, the program did not highlight the fact that lay people could report idling vehicles.

Looming over—and deeply connected to—these individual behavioral choices are several glaring macro-level factors that facilitate, and sometimes even encourage, illegal idling: decades of underenforcement at the municipal level; lax or inadequate environmental regulations at all levels of government; and capitalist greed, including businesses failing to invest in more environmentally friendly vehicles and technology that maintain driver comfort. These socio-political factors that shape and determine proximal factors are referred to as distal factors. Consider the following: for nearly five decades, New York City’s anti-idling law was rarely enforced. Between 2010 and 2012, NYC officials issued an average of 6.32 summonses for illegal idling per day.¹⁵ From personal experience, one person could, in two hours’ time, easily record six illegally idling commercial trucks or buses in most NYC neighborhoods. And six summonses per day is a shockingly low number, especially when you consider that nearly 200,000 commercial vehicles enter Manhattan and Brooklyn alone every day¹⁶ and that there are 6,300 miles of roadways across the five boroughs.¹⁷ Clearly, lay complainants are doing what city officials rarely did: enforce the 50 year old Air Code.

The 1966 killer smog event in NYC helped to catalyze federal, state, and local policymakers to introduce regulations to address rampant air pollution. At the federal level, the EPA establishes emissions requirements for mobile sources of air pollution like automobiles, trucks, and buses. Although EPA emission standards are strong compared to those of other countries, it could set even stricter standards. Despite the EPA stating that “the Clean Air Act has shown that America can build its economy and create jobs while cutting pollution to protect the health of our citizens and our workforce,”¹⁸ the second Trump administration has thus far demonstrated that it will do everything it can to roll back Clean Air Act regulations, emission standards, and oversight. The result, of course, will have disastrous impacts on pollution and on our collective short and long-term health.

Currently, the state of California sets emission standards for automobiles as well as medium and heavy-duty vehicles that are stricter than those set by the EPA. (In June 2025, the Trump administration announced it was revoking the waivers that permit California to set emission standards different from the Clean Air Act;¹⁹ California is challenging Trump’s resolution in federal court.) Nevertheless, strictest emission standards should not be confused with standards that eliminate pollution or are healthy. The California Air Resources Board is the state agency responsible for establishing regulations.²⁰ One particularly visible and highly problematic regulation is the “Certified Clean Idle” hologram sticker. The sticker is affixed to diesel trucks and buses that meet California’s emissions standards and permits these vehicles to idle—and thus pollute—longer than non-stickered vehicles in California:

CARB has rules that limit diesel truck and bus idling to 5 minutes everywhere. Trucks and buses with certified Clean Idle stickers can idle for more than 5 minutes in unrestricted areas, but are still not allowed to idle in restricted areas [such as schools, homes, hospitals, and senior and childcare facilities within 100 feet of the property line].²¹

The sticker is reminiscent of “Clean Coal” greenwashing campaigns that seek to obfuscate the harmful impacts of coal combustion on public health and our world. Moreover, the sticker causes some confusion. Last fall, at a rally outside New York City Hall, truck drivers held up signs stating, “If this sticker is on – the complaint should be GONE”. This is worrisome for two reasons: the sticker applies only to idling regulations in California, and idling a combustion engine—whether diesel or gasoline-powered—is never “clean.”

At the local level, New York City Council is considering making changes to public idling enforcement that could have mixed effects. Intro 291, which has 35 co-sponsors yet has not been brought to a vote, seeks to increase the civil penalties for illegal idling to between 2,000 and 6,000 dollars per infraction. This increase would be a welcome and clear signal that unnecessary idling is a serious offense. Some major repeat offenders seem unbothered by the current fine structure, which starts at 350 dollars and increases to 600 dollars for a third offense. For example, since 2019, energy giant Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) has amassed the most summonses for excessive idling (over 20,000) and fines ($11 million and counting) (New York Clean Air Collective, personal communication, 9/1/25). This eye-popping, lung-burning sum is but a tiny percent of the company’s profits during the same period; in 2024 alone, Con Ed reported a net income of $1.8 billion.²²

Intro 941, on the other hand, jeopardizes clean air improvements.^23,24 This bill, which was written by one councilperson—who, as of writing, remains the only sponsor—and DEP, would, among other actions, seek to increase the time permitted for buses to idle outside schools and, without oversight or involvement of a neutral third party, unilaterally ban laypeople who do not act in a “dignified, orderly, and decorous manner” from participating in the CACP. (What constitutes “dignified, orderly, and decorous” is unclear, and such a policy could be used to silence anyone who questions DEP. To date, DEP has filed charges against five lay complainants, including a journalist who wrote about the program.²⁵) In addition, the bill proposes reducing a fine against a company that electrifies or installs anti-idling technology in the vehicle that received the fine. While such mechanical changes are welcome, it is troubling to diminish a fine for damage already done to human health and the environment.

Finally, the pursuit of profit at the expense of public and environmental health ensures that, for now, air pollution will continue unabated. Much illegal idling that I witness occurs because corporations have not invested in equipment like an auxiliary power unit (APU). APUs do not require that the engine idles to maintain cabin comfort or provide an independent energy source for tools. Failure to provide such alternatives signals calculated neglect of the worker, human health, and environmental well-being. The fines associated with being caught for polluting are likely viewed as the cost of doing business and pollution as an unavoidable “environmental externality,” also sometimes referred to as “externalized environmental cost.” In abundance, environmental externalities may produce “sacrifice zones,” or geographic areas permanently altered by anthropogenic activity. But these terms sanitize the deadly impacts of toxins like air pollution: the “costs” and “sacrifices” forced onto society are, in fact, thousands of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for asthma, premature deaths, and other adverse health impacts, as well as untold future damage from climate change.

The Charges

Per the NYC Administrative Code, the alleged violations highlighted at the beginning of this essay fall under one of two main categories: 24-163 or 24-146. Permitting the engine of a motor vehicle to idle unnecessarily for three minutes or longer is a violation of 24-163; vehicles are permitted to idle for no more than one minute when parked on a block adjacent to a school or public park. Emergency vehicles, municipal and federal vehicles (e.g., USPS truck), and vehicles whose engine is actively operating a lift gate or some other processing device (e.g., jackhammer, some refrigeration units) are exempted and will not be issued a summons. The fine is 350 dollars for a first offense, 440 dollars for a second offense, and 600 dollars for a third offense; defaulting can result in a fine of up to 2,000 dollars. Code 24-146, on the other hand, refers to preventing construction-related dust and particulate matter from becoming airborne. The fine is 400 dollars for a first offense, 800 dollars for a second offense, and 1,200 dollars for a third offense; defaulting can result in a fine of up to 1,600 dollars.

In addition to the two administrative code violations, one additional charge is warranted to underscore the connection between idling, the myriad forces that ensure it will continue, and public health: social murder. About 180 years ago, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels introduced the term “social murder” to describe the harms pressed upon the working class by the ruling capitalist class:

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, … knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.²⁶

To arrive at this finding, Engels completed extensive research on proletariats working in England’s burgeoning—and alarmingly dangerous—factories. As is often the case, the workers were well aware of the “conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long . . . [and] hurries them to the grave before their time.” His work, along with that by other early occupational health pioneers like Alice Hamilton, shone a light on unjust and unsafe workplace conditions; in time, this work led to occupational health standards, regulations, and reforms that today we take for granted. The concept of social murder is helpful, too, in highlighting the adverse impacts of capitalist greed on social conditions more broadly; more recently, scholars have used social murder to understand the origins of the Grenfell Tower Fire disaster as well as its connection to racism and patriarchy, among others.²⁷ Emissions from the transportation sector represent a dual threat to working and living conditions: idling poses a threat to vehicle operators—yes, they are exposed to pollutants, too—and communities suffer because idling is shown to significantly increase pollutants near to the ground,²⁸ thereby creating local microclimate hotspots of toxic air.

In addition, whereas a civil code culpates only the offending commercial entity for a specific instance of air pollution, social murder draws attention to the range of distal actors, forces, and power relationships connected to idling events. From this perspective, it would be overly simplistic and misguided to blame only the vehicle operators (i.e., more often than not, the proletariat) alone for illegal idling and resultant air pollution. Rather, we also must hold the business class (the bourgeoisie), the regulatory and enforcement apparatuses, and society to account. For instance, we might ask: Why were sections of the Air Code ignored and not enforced for nearly five decades? What attempts at behavioral changes have been made and what alternatives, including auxiliary power units that function without idling the vehicle engine, have been made available to workers? What infrastructural changes (e.g., charging stations, alternative power sources) are needed to advance an urban transportation system that is cleaner and more sustainable?

Finally, social murder is undoubtedly and purposefully an emotion-laden term. But is it purely an academic exercise or might it help reduce air pollution and advance health equity? I agree with others that the term “social murder” is valuable because of its ability to animate society to demand change.²⁷ It can do so, I add, in ways that other, sanitized terms (e.g., environmental externalities, sacrifice zone), which are less provocative and fail to convey seriousness, might not.

Conclusion

Today, anthropogenic air pollution, be it from idling or other sources, remains an invisible yet substantial threat to human health and the environment in NYC and beyond. What is being done and what might be done going forward? From a public health perspective, we must address both proximal and distal causes of idling and transportation-related emissions. At the street-level, the CACP demonstrates society’s interest in curbing idling behaviors that, for decades, were under-enforced by officials. We should feel empowered to call out behaviors that adversely impact our well-being. With increased enforcement, some businesses are realizing that pollution does have a cost. Loomis, an armored vehicle company, for instance, received over 400 complaints before it decided to strike a deal with NYC and DEP to electrify its fleet over three years.²⁹ Shockingly, however, Loomis applied for and received a variance from DEP against additional idling summonses as it transitions its fleet—in the meantime, Loomis’s non-electric vehicles can freely idle despite the consequences for human and environmental health. Other companies, too, have taken steps to add idle reduction technology to their vehicles; disappointingly, some can easily be overridden or don’t work properly.

Amidst the weakening of federal clean air rules and weakening enforcement, cities and states must do their part, too, and fill the regulatory and enforcement void. At the municipal level, it is frustrating that a bill that would increase idling fines (Intro 291) languishes in committee—despite having dozens of co-sponsors—while the chair of the same committee is the only one who supports a bill (Intro 941) that threatens to silence lay complainants and retroactively decreases fines for polluters if they “green” their fleet. Instead, common sense legislation would acknowledge the important role of lay complainants, address barriers to participation, and encourage the adoption of idle reduction technologies, but not by reducing or eliminating fines for damage already done to human and environmental health. At the state level, the New York Climate Act is a formidable first step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that should result in important environmental changes with huge implications for public health. Among the major corporations forced to reduce its carbon footprint is Con Edison. There is some early evidence that the NYS Climate Act is forcing Con Edison to do what thousands of idling fines cannot: green its fleet and build infrastructure to encourage other companies to do the same.³⁰

Ultimately, we must not forget the paramount finding from The Condition of the Working Class in England: that individual and collective health are of secondary importance to the pursuit of profit in a capitalist system. Every business, small or large, must recognize their contributions to air pollution and its adverse health impacts. Government and civil society, too, are responsible for calling attention to this crisis and should recognize their complicity in its continuation, whether through lax environmental enforcement, inadequate regulations, or benefitting from a system that rewards cutting corners. As Engels writes, “Society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions.”

Acknowledgements: The New York Clean Air Collective provided helpful data.