Diesel Damage: How Warehouse Sprawl Is Sickening Two States

Stand outside on Doremus Avenue in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood on any given morning and you can start counting trucks before you finish your coffee. By 5 a.m., the diesel engines are already running. By mid-morning, the air carries a smell longtime residents know too well.

“I see 5 trucks right now,” said X Braithwaite, an environmental justice organizer with the Ironbound Community Corporation. “I live right next to a loading facility. The noise is astronomical. I know it’s time to wake up because at 5 in the morning, the trucks are going.”

This is daily life in one of the most over-industrialized communities in New Jersey, and a story repeating itself across both sides of the Hudson. A warehouse boom is quietly reshaping neighborhoods, thickening the air with toxic diesel emissions, and taking a measurable toll on human health. But advocates in New York and New Jersey have a concrete policy tool ready to deploy: Indirect Source Review, or ISR.

Trucks drive by homes in the Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey, near the intersection of Hawkins Street and Ferry Street. Freight traffic has impacted air quality in the area. (Yana Paskova for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Warehouses Everywhere, Clean Air Nowhere

Five million people — more than one in four New Yorkers — live within half a mile of a mega-warehouse. In New Jersey, one in three residents live near one of the state’s 3,034 mega-warehouses. These facilities generate relentless truck traffic, mostly diesel-powered, leaving behind toxic air pollution linked to cancer, heart attacks, asthma, and early death.

The burden doesn’t fall evenly. In New York, disadvantaged communities make up just 8.1% of the state but contain 50% of its warehouses. In New Jersey, neighbors with limited English proficiency are nearly twice as likely to have a warehouse within half a mile of their homes. Meanwhile, the Port of Newark — the largest on the East Coast — sends over 380,000 truck trips through New Jersey communities every single day.

“The simple fact is that the Ironbound is the most industrialized community in the state,” Braithwaite said. “The economy is being built on the backs of our people.”

Brooke Helmick, policy director of the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, speaks during a press conference against a proposed gas plant in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. (Aristide Economopoulos For Earthjustice)

What Is an ISR — and Why Does It Matter?

An Indirect Source Review lets states hold warehouses and ports accountable for the pollution their truck traffic generates, not just what comes out of their own smokestacks. Facilities can be required to submit pollution reduction plans, transition to zero-emission trucks and equipment, install solar, or pay into mitigation funds.

“It’s not just a single facility’s pollution,” said Brooke Helmick, policy director of the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. “It is the totality, the cumulative impact of all of these facilities. We don’t talk about how all of this aggregated pollution still impacts the body, and that is a central question, and kind of why we came into the ISR concept.”

This approach is already working elsewhere. California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District implemented a warehouse ISR, removing over 12.7 tons of diesel particulate matter and 536 tons of NOx from the air in 2024 alone, delivering more than three dollars in public health benefits for every dollar invested.

From Newark to New York, Change Is Coming

In New York, the Clean Deliveries Act would require emissions reviews for e-commerce warehouses over 50,000 square feet, mandate pollution reduction plans, and create stronger protections for communities near schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. Warehouse square footage in the state grew four times faster last decade than the one before — with no regulatory framework to match.

In New Jersey, advocates are pushing for a statewide ISR covering warehouses and the Port of Newark, through which 5.9 million shipping containers passed in 2025 alone. Northern New Jersey is on track for “extreme ozone nonattainment” by 2027, the Clean Air Act’s most severe designation. Community groups including the Ironbound Community Corporation, South Ward Environmental Alliance, and the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance are at the center of this push, alongside Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, and Clean Water Action.

“We have a good working relationship with the DEP,” said Leah Owens, ports and policy analyst at South Ward Environmental Alliance, while referring to New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection. “They are already part of the process to inform what’s actually feasible.”

Leah Owens, the ports and policy analyst at South Ward Environmental Alliance, stands at the corner of Frelinghuysen Avenue and Van Duyne Street in Newark, New Jersey. (Brian W. Fraser for Earthjustice)

The Future These Communities Are Fighting For

As neighbors in New York and New Jersey are telling their lawmakers to support ISR and give them cleaner air, both states are already investing in EV charging infrastructure. So the region is ready for this. The last big piece of the puzzle is for the freight and warehouse industry to be a partner, too, and support their neighbors in New York and New Jersey, who simply want what everyone wants: a safe, clean neighborhood for their families, and children.

“I want to see people engaging in communities they can love without the fear of health stressors,” Braithwaite said. “I want to see healthy communities that can thrive.”

That’s not an unreasonable ask. It’s a baseline. And in New York and New Jersey, communities are building the policy to make it real.