Is Your Building Burning Used Motor Oil?

Dan Brownell, the city’s Business Integrity Commissioner, says the hazardous practice of combining used motor oil with heating oil is still going strong in New York City and shows no signs of stopping.

"Based on information we received from our sources in the industry, the practice of blending continues," Brownell told the city council’s Sanitation Committee at a budget hearing last week, Crain’s reports. “The companies that do this know that if they are caught they currently face no serious consequences.”

But the practice of blending oils has serious health consequences for New Yorkers, particularly in poorer neighborhoods where the practice is most common. While industry sources point out that blending can be done legally – when it’s used in high-powered boilers, like those found in factories – blended oil is often burned in apartment building boilers not powerful enough to burn it completely. As a result, particulate matter is sent skyward, where it can float down and settle in the lungs of humans, potentially causing or exacerbating asthma and other ailments.

Although the city phased out the dirtiest of the heating oils in 2015, used motor oil, which is cheap and plentiful, can be blended with the heaviest home heating oil that’s still legal. The city estimates that in 2011 at least 10,000 buildings were burning heating oil blended with used motor oil, and today about 3,000 are still doing so.

Many of them are burning the adulterated oil unwittingly. Some customers who ended up with blended oil, however, including the developer Related Companies and the Schron real estate family, have sued heating oil companies. The building owners say they were harmed because they paid for pure heating oil but – without their knowledge – received and burned fuel adulterated with used motor oil.

Brownell wants the city council to pass legislation introduced last year authorizing his agency to regulate the heating-oil industry. The de Blasio administration has voiced support, but the proposal has gained little traction among lawmakers.