A Pennsylvania diesel shop spent nearly two full years systematically dismantling the pollution controls your tax dollars and decades of public health advocacy put on the books — and when the EPA finally caught up with them, the fine worked out to roughly $1,100 per truck.

What Apex Diesel Actually Did

Between January 4, 2021 and November 29, 2022, Apex Diesel Performance worked through a methodical, invoice-by-invoice campaign of tampering. The shop’s own records — the work orders the EPA obtained through its enforcement authority — show 31 separate jobs on diesel trucks ranging from 2003 Ford F-350s to 2019 Ram 3500s. Each job removed or disabled equipment that federal law requires to be present and functioning on certified motor vehicles.

The core product being installed was the EGR Delete Kit: a physical removal of the Exhaust Gas Recirculation system, the hardware that feeds a portion of exhaust gas back through the engine to reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) — one of the most damaging pollutants in diesel exhaust. Alongside EGR deletes, the shop installed custom ECU tunes using tools like EZ Lynk tuners, EFI Live, and CSP4/DSP5 tuning switches, which reprogram the truck’s onboard computer to stop monitoring or compensating for the missing emissions hardware.

These are textbook defeat devices. The term “defeat device” entered the public vocabulary after the Volkswagen scandal, but the concept is old: any hardware or software modification that disables, removes, or overrides emissions controls on a certified vehicle is a federal violation under Section 203(a)(3)(A) of the Clean Air Act.

31 Trucks. 31 Violations. Read the List.

This was not a one-time mistake or a rogue employee on a slow Tuesday. The EPA’s violation summary table documents a continuous pattern across nearly two years of business operations. Below is the complete record the EPA entered into evidence.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What Gets Stripped When You Strip an EGR System

The Exhaust Gas Recirculation system was engineered specifically to stop nitrogen oxides from leaving the tailpipe in harmful concentrations. NOx is the compound class behind smog, ground-level ozone, and fine particulate matter formation. It is not abstract chemistry. It is the reason children in diesel-corridor neighborhoods carry inhalers. When Apex Diesel Performance bolted an EGR block plate onto a truck engine and reprogrammed the ECU to ignore it, that truck began emitting significantly more NOx than the law permits — every single mile it drove from that day forward.

The settlement document states this directly: the EPA found that Respondent “provided no documented reasonable basis to conclude that such conduct does not adversely affect emissions.” The shop had no defense. There is no legitimate performance justification that erases the harm to the people breathing air along the roads those 31 trucks travel. The trucking corridors of rural Pennsylvania, the school zones, the small-town main streets where a Duramax idles at a light — every one of those places absorbed pollution that federal law was specifically designed to prevent.

The customers who paid for these services are not victims in any simple sense. Many sought out defeat devices deliberately, drawn by the promise of more horsepower and better fuel economy. But their individual choice to modify their vehicle became a collective burden imposed on everyone in their vicinity without their consent. The family living on the road a modified 2019 Ram 3500 travels every day did not agree to breathe its elevated exhaust. The kids at the school bus stop did not vote on whether the truck idling nearby should have its pollution controls intact.

What makes this a dignity issue is the geography of who absorbs the cost. Rural Pennsylvania communities like Atlantic are precisely the places where environmental enforcement is thinnest, where families have the fewest resources to address health consequences from air quality, and where trust in institutions is already strained. The EPA’s own settlement language acknowledges that it retains the right to act if it ever determines “an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health, public welfare, or the environment” exists. The fact that 31 vehicles with disabled emissions hardware driving through the same communities for up to four years does not automatically trigger that standard tells you something about how the system prices the health of people without money or power.

Legal Receipts: In Their Own Words

The Documents That Prove It

“EPA’s investigation revealed that work orders confirmed tampering in violation of Section 203(a)(3)(A) of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. § 7522(a)(3)(A), and the implementing regulations found at 40 C.F.R. § 1068.101(b)(1). Respondent has provided no documented reasonable basis to conclude that such conduct does not adversely affect emissions.”

— U.S. EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-03-2026-0003, Paragraph 5

“EPA alleges that Respondent failed to comply with Section 203(a)(3)(A) of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. § 7522(a)(3)(A), and the implementing regulations found at 40 C.F.R. § 1068.101(b)(1).”

— U.S. EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-03-2026-0003, Paragraph 4

“EPA and Respondent agree that settlement of this matter for a penalty in the amount of Thirty-Four Thousand, One-hundred and Nine Dollars and Eighty Cents ($34,109.80) which Respondent shall be liable to pay in accordance with the terms and provisions set forth below, is reasonable in the public interest.”

— U.S. EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-03-2026-0003, Paragraph 7

“EPA reserves the right to commence action against any person, including Respondent, in response to any condition which EPA determines may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health, public welfare, or the environment.”

— U.S. EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-03-2026-0003, Paragraph 14

“This Final Order shall not in any case affect the right of the Agency or the United States to pursue appropriate injunctive or other equitable relief, or criminal sanctions for any violations of the law.”

— Final Order, CAA-03-2026-0003, U.S. EPA Region 3

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Diesel Exhaust Does Not Stay in Atlantic, PA

Diesel exhaust is classified by the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen. The specific compounds that EGR systems are designed to reduce — nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — are directly linked to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. When 31 trucks have their EGR systems disabled, each one becomes a rolling source of elevated NOx for every subsequent mile it drives, potentially for years or even decades.

The EPA settlement document confirms that the shop “tampered with emissions controls on an EPA-certified motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine, by removing or rendering inoperative a device or element of design installed on or in the vehicle in compliance with regulations under Title II of the CAA.” Title II of the Clean Air Act exists precisely because Congress determined that unchecked vehicle emissions cause demonstrable public health harm at the population level. The shop’s work overrode that determination for 31 vehicles with zero documented health or safety justification.

The trucks modified at Apex Diesel span model years from 2003 to 2019 and include heavy-duty platform trucks — F-350s, F-450s, Ram 3500s, and 2500 HD pickups — that are routinely used for commercial hauling, construction, and agriculture. These are high-mileage, high-use vehicles. A 2019 Ram 3500 used in commercial service can accumulate 30,000 to 50,000 miles per year. Every one of those miles with a disabled EGR system means air quality violations for everyone in that truck’s path.

Economic Inequality: A Fine That Protects No One

The penalty of $34,109.80 (about what a full-time warehouse worker earns in a year and a half of 40-hour weeks) is the entire financial consequence Apex Diesel Performance faces for 29 documented defeat-device installations spanning nearly two full years. The settlement structure under the Clean Air Act’s expedited process allowed the EPA to close this case quickly — but “quickly” also meant cheaply, and cheaply means the deterrent signal sent to every other diesel shop in Region 3 is weak.

Under the Clean Air Act, Section 203(a) violations can carry civil penalties of up to $44,539 per violation as of 2023 penalty adjustment figures. Across 29 documented invoiced violations, the theoretical maximum penalty exposure would run into the millions of dollars. The settlement landed at $34,109.80 total — less than the per-violation maximum for a single infraction. The gap between what the law allows and what was collected is the gap between accountability and a cost of doing business.

The people who will never see a dime of that $34,109.80 are the residents who breathe the air along the routes those 31 trucks travel. There is no victim compensation fund in this settlement. There is no community remediation. The money goes to the United States Treasury — it does not return to the lungs that absorbed the pollution or the health care bills that resulted from it.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now?

Named Parties in This Case

• Dustin Harrison — Owner and Respondent, Apex Diesel Performance, 12348 Atlantic Road, Atlantic, Pennsylvania 16111
• Andrea Bain — Acting Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, U.S. EPA Region 3 (signed the settlement for the EPA)

The Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. EPA Region 3 (Philadelphia) — Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division: The body that brought this case. They can bring more. Contact them if you know of similar shops operating in your region.
• U.S. EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA): The national office that tracks Clean Air Act Title II enforcement patterns across all regions.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division: The DOJ arm that handles criminal referrals under the CAA. The Final Order explicitly preserves the right to pursue criminal sanctions.
• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP): The state-level body that can pursue parallel enforcement actions under Pennsylvania’s own Clean Air Act implementations.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you live in rural Pennsylvania or anywhere near a diesel performance shop and you suspect defeat devices are being installed, you can file a complaint directly with the U.S. EPA at epa.gov/enforcement/report-environmental-violations. You do not need a lawyer. You do not need proof beyond a reasonable suspicion. The EPA’s investigative authority, as demonstrated in this very case, allows them to obtain work orders and other business records through its enforcement powers under the Clean Air Act.

Support local mutual aid organizations in communities along heavy diesel corridors. Groups advocating for clean air in rural and working-class communities rarely get the funding that urban environmental organizations receive, but they are the ones absorbing the health costs that settlements like this one never address. Pressure your state representatives to increase PA DEP funding for mobile source emissions enforcement — a field where staffing has historically been thin.

The Final Order preserves the EPA’s right to pursue criminal sanctions. Demand they use it.