The group took action because there are no permanent monitors at the spot. Although the city does not monitor air quality at permanent locations, the state maintains a fixed network of air quality monitoring sites, including nine on Manhattan rooftops. None, however, are situated near the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority traffic hub.

Treat hopes that the data will persuade the state to install a permanent air quality monitor to track pollutants in the heavily-trafficked neighborhood and, ultimately, induce the state and federal governments to take actions. They’d like to see, for example, stricter vehicle emission standards.

On the Friday after Rosh Hashanah, the first air quality readings were not high, but Treat will return with the monitor to test again. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires three years of data to assess air quality, which is why the activists are hoping their data will push the state to install a permanent monitor.

Treat, a Hell’s Kitchen resident for the past 20 years, has become increasingly involved in efforts to improve his neighborhood, as well as Chelsea and Clinton. He is Community Board 4’s secretary and cofounder of CHEKPEDS, the Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition.

“I got tired of watching the deterioration of Ninth Avenue,” Treat said. “My 2-year-old grandson lives here; three generations of my family live here,” he said.

CHEKPEDS, which recently received a $250,000 grant from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council for a technical study of Lincoln Tunnel traffic, has lobbied for years to make the area along Ninth Avenue safer and more attractive for pedestrians.

The Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association and other local groups have also focused their attention on air quality. They enlisted the aid of Culpepper, president of the Lower Washington Heights Neighborhood Association and an air quality consultant. Culpepper, who grew concerned in the early 1990s about the high asthma rates in Washington Heights, began to explore the relationship between vehicular pollution and respiratory disease. His association purchased an EPA-approved portable particulate sampler. He now works in cooperation with the city’s environmental protection department to help other neighborhoods track the fine particle emissions, called PM2.5, that are suspended in the air their residents breathe.

PM2.5 is fine particle pollution -- composed of acids, such as nitrates or sulfates, organic chemicals, soil and dust particles and fragments of allergens such as pollen or mold – that is less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Power plant and vehicle emissions create PM2.5.

The EPA says fine particle pollution can aggravate heart and lung diseases and has been linked to cardiovascular problems, respiratory symptoms, asthma attacks and bronchitis, among other issues.

“It’s no secret that New Yorkers across are city are suffering from asthma,” Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum wrote in an e-mail. “Those who live near tunnels leading to and from the five boroughs are especially affected by toxic fumes from idling vehicles.”

Treat and other community activists are particularly concerned about city reports which showed high asthma rates in the Chelsea-Clinton neighborhoods, especially for children. Asthma hospitalizations in those areas for children under the age of 14 are the third highest in Manhattan at 4.3 per 1,000, according to United Hospital Fund statistics for 2003 to 2005. (Although third in the borough, that rate is still significantly lower than Manhattan’s highest rates for that age group over the same period of time: in East Harlem, 11.9 per 1,000 children under 14 were hospitalized for asthma and in West Harlem, the rate was 11.2 per 1,000 children.)

But the group has a long way to go before action is taken. Data collection is just the first step in a multi-phase process to determine if the air quality in Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and Clinton in considered intolerable by EPA standards.

“Right now,” Mayer said, “this is just one way of saying to people, ‘Take a look at what you’re inhaling."