Neighbor's dryer exhaust entering my apartment, looking for advice

I rent an apartment on the fourth floor of a quadplex built in the early 1900s high density housing style.

There is a ventilation shaft that runs through the center of the building.

The shaft is used to run independent ventilation ducts from each tenant's laundry dryer up to the roof to be ventilated outside.

Each bathroom has a window that opens into the shaft, but there is no exhaust fan in my bathroom, and there is no window connecting the bathroom to the outside of the building.

The only way to ventilate the bathroom is to open the shaft window, or open to bathroom door to the apartment interior.

Sometimes when the neighbor below me is running their dryer, I can smell hot dryer exhaust in my bathroom and the hallway outside it.

It's a very strong smell that instantly makes me want to leave the bathroom and hall, and makes me extremely uneasy. The odor lasts for about fifteen minutes before disappearing. This happens about twice a week on average.

When the neighbor is running their dryer, I cannot use my bathroom because of this.

the source of the problem is 3-fold

  • the neighbor's dryer duct has leaks
  • there is a hole in the wall that connects my bathroom to the ventilation shaft where exhaust comes in. The hole is behind a built-in shelf in the wall.
  • the exhaust also comes in through the bathtub access panel in the wall in the hallway, demonstrating that there are leaks in both the shaft and area between apartments

Whare the odds my landlord will implement a proper fix?

I want to leave because of all the toxic VOCs that are in laundry exhaust and I worry about cancer risk from it.

What to do? Leave? Or press for a fix?

Posted May 12, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

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