Key Takeaways
- Toronto performers S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger, the comedy duo Creepy Boys, are fighting eviction, arguing that bodily gases—not indoor smoking—could explain their apartment’s air-quality spikes.
- The couple cited Airthings’ guidance that its VOC monitors can react to breath, sweat and other bodily gases but cannot identify specific compounds or prove smoking.
- Landlord Tania Anderson served notice saying she intended to occupy the duplex to protect her health, while the couple raised more than $3,400 for legal help and challenged the eviction at an Oct. 29 tribunal hearing.
A Toronto couple is fighting to keep their apartment after their landlord blamed them for troubling air-quality readings inside the property—a case that gives a whole new meaning to the term “gas leak.”
According to TorontoToday, S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger, who perform as the queer comedy-clown duo Creepy Boys, challenged the eviction at an Oct. 29 hearing before Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board.
Their explanation was a little unusual. They insisted they weren't smoking inside and suspected their farts could explain the readings. “This is not a joke,” the couple wrote on GoFundMe. “We wish we were joking.”
The dispute began in December 2025, according to the couple, when landlord Tania Anderson installed an Airthings monitor and noticed recurring spikes in volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.
Anderson repeatedly reminded the tenants that smoking was prohibited, but Grummett and Kruger denied using cigarettes or vapes indoors. Grummett also said that their occasional cannabis use happened outside.
The couple even agreed to install a second monitor in their unit, hoping to locate the source of the readings. Instead, the device kept sounding the alarm while the suspected culprits remained frustratingly invisible.
Grummett and Kruger tried almost everything short of holding their breath. Over one week, they temporarily stopped using their gas stove, hot water, and electricity. They showered at a gym, stopped lighting candles, opened windows and added ventilation above the stove. Still, the VOC levels rose throughout the day and overnight, then dropped when the apartment was empty.
After the readings jumped shortly after they returned home and went directly to bed, the couple began to suspect the problem wasn’t an appliance. It was the two people sleeping beside the monitor.
Their research eventually led them to an explanation from Airthings, which says its VOC sensors can react to human breath, sweat, and other bodily gases. The company notes that nighttime spikes may occur when those emissions build up in a bedroom. Its sensor also cannot identify individual compounds and should not be relied upon for health-critical decisions.
The couple forwarded that information to Anderson, but the smoking warnings continued. “How do I prove to this woman that I’m just farting?” Kruger recalled thinking.
It is not the sort of question most tenants expect to raise in a housing case.
Anderson served the couple with an N12 notice on June 29, saying she intended to occupy the entire duplex to protect her health. The performers said losing the unit would mean giving up their first long-term home after years spent traveling for theater work. Its affordable rent had allowed them to continue creating full-time.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, ordinary flatulence is a normal digestive function and is usually nothing to worry about. A general VOC spike alone cannot prove that someone smoked—or passed gas.
The couple secured help from tenant lawyer Samuel Mason and raised their $2,800 legal-fund target within 24 hours, eventually collecting more than $3,400.
Friends and relatives from Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia also tuned into the public tribunal hearing.
“They wanted to see the theatre that was us possibly getting evicted for our farts,” Grummett said.
