Researchers sampled natural gas from homes across the Greater Boston area and found 21 toxic air pollutants known to cause cancer and other health problems.
There’s been a lot of focus recently on the negative health impacts of burning natural gas indoors, but asheds light on what’s in the unburned gas piped into millions of homes across the U.S.
When most people think about natural gas, they likely think about methane. And for good reason — natural gas is mostly methane. Methane isn’t known to have any direct human health impacts — though given its contribution to climate change, it certainly has big indirect impacts. And with The study also found considerable variation in the level of toxics present in gas at different times of year. The authors aren’t sure why, but gas delivered to peoples’ homes in the wintertime had more harmful pollutants than summertime gas. Wintertime gas also had lower levels of odorants — the sulfur compounds added to natural gas to give it a smell — though all samples met federal guidelines.
Though outside of the study’s scope, he says there probably is some risk of exposure to these toxics from natural gas, but “it may be less than other really well-established environmental health hazards like tobacco smoke.”One big takeaway from this study, the authors say, is that we should really start thinking about leaking natural gas as not just a climate threat, but as one that may also have human health impacts. This study was meant to be the first step of figuring that out.
"It's 2022, and there are now so many better ways to cook our food than by burning toxic chemicals inside our kitchens,” she said. LaRocque was not affiliated with the study.Do more to find and fix gas leaks — both indoor and outdoor leaks.On this last point, the effort is already underway. Scientists are testing natural gas in homes across California and in about a half-dozen other cities throughout the country.
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