Groundbreaking New Report: Silent Methane Killer Leaking Up To 75% More Than EPA Said

Up to 75% more methane is leaking nationwide than the Environmental Protection Agency estimates, researchers concluded after reviewing over 200 studies of gas leaks across North America. The report is making headlines as it shows extraordinary damage that gas is having on human health and the environment.

The ground-breaking study, published Friday in Science reports that the Environmental Protection Agency understated how much methane leaks into the atmosphere nationwide by between 25 and 75 percent, meaning it’s far more dangerous than the Obama administration asserts.

The study, Methane Leakage from North American Natural Gas Systems, was conducted by a team of 16 researchers from Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

It is making headlines because it finally and definitively shows natural gas production and development can make such gas worse than other fossil fuels for humans and their environment, including the climate.

The research, reported in The Washington Post, Bloomberg and The New York Times, was funded by a foundation created by the late George P. Mitchell, the wildcatter, who first successfully drilled shale gas.

“That makes it hard to dismiss it as the work of environmentalists hell-bent on discrediting the oil and gas industry,” DeSmogBlog reported Friday.

In November, Harvard University-led research found that industry’s methane gas leaks have been especially under-estimated. That study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, reported methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction and oil refineries in some regions are nearly five times higher than previous estimates. That was one of the 200 studies included the study released this week.

Researchers noted that even small leaks from the natural gas system are important due to methane being a potent greenhouse gas, around 30 times more so than carbon dioxide. 

Environmental Impact

The debate over natural gas industry’s climate change effects has raged several years, since researchers from Cornell University stunned policy-makers and environmentalists warned that if enough methane seeps between the gas well and burner, relying on natural gas could be even more dangerous for the climate than burning coal.

Natural gas is mostly methane, an extraordinarily powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat 86 times more effectively than carbon dioxide during two decades after it enters the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so even small leaks have major impacts.

Unless methane is controlled, the planet will warm 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius over the next 17 to 35 years, and that’s even if carbon dioxide emissions are controlled. That type of temperature rise could potentially shift the climate of our planet into runaway feedback of further global warming.

“[B]y only looking at the 100 year time frame and only looking at electricity production, this new paper is biasing the analysis of greenhouse gas emissions between natural gas and coal in favor of natural gas being low,” said Dr. Howarth, “and by a huge amount, three to four to perhaps five fold.”

Human health implications

There was one important point that the news coverage so far missed and that deserves attention: the human health effect of methane.

Living with methane, or “natural gas,” can be a health hazard both for healthy people those already ill. It is especially risky for people with weakened immune systems, including those asthmatic, allergic, or chemically sensitive.  

This risk includes not only breathing methane as people are out and about on daily errands. Gas appliances also create havoc with health,

“A constant low level exposure to gas which can cause or increase illnesses.  Natural gas is a sensitizer, which means that exposure can lead to intolerance and adverse reactions both to it and other substances in our environment,” Agnes Malouf and David Wimberly write in Environmental Health.     

Using domestic gas appliances, particularly gas stoves, is linked to increased asthma, respiratory illness, and impaired lung function especially in young women, according to The Lancet in 1996.

Women using gas stoves had double the respiratory problems of women cooking on electric stoves. The same study showed using extractor fans that vent cooking fumes outside did not reduce adverse effects of gas. 

Gas water heaters, furnaces, unvented space heaters and cook stoves are significant contributors to chemical contamination in the home, according to The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Clean Air Guide (1993). The guide recommended replacing gas appliances with electrical ones to reduce indoor air pollution. 

In a combined series of studies of 47,000 patients, two doctors found “the most important sources of indoor pollution responsible for generating (environmental) illness were the gas cook stoves, hot water heaters, and furnaces” writes Dr. Bill Rea, of the Dallas Environmental Health Centre. (Emphasis added)

“For the chemically susceptible individual this gas may be the worst form of fuel,” writes Dr. T. G. Randolph. His studies showed when gas stoves were removed from the home of a person with chemical sensitivities, not only did their health improve, so did that of all family members. 

“Other studies have found that children living in homes with gas stoves had more than double the risk for respiratory symptoms, including asthma,” says Environmental Health. “Asthma patients who used a gas stove seven or more times a week were found to have doubled their risk of emergency room treatment. Infants who grow up in households with gas are almost twice as likely to develop childhood asthma as those who live with second-hand smoke. (Second hand smoke itself doubles a child’s risk of developing asthma.)

“These studies have all been published in respected medical journals,” say the authors.

If so, why aren’t doctors asking patients about the type of heating and cooking appliances they use? Why is this not on those extensive patient questionnaires?

When natural gas is burned, for cooking and heating, the chemicals create nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particulates, polycyclicaromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (including formaldehyde) as well as other chemicals. 

“Just imagine what you are breathing when you bend over a gas cook stove to stir your food or when you open the oven door. This stuff sticks to your food, so you eat it as well. It sticks to clothes in gas dryers so you are covering your skin in it. It is lighter than air so it rises up into your living and sleeping areas, concentrating higher up nearer your head.” (Environmental Health)

This is one reason that gas is more of a health hazard than fuel oil, that’s heavier than air and thus sinks. 

It’s been estimated that, when a typical gas oven and three burners are turned on, they release the same amount of combustion by-products as a typical gas water heater.  Regulations require that all gas water heaters (and gas furnaces) be connected to a chimney or a side vented directly outdoors. Not so for stoves. Gas driers are also not vented through chimneys, but through side vents.  Side vents are usually located low on buildings, and vented fumes can re-enter the living areas through windows, doors and cracks.  
  
 At a conference on air quality and children’s health sponsored by the New Brunswick Lung Association, much attention was given to respiratory problems caused by moulds. Natural gas is a contributor to mould growth. One principal products of gas combustion is water vapour. Cooking with gas or burning gas in any way without perfect venting generates considerable amounts of moisture. When this moisture remains in a building, it’s enough to be a significant contributor to moulds and provides better growing conditions for dust mites, viruses and bacteria.   

Natural gas brings harmful chemicals into homes through methane in it

Methane (that  gives the flame its blue colour as in propane) is an asphyxiant. It typically contains impurities and additives, including radon and other radioactive materials, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene), organometallic compounds such as methylmercury, organoarsenic and organolead. Mercaptan odorants  are also added to natural gas so it can be detected by scent before reaching explosive levels. 
  
Gas components and products of incomplete combustion, including nitrogen diozide, carbon monoxide and others, have health implications individually and synergistically as they combine with each other and other indoor pollutants. 
  
“Natural gas is dangerous for several reasons,” says health advocate Helen Lofgren .  ”Even if you don’t use the gas appliance, it is always there, leaking into the environment. It is dangerous for everybody, even those who do not notice its effects. If apartment buildings converted to gas stoves and water heaters, the total effect could be quite serious. Unplanned leaks and the danger of explosion compound the risks of gas.” 

Is there any safe way to use natural gas at home?

“Yes and no,” says Environmental Health. “If you are going to use gas furnaces or water heaters, the adverse effects can be lessened considerably by putting them in a separate building downwind of the house with underground connections.

“Failing this, putting a state-of-the-art, totally sealed furnace and water heater in a separate sealed room with outside air intakes ducted directly into their combustion chambers, and automatic fans forcing exhaust up a chimney extending above the roof line, will result in a substantial lessening of harmful effects.  No side venting should ever be allowed.”   

Even with all those precautions, when combustion gases leaving a chimney cool, they become heavier than air.  Depending on wind conditions, they can reenter the living space.

“And there is really no way at present to reduce the risk of gas appliances like stoves and clothes dryers. It is safest not to have any combustion at all inside the house,” advises Environmental Health. 

Sources: Environmental Health CA,  The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Rigzone

For More Information, see Natural Gas websites: www.geocities.com/RainForest/6847 (Note especially the Medical-Environmental Report) and www..gascape.org/