The Trump administration is decreasing the attention federal regulators pay to pipeline leaks. But leaks from natural gas pipelines don’t just waste energy and warm the planet – they can also make the air more dangerous to breathe. That air pollution threat grows not just in the communities where the leaks happen but also as far as neighboring states, as our analysis of gas leaks and air pollution levels across the U.S. has found.
For instance, in September 2018 the Merrimack Valley pipeline explosion in Massachusetts, which released roughly 2,800 metric tons of methane, damaged or destroyed about 40 homes and killed one person. We found that event caused fine-particle air pollution concentrations in downwind areas of New Hampshire and Vermont to spike within four weeks, pushing those areas’ 2018 annual average up by 0.3 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s an increase of about 3% of the U.S. EPA’s annual health standard for PM2.5. Elevated air pollution then showed up in New York and Connecticut through the rest of 2018 and into 2019.
