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New Tool Maps the Health Impacts of Toxic Air Pollutants Released with Methane in Super-Emitter Events

Inside Climate News · By Liza Gross · last updated
When oil and gas infrastructure leaks the potent greenhouse gas methane, it also releases toxic air contaminants that have escaped notice, until now.

By Liza Gross

On a breezy late summer day in the small Colorado town of Fort Lupton, a massive plume of methane escaped from a hydrocarbon storage tank about 200 feet from an RV park. The leak, the second over four days in September 2023, released enough of the potent climate-warming gas per hour to fit the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of a methane super-emitter.