Methane is in violation of Environmental Justice.

May 5, 2021
By Michael Hawthorne

Pollution from natural gas (click here) is now responsible for more deaths and greater health costs than coal in Illinois, according to a new study highlighting another hazard of burning fossil fuels that are scrambling the planet’s climate.

Researchers at Harvard University found that a shift away from coal during the past decade saved thousands of lives and dramatically reduced health impacts from breathing particulate matter, commonly known as soot. But the numbers declined only slightly for gas, another fossil fuel that by 2017 accounted for the greatest health risks.

About half the deaths from soot exposure that year can be attributed to the state’s reliance on gas to heat homes and businesses, the study found. Coal is more deadly only when used to generate electricity.

The alarming findings raise questions about whether Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed transition to a zero-carbon economy would move fast enough in phasing out the use of gas — not only to blunt the impacts of climate change but also to ensure Illinoisans breathe clean air.

Chicago appears to be locked into a gas-dependent future. Peoples Gas is charging its customers $7.7 billion during the next two decades to replace aging distribution lines throughout the city, even though an accelerating shift to renewable energy could make the project obsolete before it’s completed....

Yes, when fossil fuels burn they cause soot. No one ever saw the residuals of gas burning in a stove above the pilot light?

Symposium (International) on Combustion

Volume 15, Issue 1, 1975, Pages 1427-1438

Soot formation in methane-oxygen flames (click here) 

By A.D'Alessio, A.Di Lorenzo, A.F.Sarofim,*F.Beretta, S.Masi, C.Venitozzi

The physical and chemical processes governing soot formation in the burned gas region of an atmospheric, premixed flat CH4/O2 flame have been studied, using scatter and extinction by the flame to characterize particle size and number, and samples withdrawn from the flame to characterize the soot H/C ratio and the concentration of soot, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PCAH) and the principal gas constituents. A range of CH4/O2 ratios of 0.95 to 1.35 was covered. The mean particle size was found to increase with height above the burner from 50above the oxidation zone to 150at 18 mm (∼40 msec) for a CH4/O2 ratio of 0.95, and from 50to 1530for a CH4/O2 ratio of 1.27. Soot deposition was found to persist in the burned gas region, and surface growth rates ranged from 0.8/msec at CH4/O2=0.95 to 4/msec at CH4/O2=1.27. The observed increase in particle diameters was dominated, however, by the coagulation of particles and the coagulation constants deduced from the data ranged from a value that agreed with theory at R=0.95 to a value that was an order of magnitude larger than the theoretical values at R=1.35. The total concentration of PCAH was found to increase continuously with height but the ratio of PCAH to soot decreased. Individual PCAH were found to increase either continuously with height or to pass through a maximum. The H/C ratio in the soot was found to decrease with height from a value of 0.34 to 0.24. Pyrolytic dehydrogenation of the soot samples at 1000°C reduced the H/C values to 0.1.