Home Gas Test

Unlike asbestos or cigarettes - natural gas invades every part of our lives without our permission. From providing us with comfortable heat, to delivering delicious cooked food and protecting us from the elements of nature's cold fury, to drying our undergarments so we can feel warm and fuzzy. Gas-waste infects us at every level of our lives.

Seeing is believing.

Try this simple test for yourself. In the evening, turn on a gas appliance. Then turn off all of the lights in the room and watch as your gas flame burns. Look for the blue colors. That's methane gas burning. Methane gas makes up most of your natural gas supply and it burns with a blue color.

If there are yellow, orange, green, purple or red colors in your flame - that isn't just methane gas burning. Such colors indicate that something else is burning with the methane. The industry calls them condensates. Your condensates could be Benzene, Toluene, Tar, Oil, Dust, Rust, Gas Odorants or - PCBs. Notice how the colors burst out and jump about. The colored condensates bursting in your flame are some of the hazardous chemicals in your gas.

We know - if your flame isn't a blue color - your burning something mixed with the methane. And those non-methane combustion byproducts coming from the gas company are entering the indoor air.

Natural gas indoor environmental smoke test.

Remove wall pictures and hangings, looking for a shadow behind where the object hung. The shadow is cleaner than the surrounding surface because combustion from gas appliance flames deposits environmental smoke covering everything indoors. Objects hanging on the wall collect the gas smoke and shield the wall. And your breathing this stuff?

Look at the bottom of your pots and pans used on gas appliances. See those dark sooty smudges, that's environmental smoke etched into the metal. These chemicals are so powerful, they eat into the metal surface and can't be removed. Think what they are doing to your lungs.

If you have a fireplace with a gas log insert, look at the black sooty deposits coating the hard ceramic. That's unburned hydrocarbon stains and they don't wash off.

Using a white cloth, wash a section of the wall and ceiling around a gas appliance. Observe the yellow stuff on the white cloth, it's unburned chemicals from your indoor gas appliances.

Gas is still the best energy choice we have. It's cheap, it's plentiful, and it's a commodity fuel that needs to be cleaned up. Unfortunately, we can't rely upon the gas utility to do it for us.

We need help.