ASSOCIATED PRESS • October 13, 2023
Refrigerants leaking out of an air conditioning system, they are highly destructive to the Earth’s sensitive atmosphere. They’re “the most potent greenhouse gases known to modern science,” as one research paper put it and they’re growing fast. One of the most common ones, with the unfriendly name R-410A, is 2,088 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide, which comes from burning coal and gasoline. So an essential way that people are staying cool is making the world hotter and more unstable. The need to minimize refrigerant leaks has spurred a reuse and reclamation industry. Refrigerants can be used many times over and can last for 30 years. Refrigerant that cannot be reused goes through a very high-temperature process called pyrolysis so the gases are destroyed. Business is booming.