Kingston Refrigerants Management Plan and inventory

Refrigerants are all around us. They help keep our homes comfortable and our food fresh, and as long as they stay sealed inside equipment or special pressurized tanks, they don’t hurt anybody. But when they escape to the atmosphere, many refrigerants act like climate superpollutants. For example, a single pound of the common refrigerant R410A when released to the atmosphere has the same greenhouse gas impact on a 20-year time frame as 4,715 pounds of carbon dioxide. (This is equivalent to the emissions from driving a vehicle that gets a measly 23 miles per gallon from the Hudson Valley to Phoenix AZ – and back!) A single pound of R22 would have the same impact as emitting 5,690 pounds of carbon dioxide.