Hundreds of thousands of old oil and gas wells are spread across Pennsylvania, and some could be leaking harmful chemicals into the atmosphere and groundwater.

This is the warning of research led by Penn State geochemists who surveyed 18 abandoned wells in and near the Allegheny National Forest to find they were causing harm from being left uncapped, exposed to air and erosion and breaking down.

“We found abandoned oil and gas wells were leaking methane into groundwater, creating hazardous changes to water quality,” study author Samuel Shaheen of University of Minnesota, who completed his geosciences doctorate at Penn State, told Newsweek .

The researchers also discovered some of the sites’ groundwater showed high concentrations of dissolved iron and arsenic. Methane—a powerful greenh

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