LNG Expansion Brings New Health Risks to Kitimat

Sept. 24, 2025

The project’s fast-tracked second phase would push a key pollutant far above current limits, documents reveal.

Nicknamed the “Eye of Sauron” by Kitimat residents, the flare from LNG Canada frequently engulfs the town in black, hydrocarbon-filled smoke, sometimes reaching the height of a 30-storey building. Last week, a resident reported to city council that his yard has smelled like burnt plastic.

During the city council meeting, an LNG Canada representative assured residents that the worst of these events would be temporary, occurring mostly during startup operations.

But a Tyee investigation has found that even under normal circumstances LNG Canada’s emissions will mean Kitimat residents will be subjected to high levels of nitrogen dioxide — a harmful pollutant that can irritate lung tissues and damage airways — above Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standards.

If the project’s Phase 2 expansion is built, maximum levels will be 43 per cent beyond the guidelines.

And that doesn’t include any future pollution from Cedar LNG, another plant under construction in Kitimat.

“That is very concerning that they are planning to exceed the recommended level,” said Tim Takaro, a physician scientist and a professor emeritus in health sciences at Simon Fraser University, who added that there is no “safe” level of nitrogen dioxide.

And the town already far surpasses health guidelines for sulphur dioxide, another harmful pollutant.

Kitimat is a small town on B.C.’s north coast that sits in a flat mountain-lined valley at the head of the Douglas Channel in the territory of the Haisla Nation. The majority of its population lives a short distance from the vast industrial development along the waterfront.

According to LNG Canada’s modelling, maximum nitrogen dioxide levels will be on the industrial site. But maximum levels in Kitimat’s townsite, the main centre for its population of 8,000, will also breach Canada’s guidelines for the project’s first and second phases.

The excess levels won’t happen constantly, but Takaro said Canada’s current standards are also not conservative, meaning they reflect the point at which the general population is affected.

Vulnerable people, including pregnant people and those with chronic disease, will likely experience effects before that level is crossed, Takaro added.

LNG facilities produce nitrogen dioxide throughout their operations, including during the gas-intensive liquefaction process and during flaring and venting gas from the plant.

They also produce volatile organic compounds, many of which are carcinogenic, particularly benzene, which LNG facilities strip from gas before liquefaction.

Volatile organic compounds combine with nitrogen dioxide to produce ground-level ozone, which can cause serious health problems and environmental damage.

LNG Canada has received its air waste permit for Phase 1 of the project, but its Phase 2 project still requires an air pollution permit from the province to proceed, as would Cedar LNG.

Neither LNG Canada nor Cedar LNG responded to The Tyee’s requests for comment. B.C.’s Environment Ministry did not respond to The Tyee’s request for comment or questions about its plans to address Kitimat’s nitrogen dioxide pollution.

A compromised airshed

An LNG boom is on the way for Kitimat.

So far, the LNG Canada plant makes just a quarter of the LNG it has received approvals for. Its first phase is only halfway complete. Next year, the company expects to decide whether it will double its production through Phase 2, which Canada recently added to its first list of fast-track projects, potentially relieving it from undergoing various permitting processes.

LNG Canada’s pollution disclosure has been patchy.

The company’s unpublished pollution modelling report, obtained by The Tyee, excluded Cedar LNG, which had already received an environmental assessment.

In its public-facing materials, LNG Canada focused on the project’s first phase, which, when excluding Cedar LNG, came just below acceptable levels for nitrogen dioxide.

Since then, Canada has lowered its risk tolerance, meaning even Phase 1 surpasses the guideline. B.C. has yet to adopt Canada’s new guidelines.

In its unpublished report, LNG Canada acknowledged that Phase 2 will result in nitrogen dioxide levels above Canada’s current and former guidelines by a large margin.

In another report, LNG Canada estimated the added pollution effects of its current startup phase and found that maximum nitrogen dioxide levels would be 11 times greater than the levels in Canada’s health guidelines. (While this analysis did not include pollution from Cedar LNG, it did count pollution from the now-cancelled Kitimat LNG.)

That report’s sky-high estimation likely results in part from the fact that gas flaring is substantially higher during LNG startup operations, which aren’t included in B.C.’s environmental assessment process.

But it’s hard to say for certain. While the BC Energy Regulator collects video records of LNG Canada’s flare, it deletes those records every 30 days, meaning there is likely no historic repository of real-time data to track the company’s flaring over time.

Pollution from LNG production can be lessened, but not eliminated, if electric motors are used to liquefy gas instead of gas turbines. Unlike Cedar LNG, which recently received a $200-million subsidy from B.C. to use electricity, LNG Canada plans to use gas turbines in its liquefaction process.

Kitimat’s expanding LNG industry will worsen an already compromised airshed. The town far exceeds health guidelines for sulphur dioxide, another pollutant, largely due to its aluminum smelter. B.C.’s Environment Ministry allowed Rio Tinto, which owns the smelter, to undertake a modernization project without installing technology to reduce pollutants, raising sulphur dioxide emissions by 56 per cent.

“The Kitimat airshed is quite complex,” said Michelle Martins, Kitimat city councillor and co-chair of the region’s Kitimat Airshed Group.

Martins worries about the combined effects of sulphur and nitrogen dioxide pollution, a concern shared by the government in LNG Canada’s unpublished modelling report.

A recent study by Northern Health found Kitimat already has 74 per cent higher rates of asthma than the rest of the province.

The problem with nitrogen dioxide

Nitrogen is Earth’s most abundant atmospheric element, and people and ecosystems need it to survive.

But when nitrogen meets high heat, including during the combustion of fossil fuels, it breaks from its molecular bonds to become “reactive,” soon forming nitrogen dioxide.

Along with bringing risks to lungs and airways, nitrogen dioxide can also accumulate in waterways and leach nutrients from soils. On a large scale, this can lead to biodiversity loss. A recent study identified nitrogen pollution as the third most important contributor to biodiversity loss after land use and climate change.

When combined with water, oxygen and other chemicals including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide can also cause acid rain.

Nitrogen dioxide is also a building block for an even more harmful pollutant, ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone is produced when nitrogen dioxide mingles with volatile organic compounds such as benzene and formaldehyde, which are also byproducts of LNG production. Together with sunlight, heat and oxygen, they form ozone.

“It rusts our body,” said Jeffrey Brook, an expert in air pollution and a professor at the University of Toronto. Ozone wears away at the body, causing it to react with inflammation. Under a certain threshold, the body can withstand some “oxidative stress,” but eventually, and depending on overall health and pre-existing conditions, those immune responses can get overwhelmed, leading to higher mortality and chronic diseases, Brook said.

“It all kind of adds up,” he added. “Like the straw on the camel’s back.”

Ozone ‘scoped out’

LNG Canada successfully avoided tests to model its ozone pollution.

The unpublished report reveals that during the environmental assessment process, former Ministry of Environment air quality specialist Warren McCormick asked LNG Canada to model its effects on ozone production in the future.

In an email thread included in the report, LNG Canada’s consultant Stantec pushed back, arguing that in part because the region had few pre-existing sources of volatile organic compounds — the building blocks of ozone — the issue would be negligible. “Any further pursuit of the ozone issue will detract from the effort to scope this environmental assessment on relevant issues and concerns,” Stantec added. The company did not model future cumulative volatile organic compound levels in the airshed.

The provincial government took Stantec and LNG Canada’s advice, and the ozone assessment was “thereafter scoped out of the EA,” according to the report.

That decision had ripple effects on Cedar LNG, which claimed during its environmental assessment that “ozone was not assessed as it is not directly emitted by Cedar LNG, and little evidence has been shown regarding increased ozone production or that ozone is an issue in Kitimat.”

Takaro told The Tyee he wants to see more analysis.

“They absolutely should be including ozone,” he said, adding that the cumulative effects from Kitimat’s pre-existing industry, increased marine traffic, and new LNG facilities aren’t being properly factored in.

Stantec did not respond to The Tyee’s request for comment about its recommendations to exclude ozone from the company’s modelling.

Because ozone is among the pollutants that respond to heat and sunlight, climate change could also play a role in worsening the impacts.

Martins said the town’s changing climate is already apparent, adding that the region’s usually humid, rainforest environment has been beset by drought and extreme heat.

“We’re dealing with a very different system now,” she said.

More research needed on LNG and health impacts

Relatively little research has been conducted to assess the health impacts of LNG production in Canada.

In the United States, research based on the country’s government air pollutant modelling program has linked pollutants from LNG production to potential cases of asthma, billions in health-care costs and premature death.

A report on the full spectrum of environmental, climate and health impacts of the LNG supply chain led former U.S. President Joe Biden to maintain a moratorium on LNG export permits. Under the Donald Trump administration, that moratorium has now been rescinded.

Kitimat nurse Ankur Patel wants to see a comprehensive analysis of LNG’s full spectrum of impacts, from climate to fracking to LNG production in Canada. He is calling on the government to implement recommendations from a recent open letter from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

So far, Kitimat’s air monitoring stations continue to report generally healthy air.

But Patel hears that residents with respiratory conditions face the consequences of LNG Canada’s flaring events, which sometimes black out the clouds with soot.

Their health conditions are being exacerbated, he said. “More coughing, more difficulty breathing.”

Patel was concerned to hear LNG Canada’s Phase 2, if built, plans to exceed Canada’s nitrogen dioxide emissions.

“That would be quite concerning for me,” he said. 

[Top photo: A flaring stack at the LNG Canada plant in Kitimat. Production there will exceed Canadian guidelines for nitrogen dioxide. Photo via BC Energy Regulator.]