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Yikes. Science reports that a group of scientists recently discovered that D.C. is plagued by natural gas leaks, so much so that concentrations of methane can reach 50 times normal background levels:

Jackson and his research team suspected aging infrastructure in older cities might also contribute to methane entering the atmosphere. To test the idea, they drove along every street in the District of Columbia and regularly sampled the air, mapping the concentration of methane over a period of 2 months. They found thousands of places with air concentrations significantly above the 2 parts per million background level typically found in cities, with some areas as high as 100 ppm. Although Washington’s residents often joke that the city was built on a swamp, carbon isotope analysis showed that the methane in the air came from fossil fuels, not modern swamp microbes.

By itself methane isn’t a problem, but it can help in the formation of ground-level ozone, which is. The team also found that the natural gas leaks are even more pronounced inside manholes, which explains why D.C. tends to have a lot of manhole explosions—38 a year on average. On Monday, a manhole explosion in Georgetown forced the evacuation of Georgetown Cupcake and led to unconfirmed reports of multiple tween sad faces.

The team isn’t completely sure why D.C. has so many leaks—political pun intended—but they did point to one likely cause: corroded iron pipes.