It’s common, but I wouldn’t call it an everyday occurrence at least, thankfully. A good barometer is actually the guys over at /r/HVAC who are in the field ever

It’s common, but I wouldn’t call it an everyday occurrence at least, thankfully. A good barometer is actually the guys over at /r/HVAC who are in the field every day. Last time there was a thread on this a couple of weeks ago the general consensus was that really bad stuff like emptying of entire compressor units into the atmosphere does happen, but it’s more like a few times per career occurrence to witness rather than a daily or weekly thing. Now it’s probably fair to say that /r/HVAC isn’t a completely representative sample, but at least it gives me a good feeling that the situation probably isn’t as catastrophic as this article indicates (in the states at least, it’s probably worse in Indonesia like in the article’s example)