Air pollutants from U.S. oil and gas operations are causing 91,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of health issues each year — with racial and ethnic minority populations bearing the biggest burden, a new study has found.
The outdoor contaminants, which include fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone, take the biggest toll on Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic groups, according to the study, published Friday in Science Advances.
While the U.S. has one of the world’s largest oil and gas industries, the associated air pollutants and health impacts have thus far been poorly characterized, the study authors noted. As such, they sought to quantify severe outcomes like asthma, preterm birth and early death — as well as where these effects take place.
“What we found was striking: one in five preterm births and adult deaths linked to fine particulate pollution are from oil and gas,” lead author Karn Vohra, formerly of the University College of London, said in a statement.
“Even more concerning is that nearly 90 percent of new childhood asthma cases tied to nitrogen dioxide pollution were from this sector,” added Vohra, who is now at the University of Birmingham.
To make these determinations, the scientists harnessed advanced computer models to map air pollution from oil and gas activities and associated racial-ethnic disparities across the contiguous U.S. in 2017.
The researchers also separated the contaminants generated in each major stage of the fossil fuel “lifecycle”: exploration and drilling (upstream); compression transport and storage (midstream); refinement or conversion into petrochemical products (downstream); and consumer end-use.
Ultimately, they were able to attribute the annual lifecycle burdens of 91,000 premature deaths to a combination of PM 2.5, NO2 and ozone emissions. The scientists also linked 10,350 preterm births to PM 2.5 exposure, 216,000 incidences of childhood-onset asthma to NO2, and 1,610 lifetime cancers to a mix of hazardous air pollutants.
The end-use stage — which include petroleum and gas uses, such as refueling, in the residential, industrial and commercial sectors — contributed the greatest detrimental health burden, accounting for 96 percent of total related incidents, according to the study.
The five states with the overall greatest burden from all stages, the researchers found, were many of the most populated places: California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
But racial-ethnic minorities exhibited gaping disparities in exposure and health burdens across almost all lifecycle stages, the scientists observed. Native American and Hispanic populations were more affected by upstream and midstream stages, while Black and Asian groups endured greater impacts in the downstream and end-use stages, per the study.
Downstream effects have brought particularly dire health issues to Black communities in southern Louisiana — also known as “Cancer Alley” — and in eastern Texas, the researchers noted.
Much of the disparate impacts stem from legacy housing practices, including “redlining” policies that forced certain populations to live near industrial hotspots or high-traffic roadways, according to the study.
“These communities are already aware of this unjust exposure and the disproportionately large health burdens they experience,” senior author Eloise Marais, a geography professor at the University College of London, said in a statement.
“Our study puts science-backed numbers on just how large these unfair exposures and health outcomes are,” Marais added.
These health burdens may also be traversing borders — with the scientists linking 1,170 early deaths in southern Canada and 440 in northern Mexico to U.S. oil and gas pollution.
Recognizing that the data was collected in 2017 — the most recent complete dataset available — the researchers stressed that their estimates are likely conservative. U.S. oil and gas production, they explained, surged by 40 percent and consumption rose by 8 percent by 2023.
“Although our health burden results are overall conservative, these provide a foundation for future studies that could further refine quantification of disparities to support civil, community, and regulatory action,” the authors concluded.
