Oil & Gas Pollution Linked To 90,000 Premature Deaths A Year In The US

The alleged US government is hellbent on destroying renewable energy as a way of expanding the use of fossil fuels. The administration, led by true believers like Chris Wright, the current Energy Secretary, and Doug Burgum, the current Interior Secretary, likes to pooh pooh climate change. Recently, Wright acknowledged that climate change is happening, but claimed it is far from being the most serious challenge facing the United States. There are lots of other challenges — such as relegating Black and Brown people to their proper places and passing new Jim Crow laws to keep them there.

Perhaps it is time to flip the script. Instead of yammering on about melting ice caps and starving polar bears — concepts that many people seem to have difficulty wrapping their heads around — maybe it is time to put the spotlight on the harm fossil fuels do to people. Here’s a handy example. A study published this week in the journal Science Advances claims that extracting, transporting, refining, distributing, and burning fossil fuels causes at least NINETY THOUSAND premature deaths in the US every year.

Why is that figure capitalized? Because if we just say “90,000,” there would be a tendency to skip right over the number and not internalize what it is telling us. [Editor’s note: As soon as I read it in all caps, I thought, “This is so much more impactful reading it like this. How brilliant of Steve!” —Zach] On September 11, 2001, a little over 3,000 people died in the attack on the Twin Towers. America went into a paroxysm of unfocused rage that cost the US some $3 trillion and saw more than 100,000 Iraqis killed — none of whom had the slightest connection to the horror of 9/11.

Every year, more than 40,000 Americans die in automobile accidents. Even someone with my limited math skills knows that is more than the number of people who died on 9/11, but Americans seem to be impervious to the carnage taking place on the roads. They just buy bigger and heavier vehicles, plant a religious icon on the dashboard, and hope for the best.

Now we know, thanks to this research, that 90,000 Americans — 20 times the number of deaths on September 11, 2001 — go to an early grave because of fossil fuel pollution every year. Perhaps if we seized on that information and publicized it aggressively, it would get people to pay attention to the carnage inflicted by our ongoing love affair with fossil fuels. The current climate change message is not getting through to quite a few people. Perhaps a change in tactics is in order? Here is the abstract to this groundbreaking research:

The United States has one of the world’s largest oil and gas industries, yet the health impacts and inequities from pollutants produced along the oil and gas life cycle remain poorly characterized. Here, we model the contribution of major life cycle stages (upstream, midstream, downstream, and end-use) to air pollution and estimate the associated chronic health outcomes and racial-ethnic disparities across the contiguous US in 2017. We estimate life cycle annual burdens of 91,000 premature deaths attributable to fine particles, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone.

The research finds there are 10,350 pre-term births attributable to fine particulate pollution, 216,000 incidences of childhood-onset asthma cases linked to nitrogen oxide emissions (which have been characterized as subjecting human lungs to sunburn-like conditions), and 1,610 lifetime cancers attributable to hazardous air pollutants.

It clearly illustrates that the burden of fossil fuel pollution falls primarily on non-whites. “Racial-ethnic minorities experience the greatest disparities in exposure and health burdens across almost all life cycle stages. The greatest absolute disparities occur for Black and Asian populations from PM2.5 and ozone, and the Asian population from NO2 and HAPs. Relative inequities are most extreme from downstream activities, especially in Louisiana and Texas.”

The researchers at University College London and the Stockholm Environment Institute are the first to examine the health impacts and unequal health burdens caused by every stage of the oil and gas supply chain, from exploration to end use. “We’ve long known that these communities are exposed to such levels of inequitable exposure as well as health burden,” Karn Vohra, a postdoctoral research fellow in geography at University College London, told The Guardian. “We were able to just put numbers to what that looks like.”

Pollution Is Not An Equal Opportunity Scourge

Their findings show that Indigenous and Hispanic populations are most affected by pollution from exploration, extraction, transportation, and storage; Black and Asian populations are most affected by emissions from processing, refining, manufacturing, distribution, and usage. The clearest example for that last finding is the people in South Memphis who are breathing the detritus issuing from several portable methane generators powering xAI’s data center located in a former Electrolux factory. That neighborhood is predominantly Black.

“What makes the study so valuable is how it dissects health impacts across the whole life cycle of oil and gas – from where it comes out of the ground to where it is combusted,” said Timothy Donaghy. He is the research director for Greenpeace USA and author of previous research on the racially uneven burdens of fossil fuel pollution. “As many studies have found before, these health burdens are not shared equally — a prime example of fossil fuel racism in action.”

“What we found was striking. One in five preterm births and adult deaths are linked to fine particulate pollution from oil and gas,” lead author Karn Vohra, formerly of the University College of London, told The Hill. “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.

Downstream effects have brought particularly dire health issues to Black communities in southern Louisiana — an area known as “Cancer Alley” — and in eastern Texas, the researchers found. The current administration gets apoplectic at the mention of diversity, equality, and inclusion policies, but the bald truth is that such areas have traditionally been “no go” zones for banks and other lenders, a practice known as redlining that has been in use since the 1930s. It has denied Black and other disadvantaged communities access to the capital needed to move away from industrial hot spots or high-traffic roadways. In addition, those communities lack the political power to oppose plans to add more oil, gas, and chemical operations in their neighborhoods.

“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 reported by The Hill. “Our study puts science-backed numbers on just how large these unfair exposures and health outcomes are,” she added.

The data used for the study was collected in 2017, the most recent year for which a complete dataset is available. Because of the passage of time, the researchers stressed that their estimates are likely conservative. US oil and gas production has increased by 40 percent and consumption has risen by 8 percent since then. “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,” they said.

Change The Conversation

Eloise Marais told The Guardian she hoped the study was “picked up by the kinds of community leaders and advocacy groups that are pushing for exposure to cleaner air. If there was a move away from reliance on oil and gas, we would experience the climate change benefits 50, 100, 200 years from today because the greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere so long, but communities would experience the health benefits immediately.”

Reason enough to change the conversation. People have a hard time with abstract thinking, but how difficult is it to comprehend that 90 percent of new childhood asthma cases are linked to nitrogen dioxide pollution from oil and gas operations? Regardless of political orientation, most people will be shocked by that statistic, as well they should be. Forget about starving polar bears; let’s stop damaging the lungs of our children. How hard would it be to get that message across?