Air pollution from oil and gas causes 90,000 premature US deaths each year, says new study
Reviewed by Helen Qin
Peer-Reviewed Paper link: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adu2241
News Article link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/22/air-pollution-oil-gas-health-study
Background:
The United States is the top global producer of oil and natural gas (O&G) and emissions from the lifecycle stages of O&G are responsible for over half of "CO, NOx, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, and BC anthropogenic emissions." The four main stages of the O&G lifecycle are upstream ("exploration and extraction"), midstream ("storage and transmission"), downstream (post-extraction processing), and end-use (consumer consumption).
During upstream and midstream stages, the most produced pollutants are the volatile organic compound (VOC) hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) of methane, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and benzene. During end-use stages, these pollutants are also produced as well as CO, NOx, and particulate matter, specifically organic carbon (OC) and black carbon (BC). During downstream stages, SO₂, methane and benzene are most produced. Xylene and toluene, also commonly found in O&G, are precursors of secondary organic aerosol, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), and ground level ozone.1
Peer-Reviewed Paper:
The focus of this peer-reviewed paper is on quantifying the health burdens of PM2.5, NO₂, O₃, and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) of methane, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, xylene and toluene at each life cycle stage of oil and gas across the contiguous United States, identifying the most-affected racial-ethnicities and locations.
The study was done by constructing a unified inventory with pollutant emissions data from 2017, the most recent year where all datasets had reported emissions, for each of the O&G lifecycle stages (with upstream and midstream combined together) and inputting these inventories into a chemical transport model, GEOS-Chem. The resulting modeled ambient surface concentrations of air pollutants were used with health risk assessment models to quantify health burdens, which were analyzed with demographic datasets to identify the racial-ethnicities most burdened.
The main findings of this study include the identification of the locations with ambient air pollution most affected by the O&G lifecycle stages. For the combined upstream and midstream stages, Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Colorado, and the northeast Appalachian basin were most affected. Meanwhile, pollution from downstream stages affected eastern Texas and southern Louisiana the most. The end-use PM2.5 pollution in New Jersey, Connecticut, and District of Columbia was also notably high with annual mean PM2.5 averages of 3 to 4 μg m-3.
Additionally the study found the following quantifications of annual health burdens: "91,000 premature deaths attributable to fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone, 10,350 PM2.5-attributable preterm births, 216,000 incidences of NO₂-attributable childhood-onset asthma, and 1610 lifetime cancers attributable to hazardous air pollutants (HAPs)." For most pollutant-health outcome risks and most lifecycle stages, Texas and California were most burdened.
Finally, the racial-ethnicities with most health burden at O&G lifecycle stages were identified in the study as "Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American groups experience the worst exposures and burdens for all lifecycle stages and pollutants, except end-use MDA8 O₃–attributable mortality." (Maximum daily 8 hour running mean ozone (MDA8) was used for quantification of ozone related health burdens.) For pollution from combined upstream and midstream stages, the Native American and Hispanic population were most burdened. Meanwhile, for downstream stages, Black population were one of the most burdened, and the Asian population was also one of the most burdened for both downstream and end-use stages.
News Article:
A key focus of the peer-reviewed paper was on quantification of the health burdens from these O&G pollutants, and the Guardian news article alludes to this focus with its quote from co-first author Karn Vohra and inclusion of the statistics from the study. The news article also includes the other key points of the study about health burdens from each life cycle stage of O&G and identification of most-affected racial-ethnicities and locations. The news article even draws connection between Louisiana that the study identified as a highly affected location with a link to a a Guardian news article, written a year prior about Ethylene Oxide measurements from February 2023 across southeast Louisiana where the petrochemical industry is prevalent.2 The news article does accurately summarize key points about the methods used in the paper, including a link to one of the datasets used in the study, the National Emission Inventory. However, they did not specify that this study was across the contiguous United States, which is a critical detail.
In the peer-reviewed paper, the authors mention the importance of quantification of health burdens from each stage of the O&G lifecycle (like this study) for informing policymakers, and the news article alludes to this focus with a quote from co-first author Eloise Marais. The article also includes quotations from Timothy Donaghy, linking Donaghy's review paper from 2023 that focuses on the O&G lifecycle impact on public health and inequalities in the United States.3 Donaghy not only provides additional insight on the importance of this study, but also is the research director of Greenpeace USA, an environmental organization and an example of an "advocacy group" that Marais mentioned in their quote. The quotes from Marais and Donaghy in the news article tie in with the article's ending call to action as the author of the news article reflects on the timing of this peer-reviewed paper's publication with the recent administrative direction.
My review of news article:
I would give this news article a score of 9.5/10. The title and sub-title together cover the key focus of the peer-reviewed paper, and the article does a good job summarizing the key points of the peer-reviewed paper without missing most critical details. Additionally, I liked that they included quotations and links to relevant information. Finally, I also liked that they included a critique of changes by the current administration and end with a call to action.
However, the loss points is since they did not link the peer-reviewed article, but they did provide sufficient information to search for the paper with mention of the names of both co-first authors and about the date published. Additionally, they did lack specification of the critical detail that the study was done in the contiguous United States. Finally, I will also note that the news article's explanation for the "disproportionate impacts" and statistic of US O&G production increase from 2017 to 2023 are not from this peer-reviewed paper, and I had difficulty finding sources for this information.
Citations
1) Emissions of C6–C8 aromatic compounds in the United States: Constraints from tall tower and aircraft measurements
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014JD022627#:~:text=Aromatic%20volatile%20organic%20compounds%20(VOCs,et%20al.%2C%202014%5D.
2) Ethylene Oxide in Southeastern Louisiana’s Petrochemical Corridor: High Spatial Resolution Mobile Monitoring during HAP-MAP
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c10579
3) Fossil fuel racism in the United States: How phasing out coal, oil, and gas can protect communities
http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629623001640
Hi Helen, thank you for the in-depth explanation and review of these papers. It is great that the papers address the disparities that are integrated in the subject of air pollution. I am curious though if the papers went further into the health burdens that are described. What forms of health issues do these health burdens take? Do they show up as more respiratory illnesses? How were these health burdens categorized?
ReplyDeleteHi Sydney! Thank you for your great questions. In the paper, the health burdens they had quantified were of PM2.5 attributed non-accidental (age 25+) premature deaths, NO₂ attributed non-accidental elderly (age 65+) premature deaths, MDA8 ozone attributed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) premature deaths, PM2.5 attributed premature births, NO₂ attributed onset asthma for children (age 1-18) and HAP attributed lifetime cancer. In summary, they focused on looking at the health burdens of premature deaths and lifetime cancer as well as the respiratory conditions of COPD and pediatric asthma. The choice of health burden categories likely is due to the available published studies. In the discussion section, they compare their PM2.5 attributed premature mortality burden, MDA8 ozone attributed premature mortality burden, and NO₂ attributed pediatric asthma incidences to the values of other published studies.
DeleteHi Helen. I really enjoyed reading your take on this topic and paper. It's interesting that the paper went into investigating correlations between race and illnesses rather than something like class or time spent outdoors. I'd love to see a more in-depth analysis of the reasons behind the disproportions between the races impacted. Do you think there is a particular reason certain races were more affected by the O&G pollution? I feel it would be very interesting to explore avenues such as how genetics affects different people's reactions to different stages of the O&G life cycle.
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DeleteHi Elizabeth! Thank you for your great questions. Largely, the populations most affected were those that lived near hotspots of pollutants. Additionally, baseline mortality rates of populations in these areas also played a role in the premature death estimate.
DeleteFor example, the Black population that lived in southern Louisiana and eastern Texas is near where downstream PM2.5, NO₂, and ozone gather. Additionally, for premature death quantification, the age-standardized baseline mortality rate (>1600 per 100,000 people) in this location, where the majority population are Black people, contributed to the estimates of health burden they faced. Another example is the benzene hotspots near areas with large Asian population why they were highlighted as most burdened with downstream HAP-attributable exposure and cancers. For MDA8 ozone, the white population had most mortality burden and this may be influenced by the greater COPD baseline mortality rates in this population. Thus, one of the benefits of this study is to help inform policymakers by identifying the areas and populations most affected and showing quantifications of the health burdens to highlight benefits of pollutant reduction.
The paper does mention there being epidemiological evidence for differing vulnerabilities by racial-ethnicity, but with their asthma disparity analysis, for example, the estimates from this study do not account for these baseline variances since the risks are not quantified for many of the subgroups of this study.
I agree with you and also think the news article did an excellent job of articulating key findings from the study by highlighting numerical data and quotes from the authors. It was long enough to include valuable data, but short enough that the information in it is easy to understand. The last paragraph in particular is an excellent call to action because it advocates for the long-term and short-term benefits of reducing oil and gas consumption.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I disagree with in your analysis is that in my opinion, both the news article and peer-reviewed paper explain why oil and gas pollution disproportionately impacts historically marginalized communities. Both discuss redlining and its connection to environmental racism.
Hi Caroline! Thank you for your great comment. I agree that the news article and peer-reviewed paper both explain the disproportionate impacts on racial-ethnic groups well.
DeleteWhen I was writing my blog post, my specific critique was about the news article's statement of " the high rates of permitting for oil and gas processing plants in close proximity to Black communities" as I was looking for an example of more specific information about how and who had permitted such high rates of oil and gas plants near communities. I was able to find the paper, "Discriminatory outcomes of industrial air permitting in Louisiana, United States" (linked below), that has the details I was looking for as an example that focuses on the role of state regulators.
However, it was a bit more difficult to find since this information was not available in further detail beyond red-lining within the peer-reviewed paper (that the news article did not link) or mentioned within Timothy Donaghy's paper on fossil fuel racism that the news article did link. This paper was rather within the references of Donaghy's paper.
While it is not the most critical to the news article's depiction of the peer-reviewed paper, I felt that it would have made the news article richer if they included slightly more detail about how these high rates are permitted, and it would tie well with their call to action for the public to understand how these circumstances are allowed to happen. Thus, I did not account for this in my scoring of the news article but wanted to include this comment within my review.
Discriminatory outcomes of industrial air permitting in Louisiana, United States
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667010022002281
Great job! This was a super interesting paper, especially with the push for more fossil fuels and resource extraction in the current climate. For me, I'm really curious about how Alaska and Hawaii would fit into this dataset since Alaska produces a lot of oil and Hawaii is probably one of the cleaner states. It's interesting that data from these states aren't included even though their native populations are lumped in with other races.
ReplyDeleteThe study also does a great job breaking down the life cycle of O&G stages, but do you think it would be worth expanding the study to further break down some of the stages, particularly end-use? It might be limited by the model, but "end-use" is a very broad term that spans a lot of sectors for these petroleum products.
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DeleteHi Anthony! Thank you for your great question. I agree that further study, especially of the end-use stage, would be very interesting since end-use air pollution was the stage causing most health burden in this study as well at 96% of total incidences across the states studied. The peer-reviewed paper does also mention that there have been past studies to quantify the health burdens from O&G air pollution for a single lifecycle stage.
DeleteHi Helen, great post! I was wondering if the peer-reviewed article mentioned why their study only focused on the lower 48 states? I know that Alaska has a lot of oil and gas drilling activity. I think it would have been interesting to see how large of a burden this has on human health in the state, and how it compares to states like Texas and Pennsylvania, which also extract large volumes of fossil fuels. Maybe a future study could include Alaska and Hawaii?
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis! I really liked that this study did not only look at mortalities as many of the other studies we've looked at in class so far have. I hadn't previously considered that there would be so many pollutants coming from oil and gas after they had been extracted. The spread is very large for some of the chemicals on the end-use maps in particular. I wonder what is being done to mitigate the human health effects of these pollutants from the end-use exposure that affects large amounts of the population.
ReplyDeleteHi Helen, you did a good job of clearly explaining the health impacts associated with each stage of the oil and gas lifecycle. However, one question I had after reading the article is: Did the study account for or control for potential confounding factors—such as other industrial emissions or traffic pollution—in the regions identified as most affected, particularly in places like southern Louisiana or the Northeast?
ReplyDeleteHi Helen, I agree with your assessment of the news article and the rating. It gives readers an adequate slice of the research while also contextualizing the issue with current governmental policies. I was intrigued by the issue presented in the paper and like how it really dove into specific regional challenges which disproportionately affect certain ethnicities. I was curious in particular about the air pollution from upstream and midstream processing. Did the paper share whether more deaths were attributed to that type of processing or to end-use emissions? Also, I am curious whether oil and gas companies purposefully station their extraction and processing plants in places where they know will harm the less fortunate, in order to protect their business model. Great work on this!
ReplyDeleteHi Kevin! Thank you for your great questions. The paper does share that end-use air pollution caused the most health burden, responsible for 96% of total incidences across the states studied. For premature deaths, the end-use pollutants were attributed with "~94% of O&G lifecycle PM2.5-attributable deaths, ~96% of NO2-attributable deaths, ~90% MDA8 O3–attributable COPD deaths."
DeleteHi Helen, great job! I was a big fan of the news article you chose-- I agree that they did a great job with their communication of information. I was particularly fond of their inclusion of the methodology behind the authors' results. The news article was phenomenal with their distillation of the complicated methods behind the results. I think that during our time where public trust in science has eroded, it is so incredibly important for news articles that communicate science to explain how results were found. Without some understanding of how results were found, those without knowledge of science have little more to go on than trust. By explaining how the findings here were determined, the authors do a great job of making science more accessible and trustworthy to the public.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the paper, I found it incredibly interesting that downstream processes contribute so minimally to overall emission concentrations. Is this a result of upstream and end-use stages having such massive emission profiles? Thereby making the downstream emissions appear "small" in comparison though in reality they are significant? Are downstream processes generally "cleaner" than upstream ones? Could this be a reflection of efficiency in each process? I would be fascinated to understand some of the underlying causes behind this result.
Hi Helen!
ReplyDeleteGreat job on the analysis of this article! The last quote in this news article is quite impactful in my opinion-
“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,” she said. “But communities would experience the health benefits immediately.”
In one of the earlier lectures from class, we discussed how mitigating emissions and the ozone hole is ultimately done to reduce human suffering and negative health impacts.
In your opinion, how might shifting the conversation about reducing O&G emissions and moving toward renewable energy away from climate disputes and toward the very real health impacts of pollution help the general public think differently about the urgency of this transition when it is framed as preventing human suffering rather than as a political debate?
Wonderfully descriptive post, Helen! I appreciated the definitions provided of the O&G Lifespans, which provided a good precursor to understanding the figure included. I find it shocking that so many tens of thousands of premature deaths can be linked to different pollutants from O&G. I also appreciated that both the study and you included the disproportionate impact that the pollution has on racial minorities. I think further studies on not just O&G from broad states but more localized regions and their impacts on different socioeconomic level populations would be fascinating.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to hear that HAP can cause cancer I never knew that before and to have caused hundreds to thousands of it is kind of shocking. Although I agree the article in general did a pretty good job of summarizing and the statistics from the research paper, I find it quite obtuse to use more data from a different study and not to mention or quote the source. It implies that they are either pulling that information from nowhere or are trying to make you think the author of the paper you looked at said it. I think this can be very problematic and was a problem in many papers I looked at while trying to find the one I would use. That being said still a pretty good article overall and the call to action was definitely needed and appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very good summary of the article. I think you do a good job talking about what the news article and the scientific paper had to say about the issue. I thought it was particularly interesting that the article talked about how air pollution disproportionately affects certain racial groups and how inequalities contribute to air pollution deaths. I also appreciated your explanation of what upstream, midstream, downstream, and end use meant. One thing I wish the article had done was include the maps that are shown in the study, but this is not a huge issue for me.
ReplyDelete