Fossil Fuel Sites Near Millions of Americans
- Fossil fuels pollute teh air when they are extracted and when they are burned, but the steps between those two points involve far more than familiar scenes of...
- Oil and gas move through several additional stages before reaching power facilities.
- A new analysis led by Boston University researchers provides the first nationwide estimate of how many people live close to this infrastructure.
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Millions of Americans Live Near Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
Table of Contents
Fossil fuels pollute teh air when they are extracted and when they are burned, but the steps between those two points involve far more than familiar scenes of drilling equipment and smoke-filled power plants. These visible operations represent only the beginning and end of a five-stage process that brings fossil fuels from the ground to their final use.
Oil and gas move through several additional stages before reaching power facilities. They are refined to remove unwanted materials, stored in specialized facilities, and transported across the country. These activities form a vast mid-supply chain network that stretches across the United States and often operates out of public view.
Millions Affected
A new analysis led by Boston University researchers provides the first nationwide estimate of how many people live close to this infrastructure. Published in Environmental Research Letters, the study finds that 46.6 million people in the contiguous United States live within 1.6 km (roughly a mile) of at least one component of the fossil fuel supply chain. This accounts for 14.1% of the population.
Health concerns
Previous studies have shown that communities near extraction sites and end-use facilities experience higher rates of adverse birth outcomes and asthma,and there is growing interest in potential links to other conditions,including leukemia. However, the health effects of living near facilities in the middle of the supply chain remain far less understood. Some sites in these stages have been found to emit volatile organic compounds and other harmful pollutants.
“This study helps us get a general size of the potential problem, and really starts the process of doing a better job of understanding exactly what the hazards are and how many people are perhaps exposed,” said Jonathan Buonocore, the paper’s first author, an assistant professor of environmental health at BU’s School of Public Health (SPH), and core faculty at BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS). “Especially for these more obscure pieces of energy infrastructure, this is the first step to tracking what emissions and stressors those are imposing on the communities.”
Exposure by Infrastructure type
The researchers also examined how exposure varies across different types of infrastructure. Here’s a breakdown:
| Infrastructure Type | Approximate Number of Residents Within 1.6 km |
|---|---|
| End-Use Facilities (e.g., Power Plants) | Nearly 21 million |
| Extraction Sites (e.g., Oil & Gas Wells) | More than 20 million |
| Storage Locations | Over 6 million |
| Refining & Transportation Facilities | About 9 million (overlapping with other categories) |
“There is reason to believe that there could be air pollution coming from each of these stages, from consistent pollution, gas leaks, or blowouts, when gas or oil flows from a well uncontrollably,” said Mary Willis, the study’s senior author, an assistant professor of epidemiology at SPH, and core faculty at IGS. “All of these stages can reasonably impact a range of population health outcomes, yet the basic details of who is even near the infrastructure components has not been examined to date.”
Environmental Inequities and Urban Concentration
The stud