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The rapid increase in unconventional natural gas (UNG) development in the United States during the past decade has brought wells and related infrastructure closer to population centers. This review evaluates risks to public health from chemical and nonchemical stressors associated with UNG, describes likely exposure pathways and potential health effects, and identifies major uncertainties to address with future research. The most important occupational stressors include mortality, exposure to hazardous materials and increased risk of industrial accidents. For communities near development and production sites the major stressors are air pollutants, ground and surface water contamination, truck traffic and noise pollution, accidents and malfunctions, and psychosocial stress associated with community change. Despite broad public concern, no comprehensive population-based studies of the public health effects of UNG operations exist. Major uncertainties are the unknown frequency and duration of human exposure, future extent of development, potential emission control and mitigation strategies, and a paucity of baseline data to enable substantive before and after comparisons for affected populations and environmental media. Overall, the current literature suggests that research needs to address these uncertainties before we can reasonably quantify the likelihood of occurrence or magnitude of adverse health effects associated with UNG production in workers and communities.

Background: Birth defects are a leading cause of neonatal mortality. Natural gas development (NGD) emits several potential teratogens, and U.S. production of natural gas is expanding.Objectives: We examined associations between maternal residential proximity to NGD and birth outcomes in a retrospective cohort study of 124,842 births between 1996 and 2009 in rural Colorado.Methods: We calculated inverse distance weighted natural gas well counts within a 10-mile radius of maternal residence to estimate maternal exposure to NGD. Logistic regression, adjusted for maternal and infant covariates, was used to estimate associations with exposure tertiles for congenital heart defects (CHDs), neural tube defects (NTDs), oral clefts, preterm birth, and term low birth weight. The association with term birth weight was investigated using multiple linear regression.Results: Prevalence of CHDs increased with exposure tertile, with an odds ratio (OR) of 1.3 for the highest tertile (95% CI: 1.2, 1.5); NTD prevalence was associated with the highest tertile of exposure (OR = 2.0; 95% CI: 1.0, 3.9, based on 59 cases), compared with the absence of any gas wells within a 10-mile radius. Exposure was negatively associated with preterm birth and positively associated with fetal growth, although the magnitude of association was small. No association was found between exposure and oral clefts.Conclusions: In this large cohort, we observed an association between density and proximity of natural gas wells within a 10-mile radius of maternal residence and prevalence of CHDs and possibly NTDs. Greater specificity in exposure estimates is needed to further explore these associations.Citation: McKenzie LM, Guo R, Witter RZ, Savitz DA, Newman LS, Adgate JL. 2014. Birth outcomes and maternal residential proximity to natural gas development in rural Colorado. Environ Health Perspect 122:412–417; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1306722

BackgroundOil and gas development emits known hematological carcinogens, such as benzene, and increasingly occurs in residential areas. We explored whether residential proximity to oil and gas development was associated with risk for hematologic cancers using a registry-based case-control study design.MethodsParticipants were 0–24 years old, living in rural Colorado, and diagnosed with cancer between 2001–2013. For each child in our study, we calculated inverse distance weighted (IDW) oil and gas well counts within a 16.1-kilometer radius of residence at cancer diagnosis for each year in a 10 year latency period to estimate density of oil and gas development. Logistic regression, adjusted for age, race, gender, income, and elevation was used to estimate associations across IDW well count tertiles for 87 acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) cases and 50 non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) cases, compared to 528 controls with non-hematologic cancers.FindingsOverall, ALL cases 0–24 years old were more likely to live in the highest IDW well count tertiles compared to controls, but findings differed substantially by age. For ages 5–24, ALL cases were 4.3 times as likely to live in the highest tertile, compared to controls (95% CI: 1.1 to 16), with a monotonic increase in risk across tertiles (trend p-value = 0.035). Further adjustment for year of diagnosis increased the association. No association was found between ALL for children aged 0–4 years or NHL and IDW well counts. While our study benefited from the ability to select cases and controls from the same population, use of cancer-controls, the limited number of ALL and NHL cases, and aggregation of ages into five year ranges, may have biased our associations toward the null. In addition, absence of information on O&G well activities, meteorology, and topography likely reduced temporal and spatial specificity in IDW well counts.ConclusionBecause oil and gas development has potential to expose a large population to known hematologic carcinogens, further study is clearly needed to substantiate both our positive and negative findings. Future studies should incorporate information on oil and gas development activities and production levels, as well as levels of specific pollutants of interest (e.g. benzene) near homes, schools, and day care centers; provide age-specific residential histories; compare cases to controls without cancer; and address other potential confounders, and environmental stressors.

We evaluated population size and factors influencing environmental justice near oil and gas (O&G) wells. We mapped nearest O&G well to residential properties to evaluate population size, temporal relationships between housing and O&G development, and 2012 housing market value distributions in three major Colorado O&G basins. We reviewed land use, building, real estate, and state O&G regulations to evaluate distributive and participatory justice. We found that by 2012 at least 378,000 Coloradans lived within 1 mile of an active O&G well, and this population was growing at a faster rate than the overall population. In the Denver Julesburg and San Juan basins, which experienced substantial O&G development prior to 2000, we observed a larger proportion of lower value homes within 500 feet of an O&G well and that most O&G wells predated houses. In the Piceance Basin, which had not experienced substantial prior O&G development, we observed a larger proportion of high value homes within 500 feet of an O&G well and that most houses predated O&G wells. We observed economic, rural, participatory, and/or distributive injustices that could contribute to health risk vulnerabilities in populations near O&G wells. We encourage policy makers to consider measures to reduce these injustices.

The development of natural gas wells is rapidly increasing, yet little is known about associated exposures and potential public health consequences. We used health impact assessment (HIA) to provide decision-makers with information to promote public health at a time of rapid decision making for natural gas development. We have reported that natural gas development may expose local residents to air and water contamination, industrial noise and traffic, and community changes. We have provided more than 90 recommendations for preventing or decreasing health impacts associated with these exposures. We also have reflected on the lessons learned from conducting an HIA in a politically charged environment. Finally, we have demonstrated that despite the challenges, HIA can successfully enhance public health policymaking.

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Oxygenated organic compounds in condensed (-45 O C ) smoke of 29 bench-scale fires of ponderosa pine sapwood, needles, bark, litter, duff, and humus have been identified and quantified under three types of conditions (smoldering, self-sustained smoldering, and flaming). The analyses were performed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and gas chromatography/flame ionization detection. The major condensible emissions were acetic acid, 2-furaldehyde, vinyl acetate, acetol, and methanol. The oxygenated organic emissions have been shown to be dependent primarily on fuel chemistry and secondarily on combustion efficiency. Molar ratios of individual compound emissions to CO emissions have been calculated, and exposure levels to these compounds for wildland firefighters have been estimated based on the ratios. Of the compounds measured, none was projected to exceed a toxic level, except for 2-furaldehyde and vinyl acetate, which are suspected carcinogens.