Study: Pollution causing Wyoming health issues

CASPER — Air pollution from oil and gas production is harming Wyomingites’ health, a new study says. 

Researchers from Boston University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, PSE Healthy Energy and the Environmental Defense Fund compared emissions of a trio of pollutants — nitrogen oxide, ozone and fine particulates — to rates of respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalization and childhood asthma in 2016. 

Their peer-reviewed analysis, which was published May 8 in the journal Environmental Research: Health, found that oil and gas activity contributed to 7500 premature deaths, 410,000 asthma attacks and 2200 new childhood asthma cases nationally that year. 

Roughly 13 of those deaths occurred in Wyoming. And about 11,000 children in the state are living with asthma. 

Those numbers pale in comparison to more populous states: Wyoming ranks 37th in total oil-and-gas-related deaths and 33rd in asthma exacerbations. 

But, said Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, “Wyoming does have significant impacts when you look at that per-capita basis, in terms of things like childhood asthma.” 

Upward of 6% of Wyoming residents live within a mile of an oil and gas well, according to the study. 

In 2016, it found, the state ranked 20th in premature deaths per million people and 12th in childhood asthma exacerbations per million people related to the pollutants it tracked. 

“Wyoming has a history of leading on oil and gas air quality rules and regulations,” Goldstein said, pointing to the tightened emissions constraints it imposed on new wells years ago, first in the Upper Green River Basin, where air pollution has proven a particular challenge, and then more broadly. 

“What the state hasn’t done is kind of take the next natural step, which is to apply those sorts of standards to existing wells,” he added. 

Goldstein hopes the proposed federal limits on methane emissions, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first announced over a year ago, will give Wyoming the push it needs to strengthen its own requirements. 

By curbing the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas infrastructure, he said, the industry will effectively also block other, more immediate health hazards from escaping into the air. 

Wyoming’s oil and gas industry, meanwhile, has generally taken the position that the state’s emissions standards are strong enough already and would be overly burdensome if expanded (a stance that environmental groups continue to oppose). 

Ryan McConnaughey, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, emphasized that the study’s focus on 2016 misses out not only on changes to the state’s approach but on technological advancements the industry has adopted since then.

 “Given that it was data from seven years ago,” said Ryan McConnaughey, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, “that only provides a snapshot in time and, and really doesn’t do anything to reflect the reality on the ground.” 

But, he added, “Every source of energy has some sort of impact, and the industry is always working to make sure that we reduce that impact.”