As the nation’s oil and gas output reaches record highs, new research shows that the harms from this boom go well beyond cranking up global temperatures.
According to the study, published in May in Environmental Health Research, air pollution from fossil fuel production alone kills 7,500 people a year in the U.S., while exacerbating 420,000 existing asthma cases and triggering 2,200 new incidences of childhood asthma. Health damages from the three air pollutants studied — ozone, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter — carry an annual price tag of $77 billion.
Past research into the health risks of oil and gas has mainly looked at major combustion sources such as power plants and motor vehicles, Jonathan Buonocore, a public health researcher at Boston University and the study’s lead author, told Environmental Health News (EHN). “Nobody's looked at the health impacts of extraction,” he said. “So I decided to do that, and lo and behold, they weren't small.”
For years, the fossil fuel industry has touted natural gas — which is mainly composed of methane — as a safer “bridge fuel” between coal and renewable energy. “There's been a lot of people talking about the health benefits of the coal to gas transition in the power sector,” Buonocore said. This study suggests these health benefits have been overblown.
In the next few years, however, communities downwind of oil and gas production sites may begin to breathe easier. Proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, expected to be finalized next fall, aim to cut methane and other air pollutants from hundreds of thousands of oil and gas operations across the country. The agency expects that, by 2030, this rule will cut methane from these sources by 87% compared to 2005 levels.
Health impacts from oil and gas production
The Murphy oil drill site in South L.A. contains 22 active oil and gas wells and 7 injection wells. Credit: Nīa MacKnight
Oil and gas production sites are laced with invisible leaks. Methane and other air pollutants seep from wells — both active and inactive — and from equipment. The foul-smelling gas nitrogen dioxide, which forms when fossil fuels are burned, emanates from the flares used to burn off excess gas in oil deposits.
Methane isn’t particularly harmful on its own, but when it mingles with nitrogen oxide, heat and sunlight, it turns into ozone, the main component of smog. While ozone is beneficial high up in the atmosphere, where it shields the planet from damaging radiation, it acts as a powerful oxidizing chemical in our lungs, inflaming airways, triggering asthma attacks and aggravating chronic respiratory diseases. Long-term exposure is linked to low birth weights, diabetes and neurological disorders such as stroke and dementia. Infants and children, pregnant people and the elderly are particularly susceptible.
Fine particulate matter — formed from the combustion of oil, coal and gas, and from chemical interactions between nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants — is also a major air toxic. “Globally, this is the largest health risk in terms of air pollution,” Sarav Arunachalam, an atmospheric chemist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and one of the study’s authors, told EHN. An estimated8.7 million people die prematurely every year from outdoor exposure to fine particulate matter, which carries many of the same health hazards as ozone. These minute particles, less than 1/30th the width of a human hair, are small enough to penetrate into the lungs and bloodstream, where they can kill via heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular events.
Drifting oil and gas pollution
For the study, the team ran EPA emissions data through computer models that simulate the chemical interactions of air pollutants, where they travel, and their effects on local communities. Predictably, ozone and other toxics are highest near their source, that doesn’t mean that places farther afield face no risks. “There were so many health impacts in areas downwind,” Buonocore said. This type of pollution are long-lived, and can ride atmospheric currents for hundreds of miles. “It’s regional,” It will stay in the air for two weeks.”
Cities including New York, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago caught the drift from oil and gas production, the study found. On a state scale, Illinois had the sixth highest risk, despite the fact that it produces very little oil and gas compared to the five most impacted states — Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
Karn Vohra, a public health researcher at University College London who was not involved in the study, told EHN that he was most concerned by the study’s finding that the health costs of oil and gas extraction outweighed the climate costs by a factor of five to seven. This research, Vohra said, “is an important piece of the puzzle to allow quantification of the health burden of the complete oil and gas lifecycle and inform policy.”
Despite the study’s alarming findings, the true damage to residents’ lungs and longevity may be even greater. The team looked at data from 2016, the most recent year available, which does not capture the recent boom in U.S. oil and gas development, Buonocore said. In addition, some data is likely undercounted. In Pennsylvania, for example, the EPA lists 72 compressor stations, although the state government permitted hundreds in 2013 and 2016.
“My guess is going to be that by and large, the emissions inventory going into this whole thing is pretty underestimated compared to the reality of what's on the ground,” Buonocore said.
Tackling methane at the source
The EPA’s proposed standards could cut an estimated 36 million tons of methane between 2023 and 2035 — the equivalent of cutting all greenhouse gasses emitted by the country’s coal-fired power plants in 2020. The new rules include regular leak inspections at well sites, emissions standards for compressors and other machinery, and the use of satellites to detect methane plumes. Per the EPA, “studies show that large leaks from a small number of sources are responsible for as much as half of the methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry.”
Jon Goldstein, the senior director for regulatory and legislative affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, told EHN that while he was largely satisfied with the proposal, “one piece of the puzzle that we're hoping will get addressed … is the issue of flaring.” Flares, he explained, hammer the climate on two fronts. Inefficient flares leak methane, which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at heating the atmosphere, and is responsible for one-third of current planetary warming. Efficient flares convert most of their methane into CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, compared to methane’s 10- to 20-year lifespan. “The best way, we think, to address that problem is just to stop sending so much gas to flares in the first place,” Goldstein said. (Goldstein was not involved in the study, but an Environmental Defense Fund researcher was among the authors.)
Given how long greenhouse gasses persist in the atmosphere, it can take years, even lifetimes, for the benefits of climate policies to be felt. In contrast, said Arunachalam, “the air quality effects are immediate.” Shut down the sector, he said, and new and exacerbated cases of asthma due to these pollutants would swiftly come to a halt.
This study comes on the heels of other recent research into the health risks of oil and gas use. Another new report, co-authored by Arunachalam, found that roadway emissions of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter are responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths every year in the U.S., with minority communities bearing the brunt of the pollution. A 2022 study found that 13% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. are directly tied to gas stoves.
The ubiquity of lung-damaging pollution along the oil and gas supply chain is another argument in favor of phasing out fossil fuels. But until the country transitions to renewable energy, “we don't want to see these health impacts continue at the rate that they are right now,” Goldstein said. “We need to tighten up the standards to protect people in the meantime.”
Texas refineries, however, still have some work to do.
HOUSTON — The number of U.S. oil refineries exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action level for benzene in 2023 was cut in half compared to 2020, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project.
In 2023 just six refineries were above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s average annual “action level,” compared to 12 back in 2020. The level, which is nine micrograms per cubic meter and was set in 2015, serves as a standard that requires corrective action if the concentration of benzene at a facility exceeds it. Corrective measures include determining the root cause of the emissions and then mitigating the pollution. The 2015 benzene standard also required fenceline monitoring for benzene to be finalized by 2018 at several refineries and chemical plants.
Benzene is a cancer-causing compound found in oil, gas and petroleum products. Long-term exposure can also cause various blood disorders and reproductive harm. Short-term exposure can result in headaches, dizziness and respiratory irritation.
Environmental groups lauded the findings.
“Requiring companies to publicly disclose their fenceline monitoring results and to find and fix benzene pollution sources appears to be working,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, in a statement. “Although we and others are sometimes critical of EPA, this is an example of a success story of regulations working to help to protect neighborhoods near refineries from a dangerous pollutant.”
However, it’s not all good news. Houston, the “energy capital of the nation,” hosts one of the six remaining refineries exceeding the EPA’s benzene standards. The Houston-area Pemex (formally Shell) Deer Park Refinery is exceeding the standard more than any of the other remaining refineries and its annual emissions increased to 17.3 micrograms per cubic meter in 2023 — nearly double the EPA’s action level. The levels have been rising over the past two and a half years, according to fenceline data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project.
“Let's not forget communities that are still suffering from the effects of high benzene levels, such as Deer Park and Galena Park in the Houston area, as well as others nationwide. We must continue to take further strides and actions to provide support to these communities,” said Juan Flores, community air monitoring program manager for Air Alliance Houston, a local nonprofit dedicated to cleaner air, in a statement.
Another Texas refinery — the Total Refinery in Port Arthur — exceeded the EPA’s action level “every reporting period since monitoring began in January 2019,” according to the Environmental Integrity Project report.
“Requiring companies to publicly disclose their fenceline monitoring results and to find and fix benzene pollution sources appears to be working." - Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project
The report authors did note that the decrease in refineries exceeding the action levels does not account for a few refineries that have onsite monitoring plans that adjust their benzene readings downward if there are known offsite sources — or onsite sources like storage tanks — contributing to the emissions.
In addition to the benzene rule, the EPA in April expanded fenceline monitoring rules for more than 200 chemical companies. The EPA says the rule — created under the Clean Air Act and focused on six pollutants including ethylene oxide, chloroprene, benzene, 1,3-butadiene, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride — will reduce toxic air pollution near these plants by roughly 6,200 tons annually, protecting the health and reducing the cancer burden of nearby residents.
“With the success of the benzene monitoring program, hopefully this expansion of fenceline monitoring will mean that even more industrial facilities will feel pressure to curb their emissions of dangerous air pollutants into surrounding communities,” said Schaeffer.
For additional information on benzene levels, the Environmental Integrity Project launched a database including fenceline monitoring data from 2018 through 2023.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
PITTSBURGH — Environmental justice advocates gathered last week to celebrate progress and chart a path to the future while focusing on healing, self care and mental health.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Environmental Justice Summit highlighted the need for self-care and connection among researchers and advocates working to advance justice. Exposure to pollution and anxiety about climate change can negatively impact mental health and people who work to right injustices face the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout.
“Advancing justice is emotionally difficult work,” Dani Wilson, executive director of the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which coordinated the event alongside the University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. “Taking care of ourselves and each other is critical to fostering moments of joy and connection that help us stay in the movement.”
Over three days, attendees strategized about how to advance environmental justice in the greater Pittsburgh region and how to foster resilience with tools like meditation, storytelling, community-building, yoga, crafting and cooking. The event also highlighted the importance of humor, connection and optimism.
“This is a social movement,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the nonprofit think tank UrbanKind Institute and newly-appointed director of the Department of City Planning for Pittsburgh. “That means that as part of this work, we’ve gotta have fun with our friends. We’ve gotta stay connected and be able to laugh.”
On Friday, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, set the tone for the day by declaring himself a “hardcore Steelers fan” and waving a Terrible Towel above his head while shouting “Go Steelers!”
Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, waves a terrible towel at the EJ Summit Pittsburgh.
Credit: John Altdorfer, courtesy of the Cancer and Environment Network of SWPA
Wilson peppered an otherwise serious talk about the ravages of environmental racism and his work developing tools to combat it with football jokes, referencing recent quarterback drama (“two quarterbacks are better than one!”), emphasizing the importance of both offense and defense for communities burdened by pollution and quipping that if we want to score a touchdown, the community needs to work as a team.
“Where you live can kill you,” Wilson said, noting that poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods in most places, including southwestern Pennsylvania, face higher levels of exposure to pollution that result in worse health outcomes and lowered life expectancy. These places are also more likely to experience the impacts of climate change and other disproportionate harms.
“We need a holistic framework for environmental justice that also acknowledges the need for housing justice, economic justice, social justice, educational justice, reproductive justice and racial justice,” he said, “because these things are all connected. And you can’t get equity without justice… And on a separate note, we’re going to the Super Bowl this year, right?”
Environmental justice victories
EJ Summit attendees show off their artwork.
Credit: Stephanie Ciranni, Cancer Bridges
Other speakers shared recent victories and progress.
Professor Tiffany Gary-Webb, the associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, shared the results of her work with the Black Environmental Collective and the Black Equity Coalition. The group formed in April 2020 to ensure an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pittsburgh and has evolved to continue advancing racial equity in western Pennsylvania.
“We used data to try and understand where there were higher rates of COVID and sent those to the county and state health departments. We talked to elected officials and put out our own dashboard with the numbers for Black populations, and through those efforts we were able to get critical resources to our communities and see that data change,” Gary-Webb said, pointing to a study that summarized the group’s effectiveness. “Now we’re continuing that work with a focus on other issues in our communities.”
Ash Chan, a farmer and steward at Oasis Farm and Fishery, shared their experience working at a Black-owned garden and market in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black, working-class Homewood neighborhood, which has a long history of disinvestment and has been without a grocery store since 1994. The organization uses vacant land to grow food and offers classes in urban farming and healthy cooking.
“We see food as a driver of social and economic capital, as well as a way that connects people to their cultural roots and their natural environment,” Chan said. “We’re growing what folks want. For example, last year we noticed that elders in the community would line up for okra before we even opened our farmer’s market …so this year we’re growing six different kinds of okra based on that demand.”
Bearing witness to injustice
Kayien Conner (left) and Melanie Meade (right) at the EJ Summit.
Credit: John Altdorfer, Cancer and Environment Network of SWPA
While the Summit highlighted progress and promoted resilience, it also emphasized “bearing witness” — a process described by event organizers as actively listening, not looking away, and most importantly, responding — to “the slow violence of environmental degradation on our land.”
Participants were invited to attend a “bearing witness ceremony” in Clairton, a small town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh that regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country due to emissions from a coal-based U.S. Steel plant.
“The injustices are very thick and very brutal in Clairton,” said Melanie Meade, a clean air activist and resident of Clairton. Meade shared the heartbreak she has experienced learning that Clairton’s rate of childhood asthma is more than double the national rate, watching many loved ones die of cancer and witnessing the impacts of poverty and violence. “The people are tired and they are sick and they are in great need, and we need to stand in the way for them.”
Later in the day, Kayien Conner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, told Melanie she’d been moved by her words and asked if she could connect her with an organization she’s involved with that offers mental health resources for Black communities to get additional resources to Clairton.
“Yes, please, thank you!” Melanie said.
“See? We’re here making connections, collaborating, getting this work done already!” Wilson shouted to applause and laughter.
Political optimism
Bearing witness ceremony in Clairton, Pennsylvania.
Credit: Dani Wilson
Speakers at the symposium also noted that western Pennsylvania is on the precipice of major political changes that offer many reasons for optimism for environmental advocates, pointing to the election of progressive politicians like Summer Lee and Lindsay Powell and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom have pledged to prioritize environmental justice.
“We’re really shaking things up politically right now,” said Bey. “If we don’t do this now, then that’s on us. Now is the time. Let’s keep lifting each other up, let’s do our work and let’s get this done.”
The Biden administration will end new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, the largest coal-producing region in the U.S.
Climate activists celebrate the decision, which could prevent billions of tons of coal from being mined.
Critics, including Republican lawmakers and mining groups, argue it will harm local economies and energy security.
Key quote:
“The nation’s electricity generation needs are being met increasingly by wind, solar and natural gas. The nation doesn’t need any increase in the amount of coal under lease out of the Powder River Basin.”
— Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
A recent FERC initiative aimed at modernizing the U.S. power grid has intensified partisan disagreements, threatening bipartisan efforts for a comprehensive permitting overhaul.
Democrats praise the rule for promoting renewable energy expansion, while Republicans criticize it for potential hikes in energy costs.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggests legislative efforts on transmission are unlikely to proceed due to the political landscape.
Despite these tensions, some Democrats continue to advocate for further legislative actions to address climate goals.
Key quote:
"North Dakotans are used to being the backbone of an affordable and reliable grid, but this rulemaking will force my constituents into the unaffordable and unreliable grid Democrats dream about."
— Senator Kevin Cramer, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Why this matters:
This rule sits at the heart of a conversation about how America balances immediate economic challenges with long-term environmental and health goals. The partisan debate affects policy and economic landscapes and carries significant implications for public health. Transitioning to renewable energy has the potential to reduce air pollution, a major health hazard linked to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and represents a pivotal shift in how environmental health is approached in the United States.
Rep. Jamie Raskin is demanding details from oil industry leaders about a reported meeting with Donald Trump, where deregulation promises were allegedly exchanged for campaign donations.
The inquiry involves letters sent to companies like ExxonMobil after claims Trump offered regulatory rollbacks for $1 billion in campaign support.
According to a spokesperson, the American Petroleum Institute engages with various political figures, emphasizing industry topics like energy security.
Raskin's letters cite concerns over potential ethical and legal violations stemming from the reported promises of policy changes for donations.
U.S. Steel’s proposed sale to Nippon Steel stokes concerns over labor rights and national security, all while the company continues to break clean air laws in Western Pennsylvania.
The Murphy oil drill site in South L.A. contains 22 active oil and gas wells and 7 injection wells. Credit: Nīa MacKnight
