PITTSBURGH — Covering environmental health during an ongoing global pandemic felt tricky at first.
Initially, it felt trite to talk about anything health-related that wasn’t the pandemic when the coronavirus was so obviously the greatest threat to our collective health.
The pandemic is not over — the virus continues to kill hundreds of Americans every day — but as it wears on, it’s become clear that threats to our environmental health exacerbated the pandemic and made us more vulnerable to its impacts.
Research suggests that climate change and habitat loss were likely underlying causes of the pandemic and that exposure to air pollution made people more vulnerable to the virus. Research has also shown links between levels of exposure to certain toxic chemicals and the severity of COVID-19 symptoms.
This year, much of the news shifted focus away from the pandemic, returning to the issues that were put on pause while the COVID-19 virus was all anyone could think or talk about, making it unnecessary to illuminate links to the virus in every news story. But it would be a mistake to stop thinking and talking about these big-picture connections.
Environmental health and vulnerable communities
For a lot of people, 2022 felt like the first “normal” year since 2020. It didn’t for me. My partner has an autoimmune disorder and takes medicine that suppresses his immune system, making him much more vulnerable to the coronavirus and its long-term effects. So while some of our loved ones have resumed going to concerts and parties to celebrate a return to “before times,” we’ve continued doing all those old, familiar 2020 things — wearing N95 masks anytime we’re in public, avoiding large indoor gatherings and ordering takeout instead of eating in restaurants.
What did change for me in 2022 was a deepened understanding of how interconnected the issues that impact our health are — something disability rights activists have spent the entire pandemic raising the alarm about.
The public health response to the pandemic bears many similarities to our response to environmental health issues, many of which disproportionately impact the same people. In both cases, we fail to prioritize the health of these vulnerable groups, despite the fact that 61 million Americans — one in every four of us — lives with a disability, one in every five Americans lives with autoimmune disorders and one in six Americans has a chronic disease.
For example, this year I wrote about a study that found certain types of air pollution particles are significantly more deadly for patients with certain types of lung disease than others, which likely means they’re more dangerous for healthy people, too. Most of our current air pollution standards are geared toward protecting “healthy people,” which means the levels of air pollution that most of us are exposed to on a daily basis create elevated risk for everyone, and potentially life-threatening risks for those of us living with disabilities, autoimmune disorders and chronic diseases.
I also wrote a comprehensive guide to environmental health in western Pennsylvania this year, highlighting the ways our zip codes determine whether we get to be considered safe among the “healthy people” who are expected to be able to withstand the threat of barely mitigated pandemics and pollution, or whether we’re among those who are left to fend for ourselves.
Recognizing these connections illuminates the vastness of our problems, but it also reveals that solutions to one problem can be instrumental in solving many more.
For example, I wrote about a groundbreaking new type of air monitor developed at Carnegie Mellon University that aims to make air pollution monitoring more accurate and equitable, with the potential to revolutionize the way we think about, monitor and regulate air pollution.
I also wrote about a study that found solar power at Pennsylvania schools doubled during the pandemic thanks in large part to student climate advocacy, and about how Colorado passed groundbreaking legislation that will protect its residents from exposure to harmful chemicals used by the oil and gas industry and the pathways Pennsylvania and states can take to do the same.
These stories provide a blueprint for other networks to create meaningful, systemic changes that will make our world more equitable for everyone — not just those deemed healthy enough to be worthy of protection.
In the course of writing it, I learned that these chemicals are so pervasive it’s impossible to shop our way out of this problem as individual consumers — that no matter how healthy or wealthy we are, or how much time we’re able to spend reading product labels, it isn’t possible to avoid near-constant exposure to chemicals that raise our cancer risk.
The only way for any of us to stay safe is to implement policies that keep all of us safe. The good news: There’s a growing, national movement aimed at doing just that. “A New War on Cancer” profiles the people leading this movement and empowers readers to get involved.
We all deserve health protections
It gives me hope that this new movement to fight cancer aims to help everyone simultaneously — it isn’t starting with a “trickle down” model, as so many social movements of previous generations have (See: The LGBTQ comunity’s early exclusion of trans people from legislative efforts, the feminist movement’s history of excluding women of color).
Instead, it starts from the ground up, incorporating the concept of intersectionality, which, at its most basic level, says we can’t have true justice for some without achieving justice for all. In the case of preventing cancer risk from exposure to harmful and ubiquitous chemicals, that’s true on a literal, physical level.
In 2023, I hope to cover more attempts to expand our shared search for safety and wellness that prioritize everyone’s health — not just those deemed “healthy enough” to be worthy of protection.
The study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, analyzed 21 years of data and found over 2,900 extreme wildfire events worldwide.
Wildfires in temperate conifer forests in North America and boreal forests in North America and Russia increased significantly, influenced by climate change.
Extreme wildfires pose significant risks to nearby communities and affect distant regions through smoke and greenhouse gas emissions.
Key quote:
“We’re seeing the manifestations of a warming and drying climate before our very eyes in these extreme fires.”
— Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher in pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania
Why this matters:
As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe, forests that once served as carbon sinks are now becoming tinderboxes. These fires release significant amounts of carbon dioxide, exacerbating global warming in a vicious cycle. The smoky haze that blankets cities miles away from the blazes poses serious respiratory risks, particularly for children, the elderly, and those with pre-existing conditions.
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.”
Heavy rains caused record floods in Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota, surpassing previous records.
Floodwaters collapsed a key railroad bridge and forced evacuations from hospitals and care facilities.
The region experienced extreme rain rates, with predictions of continued flooding as rivers crest.
Key quote:
“Businesses are shuttered, main streets have been impacted. Hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities were evacuated.”
— Kim Reynolds, Governor of Iowa
Why this matters:
The intense flooding disrupts essential services, endangering residents and infrastructure. Climate change is intensifying weather patterns and making extreme events more frequent and severe. For scientists and policymakers, these floods are a clarion call to accelerate efforts in climate adaptation and infrastructure modernization to better protect vulnerable communities.
A deadly heatwave during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia resulted in many deaths, predominantly among unregistered pilgrims who lacked access to cooling facilities.
Temperatures in Mecca exceeded 125°F, causing over 1,300 deaths, mostly among unregistered pilgrims.
Unregistered pilgrims, often swindled by unofficial travel agents, faced denial of access to cooling centers.
Saudi efforts to mitigate heat, such as surface-cooling coatings and misting systems, proved insufficient.
Key quote:
"I can’t breathe and I feel like I’m going to get sunstroke while sitting in the tent. I don’t know where to go."
— Ahmad Bahaa, Egyptian pilgrim
Why this matters:
This disaster is a stark reminder of the escalating impact of climate change on global health and safety. Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and intense, posing severe risks, particularly in regions accustomed to high temperatures but not prepared for such extremes. For Saudi Arabia, a country that has traditionally handled large crowds during the Hajj, the incident calls for a reassessment of strategies to manage environmental hazards and ensure the safety of all pilgrims.
Almost 1,100 critical infrastructure assets in the US face the risk of monthly flooding by 2050, with 934 at risk every other week.
Coastal communities, including California and Florida, need urgent resilience measures or relocations to avoid becoming unlivable.
Disadvantaged communities, with higher proportions of Black, Latino, and Native American residents, are most at risk.
Key quote:
“Failing to prioritize resilience solutions in these communities risks reinforcing the harmful legacy of environmental racism and colonialism in places already grossly underserved and overlooked.”
— Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability at UCS
Why this matters:
Rising sea levels will increasingly threaten homes, schools, and vital infrastructure, especially in marginalized communities. Without urgent action, the frequency and severity of floods will worsen existing social inequalities and force mass relocations.
Despite the rising threat of heat-related illnesses and deaths, the U.S. lacks comprehensive federal regulations to safeguard workers from extreme heat.
In the U.S., heat kills more people annually than tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods combined, particularly affecting outdoor and indoor laborers.
California has recently moved to protect indoor workers, and OSHA is expected to propose new heat protection rules, though they face significant opposition.
Heat exposure can cause systemic inflammation and organ damage, leading to severe health consequences like chronic kidney disease.
Key quote:
"You can be completely hydrated and still have heatstroke."
— Jason Glaser, CEO of La Isla Network
Why this matters:
As climate change intensifies, workers are increasingly vulnerable to heat-related health issues, making it crucial to implement stronger protections to prevent further loss of life and long-term health complications. Read more: We are undercounting heat-related deaths in the US.
The Supreme Court will decide if a key approval for the Uinta Basin Railway project in Utah can be reinstated, affecting local oil transport and production.
“Of all the levels of radium in produced water or brine around the world that I’ve looked at, I have encountered none that are consistently as high as what comes out of the Marcellus Shale.”
