Flares cited in premature births
Study of Eagle Ford region finds risk increases to 50 percent
The practice of burning excess natural gas during drilling operations significantly increases the risk of premature births for mothers living nearby, according to an analysis of births in the South Texas region encompassing the Eagle Ford Shale.
When done in high amounts, the practice, known as flaring, was associated with a 50 percent greater chance of preterm birth compared to women with no exposure, according to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California Los Angeles. Researchers analyzed more than 23,000 births in the Eagle Ford region between 2012 and 2015.
The study was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed Environmental Health Perspectives journal.
“It’s a pretty large effect,” said Lara Cushing, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health and one of the authors. “It’s on par with what you see for moms who smoke during pregnancy compared to moms who don’t.”
A high amount of flaring was defined as 10 or more nightly flare events within three miles of the pregnant woman’s residence. Using satellite observations, researchers estimated that more than 43,000 flaring events occurred in the Eagle Ford region between 2012 and 2016.
Flaring releases chemicals including benzene, fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that contribute to cli
mate change and have been linked to harmful human health effects.
The practice of flaring increased with the fracking boom as companies drilling for more lucrative oil sought to get rid of the cheaper natural gas that comes out of the ground with the crude. Without pipeline capacity to get the gas to market, oil companies sought and received permission from Texas regulators to burn it away.
Oil companies operating in the Permian Basin of West Texas burned a record $750 million worth of natural gas in 2018, or 238.1 billion cubic feet, according to a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonpartisan group in Ohio that researches industry trends.
The Texas Railroad Comabout mission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the state, recently said it would curb the practice. In June, regulators said they would consider policies to “drastically reduce” flaring.
Industry groups have acknowledged environmental problems with natural gas flaring and supported steps to reduce it. In March, the American Petroleum Institute applauded the formation of the Texas Methane and Flaring Coalition, an industry-led group to minimize methane emissions and flaring.
The Texas Oil and Gas Association, a trade group, said it could not comment because it had not seen the study. “We cannot make observations about a study we have not had an opportunity to review,” said Haley Emerson, a spokesperson.
Hispanic women’s risk
Of the births analyzed by USC and UCLA researchers,
11 percent were preterm (occurring before the 37th completed week of pregnancy). Premature babies tend to have higher rates of complications such as immature lungs and difficulty regulating body temperature.
When analyzing the data by race and ethnicity, researchers found that Hispanic women exposed to flaring had significantly higher preterm birth rates compared with Hispanic women who weren’t exposed.
But among non-Hispanic white women, researchers did not find an association between preterm births and flaring.
The findings suggest that factors such as economic and social inequities in health care, pre-existing medical conditions and how often mothers work outdoors could make Hispanic women more vulnerable to pollution from flaring, the authors said. More study, however, is needed to definitively make the link between flaring and preterm births.
The study adjusted for other known risk factors for preterm births including age, smoking and access to prenatal care. It excluded women in cities with a population of more than 75,000 since exposure to other sources of air pollutants differs from women in rural areas, and it controlled for potential health effects of living near oil and gas production sites that did not have high rates of flaring.
Adds to evidence
The UCLA and USC analysis adds to evidence that living near oil and gas activities adversely affects the health of pregnant women and infants.
Last year, University of Colorado researchers found that children whose birth mothers live near intense oil and gas development have between a 40 to 70 percent higher chance of congenital heart defects compared to those who live near less intense oil and gas activity. The study analyzed 3,000 infants born in Colorado between 2005 and 2011.
In 2016, a study published by the journal Epidemiology found statistically significant associations between natural gas development and preterm birth rates in thousands of mothers studied in Pennsylvania.
“This corroborates (other studies) and suggests a kind of double whammy in the Eagle Ford — a potential cumulative impact of not just flaring, but also the drilling itself,” Cushing said. “Our research suggests a significant adverse impact (of flaring) on pregnant women and infants who live nearby.”