ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN

Study finds fracking, pollution link

Emissions wafting out of oil and gas operations can trigger “extreme” ozone pollution events that rival those seen in congested cities such as Los Angeles, according to an international study.

Extraordinary levels of ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory problems, have been seen in rural areas of Utah and Wyoming where oil extraction and fracking have taken off.

Scientists say the same phenomena may be occurring near oil and fracking operations in Canada — especially in mountainous regions where winter weather can trap and concentrate the emissions emitted by wells and extraction processes.

“I would expect any mountain basin that has oil and gas development in it and winter weather conditions to be subject to the same phenomenon,” Steven Brown, an atmospheric scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Postmedia News.

Brown and his colleagues reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that emissions from oil and gas operations can trigger “extreme winter ozone pollution events” that exceed national air quality standards.

“It’s shocking,” co-author Cora Young of Memorial University in Newfoundland said. She initially didn’t believe the results she helped collect in a mountain basin in Utah where oil and gas wells are now operating across the landscape.

“I was like: ‘There must be a mistake, there must be a problem with the monitors,’? she said. “But it’s real.”

Winter ozone events have not been reported in Canada, but the scientists say that could be because of a lack of monitoring.

“It’s this combination of emissions and cold weather and snow that is causing this,” Young said. “And we certainly get snow in Canada, and we have the same emissions, so there is no reason to think it wouldn’t happen.”

Brown said “there is a lot of potential for this sort of thing to be going without being noticed.”

Atmospheric scientist ShoaMeng Li at Environment Canada was involved with the study but could not be reached for comment. Environment Canada’s media office, which insists media requests be routed through its Ottawa operation, did not respond to questions about ozone monitoring near the expanding oil and gas operations in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

In the U.S., concern over air quality near oil and gas fields has been mounting since a high-school science project in Wyoming turned up high winter ozone levels a few years ago.

The new study confirms the students were on to a very real but “unpredicted” atmospheric phenomenon, Brown said.

For the Nature study, the scientists monitored the atmosphere in a mountain basin in northeastern Utah from 2012 to 2014 and found that nitrogen oxides and particularly high levels of volatile organic compounds ( VOCs) can get trapped in the basin by winter weather inversions. And sunlight reflecting off snow accelerates the ozone-forming reaction during “cold, snowy stagnant periods.”

“When you have air quality than resembles Houston or Los Angeles in a rural area that’s a serious problem,” Young said.

Nitric oxides and VOCs have been known to create summer ozone events in congested cities, but the scientists found that a different chemical process involving much higher levels of VOCs drives the winter ozone formation near the oil and gas fields.

“It’s really a combination of winter meteorology in mountain basins and this very unusual atmospheric chemistry,” Brown said. “Both are required for these events to occur.”