Community-led science reveals high air pollution from fracking in Ohio County

Community-led science reveals high air pollution from fracking in Ohio County

Sensor pinpoints emissions missed by expensive EPA instrument

Some residents in eastern Ohio’s Belmont County have long suffered from headaches, fatigue, nausea and burning sensations in their throats and noses.they suspect these symptoms is the result of air pollution from the fracking facilities that dominate the region, but regulators dismissed and played down their concerns.

With technical assistance from Columbia University volunteer scientists Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryMIT and the American Geophysical Union Thriving Earth Exchange, local advocacy groups built their own low-cost sensor networks. They found that three EPA sensors in the area were unable to provide accurate images: The sensors revealed air pollution levels and correlations between local peaks and health effects.

result Post today in the magazine Environmental Research Letters.

Nestled in the Appalachian Valley, Belmont has been booming with new infrastructure to extract and process natural gas.As we all know, hydraulic fracturing Discharge of pollutants Includes particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene, which have been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular health problems. Lung and bronchial cancers have become the leading causes of cancer death in Ohio. 2017 Yale Public Health Analysis Identify the need for additional monitoring and regulation of chemicals associated with unconventional oil and gas development.

Concerned about smog and lack of information and transparency in certain areas of the community, two activist groups, Follow Ohio River Residents and Freshwater Accountability Project, want to build a high-density monitoring network.After submitting their proposal to the Thriveing ​​Earth Exchange, which promotes collaboration between community groups and volunteer scientists, they collaborated with Garima RaheaPhD student studying air pollution at Lamont-Doherty.

“We realized that the Thriving Earth Exchange program would provide us with invaluable help in validating the complaints we often receive from people living near pollution sources, providing reliable and actionable data to improve the air in the region quality,” said Lea Harper, managing director of the Freshwater Responsibility Program.

At the suggestion of Raheja and other scientists, community members purchased 60 low-cost sensors to monitor airborne particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. They then identified the areas of greatest concern and recruited residents to install and maintain sensors in their backyards, churches and schools.

Dark clouds gather over Caithness Energy’s Guernsey Generating Station in Belmont County, Ohio. (Leatra Harper/Freshwater Responsibility Project)

The new study presents the first two years of data from the sensor network. The team found that many locations frequently had days when air pollution exceeded levels recommended by the World Health Organization. In the city of Martins Ferry, for example, the sensors measured 336 days, 50 of which measured unsafe air pollution levels.

“It’s a bit desolate,” Raheja said, “considering it’s generally a clean area. I think any number of days above WHO guidelines is really concerning for an area like this.”

She sees a clear link to the development of fossil fuels in the region. “If this area didn’t have fracking, there wouldn’t be serious air pollution. It’s not an urban area. There’s not a lot of cars or rush hour or anything like that that usually causes air pollution.”

The study compared daily averages collected from Citizen’s sensors with three sensors near the EPA. The correlation between the two is low – less than 55%.

“It just shows that the EPA monitors may be getting broad trends correctly, such as annual or seasonal quantities,” Raheja said. “But in terms of daily averages affecting human health, EPA sensors don’t always capture the heterogeneous exposures people experience in the region.”

That’s because EPA sensors are too few and too widely spaced to capture a detailed picture of air pollution levels, she said. The EPA’s reliance on fancy monitors costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each helps explain why the network is so sparse. By contrast, citizen scientists’ sensors cost just a few hundred dollars each, allowing them to build a denser network.

In another aspect of the study, residents spotted air pollution spikes on their monitors and wondered where they came from. So volunteer scientists helped simulate local wind patterns to determine which fracking facilities might cause spikes in specific sensors on specific days.

“There are so many different sources in the area, and sometimes community activists have to choose which fights to fight first,” Rahja said. So far, residents say they are particularly concerned about the Williams Compressor Station and the Dominion Compressor Station in the area.

The document states that the data enables community leaders to submit targeted public records requests about these operations and their compliance with air quality standards. Information from air quality sensors also helps residents know when to close windows, wear masks or update indoor air purification systems.

Community members also saw a correlation between spikes in air pollution and their headaches and nausea. For example, some people noticed a bad smell and more severe symptoms in mid-December 2020. Meanwhile, air pollution data showed several spikes in emissions.

The paper cites community member Kevin Young. “forward, [there] Nobody helped us. None of the Ohio regulators would have witnessed the extreme air pollution event that made my wife and I very sick. “Now that we have data to substantiate harmful levels of air pollutants, regulators seem to be taking us more seriously,” he added. “

The paper notes that the data provide a shared language in which community members can express their complaints to the EPA, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Health.Regulators are starting to take notice; local activist Jill Hunkler invited to attend testify Before the U.S. House of Representatives Environment Subcommittee in April 2021.

Scientists and community groups hope to continue working together.They are currently applying for grants to expand their sensor network and connect with other relevant community groups, some as far away as Louisiana’s notorious cancer alleywho wants to learn more about how to get started with a similar program.

“Community-led science and community activism, especially when working with academic scientists, is very powerful in doing things that regulators can’t,” Raheja said.

Co-authors of the study include: Leatra Harper and Yuri Gorby of the Freshwater Responsibility Project; Anna Hoffman of Carnegie Mellon University; Lyssa Freese of MIT; Brendan O’Leary of Wayne State University; Environmental Health Project Nathan Deron of the FracTracker Alliance; Shannon Smith and Ted Auch of the FracTracker Alliance; Melissa Goodwin of the American Geophysical Union Prosperity Earth Exchange; and Daniel M. Westervelt of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.