It’s a simple enough solution to a common problem: when oil is extracted from the ground, so-called associated gas can come along with it, and when there’s too much gas, or there isn’t a way to trap and transport the gas — it’s simply released or burned off. The process is known as venting and flaring, and it’s also practiced at refineries and other petrochemical facilities, usually as a safety measure when there is excess gas that, for whatever reason, cannot be processed.
Even if the term is unfamiliar, you’ve probably seen a flare if you live near or have driven through an area with oil wells or refineries: it’s that unnervingly tall flame blazing above an oil and gas facility.
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But flares are anything but safe for the predominantly Black, brown, and indigenous communities that often live alongside both rural oil extraction and urban refining.
A new study published in the journal Geohealth found that the emissions from flaring and venting of associated gas (from oil production) do significant harm to public health, leading to about two premature deaths per day among the some 500,000 Americans who live within three miles of a facility that flares.
The study found that Latinx and indigenous communities bore the brunt of the negative health effects, but when flaring happens at the other end of the oil production, there are far more Black people who are breathing in the pollution it produces, including fine particulate matter, ozone, and nitrogen oxide.
Pollution from flares has to be permitted, and emissions are reported by air quality monitors — but when the researchers used infrared satellite images to analyze a year’s worth of venting and flaring at facilities across the country, they found that emissions were far higher than reported.
For fine particulate matter, which is associated with asthma and other respiratory issues as well as heart disease, emissions were 15 times higher than reported, and sulfur dioxide emissions were double the reported amount.
These emissions not only lead to excess deaths (710 for the year studied, 2016) but also affect chronic respiratory illnesses such as asthma. The study found that children living near flares suffered 73,000 asthma attacks annually due to emissions.
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Most of the effects from venting and flaring are felt locally, but researchers noted the health effects can be seen far away, too: winds carry the pollution away from rural oil fields to major cities like Chicago and New York.
There has long been pressure on the oil and gas industry to reduce its reliance on flaring, largely on the grounds that it generates significant carbon emissions. In 2020, for example, 150 billion cubic meters of gas was flared globally — sucked up from the earth only to immediately be burned off — which would be sufficient to power all of sub-Saharan Africa for a year.