Updated methods for assessing the impacts of nearby gas drilling and production on neighborhood air quality and human health

Abstract

An explosive growth in natural gas production within the last decade has fueled concern over the public health impacts of air pollutant emissions from oil and gas sites in the Barnett and Eagle Ford shale regions of Texas. Commonly acknowledged sources of uncertainty are the lack of sustained monitoring of ambient concentrations of pollutants associated with gas mining, poor quantification of their emissions, and inability to correlate health symptoms with specific emission events. These uncertainties are best addressed not by conventional monitoring and modeling technology, but by increasingly available advanced techniques for real-time mobile monitoring, microscale modeling and source attribution, and real-time broadcasting of air quality and human health data over the World Wide Web. The combination of contemporary scientific and social media approaches can be used to develop a strategy to detect and quantify emission events from oil and gas facilities, alert nearby residents of these events, and collect associated human health data, all in real time or near-real time. The various technical elements of this strategy are demonstrated based on the results of past, current, and planned future monitoring studies in the Barnett and Eagle Ford shale regions.Implications: Resources should not be invested in expanding the conventional air quality monitoring network in the vicinity of oil and gas exploration and production sites. Rather, more contemporary monitoring and data analysis techniques should take the place of older methods to better protect the health of nearby residents and maintain the integrity of the surrounding environment.PAPER HISTORY

Exploring the endocrine activity of air pollutants associated with unconventional oil and gas extraction

“…et al, 2012 [ 31 ] Human health risk assessment of air emissions from development of unconventional natural gas resources Piceance Olaguer, EP. et al, 2015 [ 83 ] Updated methods for assessing the impacts of nearby gas drilling and production on neighborhood air quality and human health Eagle Ford Oltmans, S. et al, 2014 [ 84 ] Anatomy of wintertime ozone associated with oil and natural gas extraction activity in Wyoming and Utah Green River; Uintah Omara, M. et al, 2016 [ 85 ] Methane emissions from conventional and unconventional natural gas production sites in the Marcellus Shale basin Marcellus Paulik, LB. et al, 2016 [ 59 ] Emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from natural gas extraction into air Utica Peischl, J. et al, 2015 [ 86 ] Quantifying atmospheric methane emissions from oil and natural gas production in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota Fayetteville; Haynesville; Marcellus Pekney, NJ.…”

Ethylene Oxide Exposure Attribution and Emissions Quantification Based on Ambient Air Measurements near a Sterilization Facility

“…Inverse modeling is a technique that is used to infer the strengths (and possibly the locations) of emission sources from a set of measured impacts around the sources. Olaguer et al [19] provided examples of how inverse modeling can quantify emissions from natural gas production and transmission facilities based on a 3D Eulerian transport model. Simpler steady-state Gaussian plume models have also been used as the basis for atmospheric inverse modeling [20,21], and this is the approach we have chosen for this study.…”

Modeling of Bulk Kerogen Porosity: Methods for Control and Characterization

“…while commercial shale gas extraction activities have also been related to increased concentrations 13 of NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOC) 17 in nearby regions, as well as with the possibility 14 of pollution by radioactive materials. 18 Finally, investigations have also been conducted with 15 regard to the relation of hydraulic fracturing and increased seismic activity around the shale 16 fields.…”