Still, being aware of the characteristics of communities closest to power plants is a starting point in understanding the potential sources of pollution that may impact a community and how changes in a power plants air emissions may affect the air quality experienced by some of those already vulnerable to environmental burdens. M Natural gas is a relatively clean burning fossil fuel. MS Reports requested by congress or otherwise deemed important. Updated March 27, 2012. When natural gas arrives at the locations where it will be used (usually through large pipelines), it flows into smaller diameter pipelines called mains and then into smaller service lines that go directly to homes or buildings. JJ The impurities in wellhead natural gas determine the number of stages and the processes required to produce pipeline-quality, dry natural gas. The final reason to be concerned about pollution from natural gas power plants is that it may get worse in the coming years. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders or data provider. SA As noted in the Data Considerations section, information about the adjacent communities can be used to raise awareness and to help people understand the extent to which there may be disproportionate, adverse impacts on overburdened communities. Living next to natural gas wells is no fun From health threats to truck traffic, from rank odors to sinking property values, Coloradans explain what it's like to live near WebSince fuel cost is the major cost component of a typical natural gas power plant, a sustained increase in natural gas pricing also poses a major risk. KO Gouveia When stratified by fuel type, coal had the strongest association with all adverse birth outcomes. Electric power sector power plants that burned fossil fuels or materials made from fossil fuels, and some geothermal power plants, were the source of about 32% of total U.S. energy-related CO 2 emissions in 2021.. D We obtained the odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the increase in odds of having adverse birth outcomes for each 5 km closer to any power plant. More research is warranted to better understand the causal relationship. A Better Way of Paying for a Reliable Electricity Grid, Minnesota Proves Its Readiness for Carbon-Free Electricity. In the graph below, the low-income(verticalaxis) and the people of color(horizontal axis) are plotted for the communitiesaround each U.S. fossil fuel-fired power plant. Those NOx emissions may linger in nearby communities, leading to serious health problems for the people living near plants. We geocoded 423,719 singleton Florida births born from 2004 to 2005 and all active power plants and determined residential proximity to the nearest power plant for each birth. The main outcomes of interest in this study include the terms LBW, PTD, and VPTD, all of which were assessed through Florida Vital Records data. To make long-term gains against infection inequity, infectious disease epidemiology needs to develop a more sociological imagination. JM When ultrasound is not available, fundal height (determined by clinical examination) or menstrual history is used to estimate gestational age. All rights reserved. Natural gas processing can be complex and usually involves several steps to remove oil, water, HGLS, and other impurities such as sulfur, helium, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. With coal combustion accounting for approximately 45% of electricity produced in the United States, it may pose a serious public health issue. Morara Ha M Petroeschevsky J For example, in Ohio the setback from a home is 100 feet from a well - It is possible that socioeconomic status confounded the association that we observed in this study. However, the distance from the line is crucial in determining the damage it causes. Eshoul Figure2A and 2B illustrate PM2.5 exposure by types of power plants. et al. You can seethe percentages by hovering your cursor over the colored bars. Author affiliations: Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health and Health Professions and College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida (Sandie Ha, Hui Hu, Xiaohui Xu); Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida (Jeffrey Roth); and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Particle Pollution and Prevention (LAP3), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China (Haidong Kan). Given that power plants are major sources of particulate matter, the present results are consistent with those of our recent study, which found that prenatal PM2.5 exposure was positively associated with LBW, PTD, and VPTD (23). L The following maps and graphs highlight powerplants located in or near communities with one or more of the six key demographics at or above the 80thpercentile nationally. Moreover, these associations showed an exposure-response relationship with closer residents having the higher odds. We also categorized the proximity to power Yet the recent closures of plants in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania underscore their effects on emissions. WebA gas-fired power plant is a type of fossil fuel power station in which chemical energy stored in natural gas, which is mainly methane, is converted successively into: thermal energy, mechanical energy and, finally, electrical energy.Although they cannot exceed the Carnot cycle limit for conversion of heat energy into useful work the excess heat may be used in An official website of the United States government. The lack of a positive association could be explained by the fact that, compared with other types of plants, nuclear plants do not emit as many atmospheric pollutants in high concentrations (e.g., PM2.5, sulfur dioxide, and nitric oxides) (35). After adjustment for potential confounders, living closer to any power plant increased the odds of all adverse birth outcomes compared with living farther away. Natural gas power accounts for about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. However, emissions from natural gas power plants are only a fraction of the emissions from stationary sources, so NOx emissions from natural gas power plants end up being roughly 1% of total NOx emissions in California. Teng Association Between Proximity to Power Plants and Adverse Birth Outcomes in Florida From 2004 to 2005. Bronson Director of Energy Research & Analysis, Guillermo Pereira Caton F Tsai H LA When stratified by type of plants in order to compare birth outcomes among women who lived close to or farther from different types of power plants, our data showed that solid waste plants had associations with all adverse birth outcomes. Forsberg C We also compared the odds for different buffer sizes of <5, 59.9, 1019.9, and 20 km from a power plant. This finding is plausible as these plants produce high concentrations of nitric oxides that have been found to increase the odds of these outcomes (30, 33). EM Air pollution has been extensively linked to many negative health outcomes ranging from cardiorespiratory diseases (13) to hospitalizations (46) and mortality (7, 8). Search for other works by this author on: Particulate matter air pollution and cardiovascular disease: an update to the scientific statement from the American Heart Association, Outdoor air pollution and respiratory health in patients with COPD, A systematic review of air pollution and incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, Fine particulate air pollution and hospital admission for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, Urban air pollution, and asthma and COPD hospital emergency room visits, Acute and subacute effects of urban air pollution on cardiopulmonary emergencies and mortality: time series studies in Austrian cities, Multicity study of air pollution and mortality in Latin America (the ESCALA study), The short-term effects of air pollution on daily mortality in four Australian cities, Estimating the national public health burden associated with exposure to ambient PM, Ambient air pollution, birth weight and preterm birth: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Ambient air pollution and risk of congenital anomalies: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Ambient air pollution and hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, Ambient air pollution and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Toxic Air: The Case for Cleaning Up Coal-fired Power Plants, Published March 27, 2012. For example, the fact that our study showed an increased proportion of females among the term LBW group and a decreased proportion of females among the PTD and VPTD groups confirmed previous findings. Association Between Proximity to Power Plants, by Fuel Type, and Adverse Birth Outcomes in Florida From 2004 to 2005. Holland After adjustment for potential confounders, the associations between proximity to power plants and adverse birth outcomes remained consistent. 2 Brattle Square, Cambridge MA 02138, USA M et al. Table1 shows participants' characteristics by term LBW, PTD, and VPTD. They included mother's age (continuous), maternal education (less than high school, high school graduate and/or some college, college graduate, graduate school), maternal race (white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and others), and marital status (married, unmarried). For each demographic, the percentages of these communities within three miles of a power plant greater than and less than the national averages are displayed. AE In addition, women who were closest to coal plants were exposed to the highest levels of PM2.5 (mean = 10.7 (standard deviation (SD), 2.7) g/m3) during the first trimester, followed by those living close to solid waste plants (mean = 10.1 (SD, 1.8) g/m3), gas plants (mean = 9.5 (SD, 2.1) g/m3), and oil plants (mean = 9.3 (SD, 1.8) g/m3). Furthermore, when studying a proposed natural gas power plant, a California Energy Commission analysis found that local one-hour concentrations of NO2 (one form of NOx) would nearly double from their background levels. Some places in the country, however, still have setbacks for homes that are less then 300 feet. ML Energy use in homes, commercial buildings, manufacturing, and transportation. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Coal was strongly associated with all adverse birth outcomes (Table4). A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. These data are based on the US Environmental Protection Agency's Hierarchical Bayesian Prediction Model output (25). A Additionally, emissions of SO2 and NOXcontribute to the formation of ozone, or smog, and fine particle pollution. For example, in Ohio the setback from a homeis 100 feetfrom awell - not even from the boundary of a wellpad - and only 75 feet for a directional well. Seigneur All active power plants during the study period and eligible births were geocoded and mapped using ArcGIS V10.1 (ESRI, Redlands, California). RE: How far away should you live from a power plant? From a coal-fired power plant I would want to be at least ten miles upwind and nowhere near th All rights reserved. Monthly and yearly energy forecasts, analysis of energy topics, financial analysis, congressional reports. Sign up for email subcriptions to receive messages about specific EIA products. Stieb et al. J Soriano C These results call for further investigation to confirm our results and to investigate the specific pollutants generated from power plants that are responsible for this association. This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com. Practical Guide to Honest Causal Forests for Identifying Heterogeneous Treatment Effects, Modern epidemiology confronts COVID-19: reflections from psychiatric epidemiology, Burden of COPD Attributable to Tuberculosis: A Microsimulation Study, How Effect Measure Choice Influences Minimally Sufficient Adjustment Sets for External Validity, About the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, http://www.epa.gov/airquality/powerplants/, http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_09_01.html, http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/air-emissions.html, http://www.cdc.gov/pednss/how_to/read_a_data_table/prevalence_tables/birth_outcome.htm, http://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/2546.pdf, Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic, Academic Pulmonary Sleep Medicine Physician Opportunity in Scenic Central Pennsylvania, Academic Surgical Pathologist/Breast Pathologist, Census block group annual income, US dollars, 29,643.00 to <38,095.00(second quartile), Copyright 2023 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The pamphlet I got in the mail the other day shows drawings that include three gas turbines, three step up transformers, gas compressor building and three stack towers coming off the turbines. When hydrogen is added to the natural gas fuel mix, the carbon emissions fall even more. Do you need one? These findings are consistent with the fact that coal and solid waste power plants produce relatively larger amounts of particulate emissions compared with other types of power plants. Subscribe to feeds for updates on EIA products including Today in Energy and What's New. B P This practice, although common, is inherently unsafe. Many fossil fuel-fired power plants (especially coal-fired power plants) have announced plans to retire, based on data collected by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Lets plan for a clean energy future that does not lead to even more air pollution in communities already afflicted with pollution. et al. D Wellhead natural gas may contain contaminants and hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGLs) that must be removed before the natural gas can be safely delivered to the high Anderson Lee Siffel Minority, low-income, and indigenous populations frequently bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and adverse health outcomes, including the development of heart or lung diseases, such as asthma and bronchitis, increased susceptibility to respiratory and cardiac symptoms, greater numbers of emergency room visits and hospital admissions, and premature deaths. S Logistic regression models were used to test the hypothesized associations. A three-mile radius isconsistent with environmental justice literature and studies, including theEJ Screening Reportfor the Clean Power Plan. The power sector has significantly reduced many of these pollutants over the past two decades, but important health and environmental concerns persist. The Author 2015. If something happens to go wrong at a nuclear reactor, anyone living in a 10-mile radius of the plant may Second, just because the electric sector is cleaner than the transportation sector does not mean the electric sector is not dirty. For example, for oil plants, we compared births within 20 km with births not within 20 km from any plant (e.g., excluding those who were closer to any other types of plant). However, in addition to adjustment for maternal education, which serves as a proxy for socioeconomic status, we also adjusted for census-tract-level median household income from the US Census 2000 to control for ecological (or population-level) socioeconomic status factors. These analyses showed consistent results, suggesting that residual confounding was unlikely. A detailed description of this method was reported elsewhere (23). Some power plants also T et al. Lee In categorical exposure analyses, no association was found. J How much NOx is coming from natural gas power plants? 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Even more sign up for email subcriptions to receive messages about specific EIA products near plants b P This,! Mix, the distance from the line is crucial in determining the damage it causes,! Reliable Electricity Grid, Minnesota Proves Its Readiness for Carbon-Free Electricity participants ' characteristics term. So2 and NOXcontribute to the formation of ozone, or smog, and fine pollution! The nation 's Electricity inequity, infectious disease epidemiology needs to develop a more sociological imagination 's! It may get worse in the country, however, still have setbacks for homes are... Padlock ) or https: // means youve safely connected to the.gov website required! Studies, including theEJ Screening Reportfor the clean power plan national average for each is... The past two decades, but important health and environmental concerns persist or smog, VPTD. Be at least ten miles upwind and nowhere near th all rights reserved EIA including... 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safe distance to live from natural gas power plant