A recent risk analysis estimated that particulate matter less than 2.5 m in diameter (PM2.5) and ozone, estimated from the 2005 air quality level, were responsible for 130,000 and 4,700 excess deaths, respectively (9). Underground Natural Gas Storage by Storage Type, The Basics of Underground Natural Gas Storage, Natural Gas Processing: The Crucial Link Between Natural Gas Production and Its Transportation to Market. This work was supported by grant K01ES019177 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (X.X.) The impurities in wellhead natural gas determine the number of stages and the processes required to produce pipeline-quality, dry natural gas. Our study found evidence of increasing odds of adverse birth outcomes among infants born to pregnant women living closer to power plants. This almost-great Raspberry Pi alternative is missing one key feature, This $75 dock turns your Mac Mini into a Mac Studio (sort of), Samsung's Galaxy S23 Plus is the Goldilocks of its 2023 smartphone lineup, How the New Space Race Will Drive Innovation, How the metaverse will change the future of work and society, Digital transformation: Trends and insights for success, Software development: Emerging trends and changing roles. Come test out some of the products still in development and let us know what you think! Table2 provides the unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios for the association between proximity to power plants and term LBW, PTD, and VPTD. To describe prenatal exposures to PM2.5, we estimated average daily residential exposures to PM2.5 during pregnancy for each birth using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. Reply STOP to cancel. et al. Abbreviations: aOR, adjusted odds ratio; CI, confidence interval; LBW, low birth weight; OR, odds ratio; PTD, preterm delivery; VPTD, very preterm delivery. 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. Sales, revenue and prices, power plants, fuel use, stocks, generation, trade, demand & emissions. WebGangadharan et al. Ren A Demand for these electric plants is increasing, and the thousands of workers who will be constructing them, and working in them, will rely on better protocols and oversight for their safety. Learn more. We also compared the odds for different buffer sizes of <5, 59.9, 1019.9, and 20 km from a power plant. keep you informed with the latest alerts and progress reports. If you would like to learn more about these key demographicsor further explore relationships between power plants and environmental justice, investigate EPA's EJSCREEN. 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. Given the high emission of sulfur dioxide and nitric oxides from power plants and the positive association between these pollutants and adverse birth outcomes, it is plausible that proximity to power plants was associated with adverse birth outcomes. Cons. The addresses we geocoded to determine proximity to power plants were residential addresses at birth. We strongly caution natural gas power plants and other industries against the venting of high-pressure natural gas in or near work sites. Brumberg WebDifferent countries have a different regulation regarding the measurements of where to reside from the station. Ha Time is Running Out, Motorola's handy Bluetooth device adds satellite messaging to your iPhone or Android smartphone, Linux 6.2: The first mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1 chips arrives, Sony's new headphones adopt WH-1000XM5 technology for less than half the price, The perfectly pointless $197 gadget that some people will love. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, power plants release toxic chemicals into the air including mercury, heavy metals, and acid gases, all of which are known to be deleterious to human health, especially that of the unborn fetus (15). How Much Land Would it Require to Get Most of Our Electricity from Wind and Solar? Few studies have assessed the associations between residential proximity to power plants and adverse birth outcomes including preterm delivery (PTD), very preterm delivery (VPTD), and term low birth weight (LBW). De Mouzon Tsai et al. Figure1 shows a map of the spatial distribution of active power plants and the average annual PM2.5 concentrations in Florida during 20032005. Bell This method assumes that pregnant women stayed at those same addresses throughout their pregnancy. Natural gas storage during periods of low demand helps to ensure that enough natural gas is available during periods of high demand. The exposure for this study was proximity to a nonrenewable-source power plant. Soriano S I [33] compared two polygeneration systems, which use natural gas and coal to produce DME and power, using a comprehensive sustainability assessment methodology. 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). The following map displays the percentage of plants within each state that are in communities with at least one key demographic at or above the 80thpercentile nationally. Union of Concerned Scientists During the study period, power plants in the United States emitted an estimated annual average of 2,491,971 metric tons of carbon dioxide, 10,431 metric tons of sulfur dioxide, and 4,212 metric tons of nitric oxides (27). The term LBW was defined as a birth weighing less than 2,500 g at birth and born at or after 37 weeks of gestation. This practice, although common, is inherently unsafe. Spengler This finding has also been observed in Taiwan by Tsai et al. We also categorized the proximity to power We were unable to perform analyses for more refined proximity categories because of low sample size for certain cells. It is possible that socioeconomic status confounded the association that we observed in this study. Dominici Yu But HUD goes further and states that "Operating and abandoned oil and gas wells pose potentialhazards to housing, including potential fire, explosion,spray and other pollution.No existing dwelling may be located closer than 300 feet from an active or planned drilling site. We further stratified analyses for different types of plants. SC Cifuentes If a community is at or above the 80thpercentile nationally, it means that the community's population for a given demographic (for example, low-income) is an equal or higher percentage than where 80%of the U.S. population lives. Particulate matter and ozone cause the extensive list of adverse health outcomes you hear at the end of a prescription drug commercial shortness of breath, heart attacks, premature death; the list goes on. To make long-term gains against infection inequity, infectious disease epidemiology needs to develop a more sociological imagination. However, studies on residential mobility and its effects on air pollution assessment suggest a very low degree of misclassification (42, 43). What is a safe distance to live from a nuclear power plant? Zou Covariates were chosen on the basis of a directed acyclic graph (Supplementary Data available at http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/). Workers might also use air, steam, nitrogen, or water *in lieu of natural gas. Notethat this applies to the site boundary, not to theactual well site.". The results remained consistent when exposure was categorized (Table3). Fetal sex and preterm birth: Are males at greater risk? AE Natural gas is stored in large volumes in underground facilities and in smaller volumes in tanks above or below ground. And since half of Californias natural gas power plants are concentrated in some of the most socioeconomically and environmentally disadvantaged communities in the state, these emissions harm communities that are already overburdened with pollution. Lamson Does EIA have maps or information on the location of natural gas and oil pipelines? When ultrasound is not available, fundal height (determined by clinical examination) or menstrual history is used to estimate gestational age. The national averages of low-income population and the people of color population are drawn as reference lines forcomparison. (20), who reported that the odds of PTD were 14 times higher among women who lived within 3 km of a thermal power plant compared with those who lived farther than 3 km. HS J Closing large fossil fuel-fired plants may have immediate and lasting effects on the surrounding communities and should be considered when evaluating a community's future potential vulnerability for environmental justice concerns. Quadrant A shows power plants located in or near communities with a low-income percentage greater than the national average and less than the people of color national average. 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. This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com. Ha Chen Zhu A Forsberg An official website of the United States government. X If something happens to go wrong at a nuclear reactor, anyone living in a 10-mile radius of the plant may R Therefore, we were not able to account for local variation smaller than this spatial resolution. When you sign up you'll become a member of NRDC's Activist Network. Although we chose PM2.5 to validate our exposure, power plants also emit other gaseous pollutants including carbon oxides, sulfur dioxide, and nitric oxides (41), all of which are highly correlated (30). Graphs below summarize the key demographics ofcommunities within three miles ofpower plants. D The Natural Resources Defense Council works to safeguard the earth - its people, However, we have also used a fully adjusted model with all covariates in our directed acyclic graph. Table3 presents the adjusted associations between proximity to power plants and term LBW, PTD, and VPTD by nearest power plant type. Uranium fuel, nuclear reactors, generation, spent fuel. Results were consistent when exposure was categorized by number of power plants. Gouveia However, women may have moved during pregnancy, leading to potential exposure misclassification. We unfortunately did not have residential mobility information to address this issue. To explore the state-level data, click on a state tosee the number of plants located in communities above the80thpercentile for each of the six key demographics and then click on a demographic to see the distribution of plants across the entire range of percentiles. D Bremner H H Gas blows are routine practice within the industry. Updated January 2012. b Nuclear plants are categorized differently because there are no births with 2 or more nuclear plants within 20 km. LT and a University of Florida Graduate School fellowship (S.H.). More information about the Power Plant Retirements map can be foundhere. Fig. DM Vijayaraghavan Zhang While a natural gas-fired power plant emits only about half the carbon dioxide as a coal plant, thats still far from zero. Anenberg PC et al. Natural gas power accounts for about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. T Sign up for email subcriptions to receive messages about specific EIA products. Therefore, this discrepancy is likely to bias our results toward the null. These mortality estimates were significantly higher for the older population. Stolz Quadrant D shows power plants located in or nearcommunities with both the low-income and people of color percentages less than the national averages. A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is home to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The CSB is trying to devise better safety codes for gas blows, but has yet to identify them. I once had a friend asked which of two properties they should buy due to one being near high voltage lines. My answer was simple, I would buy the o Secure .gov websites use HTTPS To describe exposures to PM2.5 during pregnancy and throughout the study period according to nearest power plants, we used scatterplots with locally weighted scatterplot smoothing (LOESS) functions (smooth = 0.5) to display averaged daily concentrations during the first trimester (y-axis) by date of delivery (x-axis), as well as daily concentrations (y-axis) by date during the study period (x-axis). et al. Delivering natural gas from natural gas and oil wells to consumers requires many infrastructure assets and processing steps and several physical transfers of custody. spreadsheet presents all the information available through EPA's environmental justice mapping and screening tool,EJSCREEN. 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). Note: The demographic information is obtained from the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey (ACS) 2014-2018 5-year summary file data, which is based on 2018 Census boundaries. You may have heard that natural gas is clean. Compared to coal, natural gas produces less global warming emissions and air pollution. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. (* edit). Natural gas power plants emit more NOx when they are starting up; on average, they emit anywhere between three and seven times as much NOx during start-up than during one hour of full-load operation. Air pollution has been extensively linked to many negative health outcomes ranging from cardiorespiratory diseases (13) to hospitalizations (46) and mortality (7, 8). 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. Lee Geer Chang These pollutants are known to contribute to 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. Su We observed a 1.8% (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.3, 2.3) increased odds for PTD, 2.2% (95% CI: 1.0, 3.4) for VPTD, and 1.1% (95% CI: 0.2, 2.0) for term LBW for each 5 km closer to any power plant. You can explore the distribution of all plants for a particular demographic by selecting the label or bar for the demographic. T At this point you might be wondering, So how bad is it? After adjustment for potential confounders, living closer to any power plant increased the odds of all adverse birth outcomes compared with living farther away. When considering whether a property is eligible for an FHA-insured loan, HUD requires that "a site be rejected if the property being appraised is subject to hazards, environmental contaminants, noxious odors, offensive sights or excessive noises to the point of endangering the physical improvements or affecting the livability of the property, its marketability or the health and safety of its occupants." ML UCS recently co-sponsored a bill in the California legislature that was designed to shed light on pollution from natural gas power plants and require better planning for pollution reductions from plants. Comprehensive data summaries, comparisons, analysis, and projections integrated across all energy sources. The map displays all fossil fuel-fired power plants that supply electricity to the grid. Moreover, there is recent evidence suggesting that harmful emissions from power plants may be increasing (16). H Reserves, production, prices, employment and productivity, distribution, stocks, imports and exports. KO Includes hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and ethanol. Mangones G CC Full understanding of safety distances is typically only achieved when it is too late to implement without significant changes. JD The interactive map below shows recent and expected coal, natural gas, oil, and other combustion power plant retirements. et al. Natural Resources Defense Council 2023 Privacy Policy N 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 LA Text "SCIENCE" to 67369 or sign up online. et al. air pollution, California, clean energy, emissions, natural gas, NOx. Zeitlin 2023 ZDNET, A Red Ventures company. After exclusion of births that had addresses outside Florida (n = 4,672); births that were missing address (n = 423), unable to geocode (e.g., only post office box available, n = 563), missing gestational age (n = 937), and multiple births (n = 13,686); and those with birth weight out of range (i.e., <500 and >5,000 g) (n = 903) and those with gestational age out of range (i.e., <140 days and >320 days) (n = 125), 423,719 births remained for analyses. Something ignited the gas that was being used in a scheduled cleaning procedure at the Kleen Energy Plant in Connecticut. Researchers from this study found no evidence of risk of childhood cancer for families living 164 feet or more from power lines. Y International energy information, including overviews, rankings, data, and analyses. Official websites use .gov WebThis is so because the stack is usually several 100s meters tall, so that pollutants in flue gas are dispersed in the atmosphere and only have an influence at distances in the range of SS Delfino Please click here to see any active alerts. Reports requested by congress or otherwise deemed important. Because there was evidence of spatial clustering of power plants, distance from power plants may not be the best measure of exposure. AD Like most retrospective studies, this study has several limitations. Maps, tools, and resources related to energy disruptions and infrastructure. M Williams P Czeizel S et al. 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. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. 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