1. Introduction
The consequences for public health of oil development in densely populated urban environments is an understudied research question, but one of great concern to residents surrounding oil and gas development facilities in Los Angeles. Oil and natural gas extraction activity, both using traditional primary production methods as well as secondary methods such as flooding, steam injection, hydraulic fracturing, and acidization, has prompted concerns over impacts to water, air, land, and public health across the United States [
1]. Yet, there is little environmental or public health data on the consequences of oil development in urban core cities, such as Los Angeles, with substantial production located near dense populations. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funded Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers recommended that future research should examine exposure and health outcomes related to oil and natural gas development with community engagement as central to study design [
2]. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be a vital component of research that is designed around the 3Rs—rigor, reach, and relevance—that is critical to the usefulness of scientific findings [
3]. Our study is a contribution to CBPR research in an urban oil development context. We examined oil development in South Los Angeles through self-reported community health. We also gathered qualitative information about community knowledge of and experiences living nearby an oil development site. Finally, we tested a low-cost method for identifying methane emissions from oil development in a neighborhood impacted by multiple pollution sources to better discern oil-related exposures.
Research studies on the health impacts of proximity to oil and gas development suggest an important spatial dimension, with those living closer to active wells experiencing greater adverse impacts. Residents living within 0.8 km from a gas well, compared with residents living further away from such active gas development, experience greater impacts on their health from exposure to gas emissions [
4]. Greater density and proximity of natural gas wells to maternal residence (within a 10 m radius) were associated with adverse birth outcomes [
5]. Residential proximity has also been associated with dermal and respiratory conditions in residents near natural gas extraction activities with distances typically measured at less than a kilometer to two kilometers from well to residence [
6].
Los Angeles is an oil-rich basin concentrated across 70 active oil fields [
7]. In some neighborhoods, residences are located just 3 ft. away from the boundary of an active drilling and/or production site, with the wellheads as close as 60 ft. from the residence. In Los Angeles County, a population of 10 million people resides amidst more than 5000 active oil and gas wells, with the City of Los Angeles hosting approximately 850 active wells and 4750 wells in the county, adjacent to over 4 million and 10 million residents, respectively. In neighborhoods such as South Los Angeles, wells are located nearby a dense residential population and sensitive land uses such as childcare centers, schools, urban parks and playgrounds, and senior residential and healthcare facilities, many composed of vulnerable populations [
8,
9]. The proximity of oil wells and production facilities to a dense population makes Los Angeles a critical site for examining the public health consequences and potential exposures from oil and gas development in an urban context. Our community-based health and exposure study is a collaboration between Occidental College, University of Colorado, Boulder, and member organizations of STAND-LA (Stand Together against Neighborhood Drilling-Los Angeles). STAND-LA is a coalition of environmental justice and community groups organized to confront the public health consequences of oil development for residents living amidst active oil development in the City of Los Angeles. Despite the more than 100-year history of oil development in Los Angeles [
10], there is a dearth of data on environmental and public health consequences of these long-lived and continuous operations. We sought to generate baseline community data by conducting a preliminary survey through the collection of comparable self-reported health data as well as baseline information about resident experiences of living near active oil development. Further, communities have no access to exposure monitoring data, and air monitoring can be prohibitively expensive [
11]. Low-cost sensors are a potential option for generating localized community-relevant monitoring data that can be examined alongside self-reported data.
Los Angeles is a well-documented “riskscape” of environmental hazards and elevated health risk, disproportionately concentrated in poor communities and communities of color [
12,
13]. CalEnviroscreen, a pollution exposure and health vulnerability screening tool developed by the California Environmental Protection Agency Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment for use by State agencies, helps identify communities most affected by multiple sources of pollution, and where people are especially vulnerable to pollution’s effects [
14]. CalEnviroscreen calculates scores that reflect cumulative impact and vulnerability for every census tract in the state using environmental, health, and socioeconomic information from state and federal government regulatory agencies (Cushing et al. 2015). Vulnerability incorporates individual and community level characteristics that make people more sensitive to pollution’s effects, such as young children and people with asthma, and socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, race/ethnicity, and education. The tool ranks communities based on their scores, and then maps these scores, allowing for objective cross-community comparisons. Because the determinants of vulnerability include socioeconomic factors, such as race/ethnicity and income, our CBPR study examines active oil production in two communities with a residential population that is poorer, and with a higher proportion of non-Anglo people than the city or county overall. The West Adams and University Park neighborhoods, surrounding the Jefferson (The Jefferson Drill Site) and AllenCo (the AllenCo Drill Site) oil production sites, are both located in an area identified by CalEnviroscreen as an “environmental justice” community, defined as among the top 25% of most environmentally most environmentally burdened census tracts in the state [
15].
Environmental justice (EJ) community organizations have historically recognized and documented health and environmental consequences from polluting industries and other incompatible land uses located near their homes, schools, and playgrounds [
16,
17]. EJ communities often more actively seek information and gather data related to community hazards to demonstrate the hazards and risks they face, and to better inform policy and decision-making [
18]. Residents in Los Angeles neighborhoods near oil development sites report health symptoms such as nosebleeds and headaches, ailments that have also been described with oil and gas production in other areas [
19]. Oil production and drilling is associated with exposure to hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and toxicants, such as BTEX chemicals (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) [
20].
Secondary drilling and production enhancement practices inject fluids into oil and gas reservoir rocks to enhance the recovery of the hydrocarbon products. For example, acidizing is used in Los Angeles, where large volumes and high concentrations of hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, or other chemicals are injected underground, mixing and reacting with other well fluids, most of which lack adequate hazard evaluation. Oil development facilities within the South Coast Basin submit chemical use reports for certain well activities. The reports indicate chemical ingredients with known air toxics such as hydrogen chloride, xylene, hydrofluoric acid, and ethylbenzene used as part of standard well development and maintenance acidizing practices [
21,
22].
Residents living near active oil wells and production facilities in Los Angeles often note symptoms such as nosebleeds, headaches, and worsened asthma. In the most highly publicized case, residents of the University Park neighborhood in 2013 complained of foul emissions and reported nosebleeds, headaches, and respiratory problems. These complaints coincided with increased oil production in the nearby field, where production rose 400% in one year following the purchase of the facility by AllenCo Energy Inc. (Los Angeles, CA, USA) (4178 barrels in 2009 to 21,239 barrels in 2010 [
23]. Subsequently, the EPA fined AllenCo. The facility is temporarily closed with plans to reopen once it installs emissions control equipment. Other extraction facilities and wells in this and many other densely populated Los Angeles neighborhoods continue to operate.
As proximity to oil and gas development has emerged as important to understanding its public health impacts, policy measures suggest the need for setbacks or buffers as a public health protection [
24,
25]. Los Angeles requires no buffers or setbacks from oil development operations, which permits very close distances between residents and extraction sites. Responding to community complaints, in April 2017, Los Angeles City Council introduced a motion for the city to study the possibility of a safety buffer [
26]. 70% of active wells in Los Angeles are located within a 1500 ft. distance from “sensitive land uses” [
27], such as a home, school, childcare facility, urban park or playground, or senior residential facility, as defined by Cal EPA (
Table 1). Setbacks have been enacted in municipalities in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas to separate oil and gas development from residences for health and safety protections. Here, we report on the analysis of a random sample household survey of residents living within a 1500 ft. radius of oil development sites. We compare resident self-reported health within the 1500 ft. radius of the site to resident health in Service Planning Area 6 (SPA6), the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health designated area in which South Los Angeles is located and to Los Angeles County residents overall.
In partnership with residents, we also piloted the use of an open-source low-cost air quality monitoring system during the survey period in West Adams (Jefferson Oil Field) as a pilot site. While these sensors present challenges in terms of cross-sensitives and lower accuracy/precision compared with conventional monitoring equipment [
28], they have led to more accessible tools that can complement existing monitoring methods and serve as a screening method for concerned communities. In recent years, much work has gone into understanding the capabilities of low-cost sensors [
29,
30,
31] and they have been utilized in a variety of applications from personal exposure monitoring [
32] to high-density networks designed for monitoring in complex urban environments [
33]. Sensors have even been calibrated for the detection of ambient levels of methane [
34]. We present preliminary results from the calibration and deployment of these same sensors in areas with and without oil and gas activity and discuss how this type of data may further support CBPR efforts. In addition to providing CBPR with new options for data collection, low-cost sensors allow researchers and communities to examine high time-resolution data alongside community-member knowledge, which offers yet another way to engage community expertise to better understand the potential impact of local emission sources, such as oil and gas operations. Through this mixed methods approach, we report on how research engages community expertise as central to the research process and extends knowledge on local health impacts from oil development. We also suggest how community residents living nearby urban oil drilling facilities can contribute to locally relevant health interventions and lend their knowledge to support the development of relevant policy measures.
4. Discussion
Our random household sample and exposure monitoring within 1500 ft. of oil development sites is the first study in partnership with residents living in very close proximity to oil development in Los Angeles. It is also the first study, to our knowledge, to compare the self-reported health of residents within 1500 ft. of oil development to residents in the broader area of South Los Angeles (SPA6) and Los Angeles County. The testing of low-cost sensors supports community organization efforts to collect air monitoring data as related to oil development in their neighborhoods. There are currently no buffers or setbacks between sensitive land uses, such as homes and schools, and oil development in Los Angeles. West Adams and University Park are located within an area identified by the State of California as having high vulnerability to the health impacts of pollution due to the SES status of residents exposed to multiple sources of pollution. More than 50% of residents reported household incomes of
$20,000 or less as compared to 29% of households in SPA6 and 17% in LA County. The median household income is lower in both communities than in the City (
Table 2). Within the West Adams buffer, 20% of residents identify as Non-Hispanic Black as compared to 10% in the City. 76% of residents within the University Park buffer and 58% in West Adams buffer identify as Hispanic as compared to 50% in the City.
We gathered community experiences living adjacent to oil development sites. Many residents (University Park: 45.8%, West Adams: 38.9%) living within 1500 ft. did not know that an oil development site was located in the neighborhood. This may be due to tall walls and landscaping surrounding both sites, and to visible private property and no trespassing signage. From our survey, one of the main burdens appeared to be odors, which some respondents reported prevented daily activities (University Park: 15.7%, West Adams: 27.5%). However, only a few respondents said they had reported odors or any health symptoms to the gas company, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, or any other entity, as most responded that they lacked information as to how to report. Further, since most residents are unaware of these activities, they may attribute symptoms to allergies or general poor air quality.
Oil and gas development is associated with degraded air quality and exposure to air pollution [
45,
46] as well as exacerbated respiratory conditions and asthma [
47]. For both University Park and West Adams, compared with SPA6, resident-reported asthma prevalence was significantly higher. Respondents in West Adams (15.5%) and University Park (12.1%) reported experiencing asthma symptoms of coughing and wheezing on a weekly or daily basis. Decreases in ambient pollution levels in Southern California have been associated with statistically significant decreases in asthma-related symptoms in children [
48]. Children under the age of 5 living within the West Adams buffer area represent 20% of the population as compared to 7% of residents in the city of Los Angeles, and this group is more biologically sensitive to air pollution health impacts. Future studies might consider children’s health specifically. Respondents with diagnosed asthma in our sample did not report higher rates of emergency room visits in the previous 12 months (West Adams 25%; University Park 19%) than previously reported in SPA6 or LA County, but our sample size was small (16 diagnosed asthmatics for UP (University Park) and 28 diagnosed asthmatics for WA (West Adams)).
The reliance on self-reported information is a possible limitation of the study. Surveys are not an optimal method for estimates for some kinds of health outcomes of interest, such as birth defects, especially in a population that may be transient. However, the use of questions from a validated survey facilitated comparison for asthma and respiratory health. While both Jefferson and AllenCo have long operated in these neighborhoods, AllenCo was closed at the time of the survey to address their lack of emissions controls. We report both University Park and West Adams rates here given the significant community interest in both fields and concern over AllenCo’s reopening. Another limitation of the survey could be awareness bias. The study questionnaire asked respondents about knowledge of their environment and the oil development, as well as health status. One way to reduce this bias may be to control for the effect of awareness [
6]. In our case, community organizations were interested in learning both about environmental awareness and self-reported health.
Air Quality Monitoring
The similarities between the data from Sites A and C seen in the diurnal patterns and the ranges of methane variation are likely explained by regional methane trends and meteorology. There was an offset between the two datasets (seen in the differing medians); however, this offset was less than the RMSE determined during calibration. Spatial differences occurred at a finer temporal scale as can be observed in
Figure 3, which depicts periods of elevated methane lasting from approximately 10 min to up to 3 h. These events included differences in methane between the two sites greater than 1.0 ppm, well above the RMSE of the calibration model (0.14). Given that these events occurred at one site and not the other, they were likely the result of an emission source nearer to Site A. This was even more evident for the events that occurred during daytime hours when more, atmospheric mixing is typically taking place [
49]. Additional measurements would aid in further narrowing down the source of these events. For example, wind speed and direction information combined with data from multiple sensors might point to the origin of emissions. While data from different types of low-cost sensors could possibly provide more information on the composition of the plumes causing these events. Another benefit of utilizing low-cost sensors in a CBPR context is that local experience, such as observations about local activities or odors, can improve interpretations of the data. On one day depicted in
Figure 3, nearby residents reported seeing heavy equipment being used at the active drill site. If similar methane enhancements were observed every time this activity occurred, it would indicate a correlation worthy of further investigation. Examining this qualitative data alongside quantitative data provided by low-cost sensors may result in a more comprehensive understanding of the community’s experiences, which could in turn carry through and inform community-based action or potentially policy recommendations.