Most people want to stop the burning of fossil fuels because of their contribution to climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and coral bleaching. However, there are additional problems with fossil fuel pollution that people neglect to talk about when discussing how quickly we should phase them out. These problems can include infant mortality, asthma, mental health, and cancer. Also, people seem to forget that things like the cleanup of oil spills and difficulties with plugging oil wells will happen until the transition to renewable energy is complete. Perhaps highlighting some of these problems will change our discussion about fossil fuel phase out.

Fossil fuels release particulates when burned and can contribute to drought conditions that cause the release of more natural particulates (Averett, 2020). Removing this particulate matter could reduce the infant mortality rate by 18% in Africa (Averett, 2020). A mother’s exposure to fossil fuel particulates increases her children's chances of having asthma (Ji et al., 2016).

There is also an increased incidence of cancer at oil refineries (Williams et al., 2020). Oil refineries are known to emit carcinogens such as benzene and several United States Refineries were recently found to be responsible for creating off-property concentrations of the carcinogen benzene above the federal recommendations (Reuters Staff, 2020).

Burning fossil fuels can cause neurodegenerative diseases similar to Alzheimer's (Zhu et al., 2020) and can increase the probability of autism (Imbriani et al., 2021). The thought that burning fossil fuels causes our thinking to change should be scary enough on its own, but according to the CDC (Xylene, 2019) even in liquid form, chemicals like xylene (an oil derivative found in gasoline) cause symptoms like confusion and dizziness.

When oil companies go out of business, they do not have the resources to pay to have their wells secured. There were many abandoned wells in the United States that taxpayers had to pay to have closed because the company went out of business.

Even if the company doesn’t go out of business, natural gas and oil wells can be difficult to close. One of the most famous cases of a gas well that is difficult to close is “The Door to Hell” which has been burning in the Turkmenistan desert since 1971 (Geiling, 2014). If the Soviet Union, one of the world's 2 superpowers at the time, could not contain this leak, what are the odds of a gas leak remaining open in a less developed country? The United States of America has not had the best track record either, with the Deepwater Horizon remaining open and polluting the Gulf of Mexico from mid-April to early August of 2010, preventing fishing in large sections of the gulf even months after it closed.

Smog/regional haze is ground-level ozone that obscures vision and has a strong smell. Ground-level ozone is formed from a combination of Volatile Organic Carbon compounds (VOCs) and nitric oxides. Both of these compounds are released from the burning of fossil fuels. London has had notorious smog problems from its burning of fossil fuels.

People like to think of themselves as separate from the species of the planet that have had a negative impact from the drilling, refining, and mining of fossil fuels but this view is clearly not in line with reality. Hopefully having the problems with fossil fuels laid out in terms of short term effects in the vicinity of usage will result in people making informed decisions about how fast to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy; that is, if climate change isn’t enough to galvanize you.

Written by David Infortunio

References

Averett, N. (2020, December 14). Fine Particle Pollution is Down, But Still Killing People. Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/fine-particle-pollution-kills-and-its-on-the-rise?fbclid=IwAR2N7TxjZodF4i5IFsopc57Uo_x5ljyKLWCIx1_l3ibtaEDt23z1JyfQJXk

Geiling, N. (2014, May 20). This Hellish Desert Pit Has Been On Fire for More Than 40 Years. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-been-fire-more-40-years-180951247/

Imbriani, G., Panico, A., Grassi, T., Idolo, A., Serio, F., Bagordo, F., De Filippis, G., De Giorgi, D., Antonucci, G., Piscitelli, P., Colangelo, M., Peccarisi, L., Tumolo, M. R., De Masi, R., Miani, A., & De Donno, A. (2021, January 29). Early-Life Exposure to Environmental Air Pollution and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review of Available Evidence. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(3), 1204. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031204

Ji, H., Biagini Myers, J. M., Brandt, E. B., Brokamp, C., Brokamp, C., Ryan, P. H., & Khurana Hershey, G. K. (2016, October 19). Air pollution, epigenetics, and asthma. Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, 12(51). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13223-016-0159-4

Reuters Staff. (2020, FEBRUARY 6). Ten U.S. refineries emitted excessive cancer-causing benzene in 2019: report. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-refineries-benzene/ten-u-s-refineries-emitted-excessive-cancer-causing-benzene-in-2019-report-idUSKBN2000EE

Williams, S. B., Shan, Y., Jazzar, U., Kerr, P. S., Okereke, I., Klimberg, V. S., Tyler, D. S., Putluri, N., Lopez, D. S., Prochaska, J. D., Elferink, C., Baillargeon, J. G., Kuo, Y.-F., & Mehta, H. B. (2020, October 7). Proximity to Oil Refineries and Risk of Cancer: A Population-Based Analysis. JNCI Cancer Spectrum, 4(6). https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkaa088

Workplace Safety and Health Topics: Xylene. (2019, June 21). National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Retrieved February 6, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/xylene/default.html

Zhu, X., Ji, X., Shou, Y., Huang, Y., Hu, Y., & Wang, H. (2020, September). Recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of PM2.5-mediated neurodegenerative diseases. Toxicology Letters, 329(1), 31-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2020.04.017