Study: Higher COVID Death Rates In California Among Those Who Lived Near High-Volume Oil & Gas Wells

On Feb. 6, 2020, a week after the World Health Organization declared the global coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency, the first Californian died of COVID-19 in San Jose. The next month, cases ballooned around the San Francisco Bay Area, prompting seven counties to issue shelter-in-place orders. By May, Los Angeles County had emerged as a hotspot, and researchers reported that Black and Latino residents were twice as likely to die of the disease than whites.

Now recent research adds to evidence that communities burdened by pollution, like many in Los Angeles County, face higher risks from infectious diseases. As public health officials worry that bird flu could spark the next pandemic, the new research shows that living near oil and gas wells worsened the impacts of the ongoing one. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal GeoHealth in November, found higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death in the early months of the pandemic among Californians who lived near the highest-producing oil and gas wells.

“We were concerned because we saw disparities in rates of disease and death in the beginning of the pandemic,” said Helena Archer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research who led the new research while a fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She wanted to know how being chronically exposed to pollutants like those produced by oil and gas wells affected COVID-19 outcomes.

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More than a million people in California live within a kilometer (about two-thirds of a mile) of an active oil or gas well. Many studies have linked living near such sites with a higher risk of several health problems, including asthma, immunodeficiency, heart failure, upper respiratory disease and cancer. Several of these conditions, particularly cardiovascular disease, have been linked to increased risk of developing a more severe case of COVID-19.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022025/living-near-oil-gas-wells-may-have-increased-covid-19-risk/