Science Mama

It is late September, and I’m standing in a field of knee-high prairie grass with a gaggle of representatives from different health departments. Their concerned faces twitch at the heat as they strain to hear the tall German man speaking. The man is Detlev Helmig, a renowned air pollution scientist. We crowd around his air monitoring station: a tiny aluminum trailer rigged with sensors and computers spinning and beeping from every corner. Helmig has been studying air pollution in the Colorado Front Range for years and is contracted by multiple counties to analyze regional air quality. We are currently at one of his six local stations. This station has recently gained attention from the local health officials and public health advocacy groups for its recent findings.

 Helmig lifts his long, thin arm and points to a fracking site behind us. “We can see the trajectory of the plume coming from right there,” he says. The plume he is talking about is acetylene, a toxic chemical that is released during fracking. Fracking, the method of extracting oil and gas from underground rocks by injecting liquid, has become commonplace for areas like this.

The mile high city is primed for oil drilling as it boasts the richest oil shale deposits in the world. For years, oil companies have taken advantage of rural areas on the outskirts of the main metro hubs. Over time though, more families have moved into these areas, unaware of the health risks quietly lingering in the air. Currently there are 40,000 drilling wells across Denver’s basin, with new ones cropping up each month.  Oil is dredged up less than 600 feet from schools, playgrounds, and family homes. Thousands of kids live in these areas, and only recently has research started to reveal its detrimental effects on the developing body.

 It isn’t just fracking that health officials are worried about, though. In recent years, the Denver-Boulder area has been experiencing an uptick in vehicle emissions, local wildfires, and industrial pollution. Paired with our inversion layer, this blend of emissions creates a thick stew of noxious air sitting over our heads.

In the past several years, more researchers have turned their focus on the impact of these pollutants on the developing body.  “Small particles can travel into your lungs and then further circulate throughout the body. Specifically, some very small particles that are made of different chemical mixtures, including metals, go directly to the brain through the olfactory pathway. This can have a direct influence on neurological development,” says Dr. Jun Wu, an air pollution specialist at UC Irvine.

Once these particulates enter the brain, they orchestrate a cascade of neural changes. One study done by Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas and colleagues observed structural alterations and decreased blood flow in cerebral white matter in children who had frequent exposure to air pollution. The study also found that those children with higher exposures showed higher amounts of pro-inflammatory biomarkers. Neuroinflammation is the hallmark of neurodegeneration­– the damage and loss of neurons. A separate study conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health concluded that early-life exposure to air pollution is associated with reduced working memory and attention.

From head to toe, these carcinogens have been shown to damage virtually every organ. These ultrafine particles hitch a ride along the bloodstream highway and travel along to far-reaching cells, inducing molecular changes along the way. These changes result in disruption within the cellular machinery, stimulating inflammation and tumor growth. These changes result in disruption within the cellular machinery, stimulating inflammation and tumor growth. A study performed by Lisa McKenzie and associates found that Colorado children who lived within a 4-mile radius of a fracking site were 4.3 times as likely to be diagnosed with hematologic cancer such as leukemia. A similar study performed by the same team found that children born within ten miles of an oil and gas development have a 40-70 percent increased chance of having a congenital heart defect. Currently, six percent of Colorado’s population lives within a one-mile radius of an oil or gas site.

The prevalence of asthmatic children in the Front Range has become so pervasive that the city of Denver installed particle sensors at 40 schools with the highest asthma rates. The Clean Air Task Force found that 20,466 pediatric asthma attacks per year are attributed to ozone smog from oil and gas production in Denver. Twenty percent of students in the Denver metro area suffer from asthma– nearly threefold the national average.

Now our summer skies rest in a haze of dark coffee. My son, who is six, has developed what the locals call the “summer hack” ­– a deep and unforgiving cough that plagues residents during our worst air quality months. Weeks go by that aren’t safe enough to let him outside to play. He’s made it a morning ritual to check the air quality before breakfast. “It’s in the red again,” he tells me disappointingly. The Denver-Boulder area experienced 129 days of elevated air pollution in 2020. Currently, 2021 is on track to break that record.

My mother suffered from asthma all my life. She grew up in inner-city Los Angeles in the 1960s, before air pollution limits and laws. She jokes, “I didn’t even know what a blue sky looked like.” My childhood is haunted with periods of her asthma attacks, watching her face turn blue, gasping for hair. My heart wrenches knowing thousands of families will unnecessarily relive this experience. As I drive home from Helmig’s field station, I pass by a park nestled up next to a drilling site. Children are playing in the tall grass; their bright faces a stark contrast to the ominous industrial rig in the background. With the trilogy of increased emissions, wildfires, and oil development, there is no telling what health outcomes these kids will experience down the line. But we still have a responsibility to do what we can, while we can. “We have done a lot of research and understand the impact,” says Wu. “We should improve the living experience to improve their health.”

List of Sources

• Calderón-Garcidueñas, Lilian, et al. “White matter hyperintensities, systemic inflammation, brain growth, and cognitive functions in children exposed to air pollution.” Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 31.1 (2012): 183-191.

• McKenzie, Lisa M., et al. “Childhood hematologic cancer and residential proximity to oil and gas development.” PloS one 12.2 (2017): e0170423.

• McKenzie, Lisa M., William Allshouse, and Stephen Daniels. “Congenital heart defects and intensity of oil and gas well site activities in early pregnancy.” Environment international 132 (2019): 104949.

• Rivas, Ioar, et al. “Association between early life exposure to air pollution and working memory and attention.” Environmental health perspectives 127.5 (2019): 057002.