New study on diesel pollution: “There is strong evidence that particulate matter (PM) emitted mainly from diesel road vehicles is associated with increased risk of heart attack, heart failure, and death.” Ever wonder why so many get sick when the oil & gas industry invades your home & community? Air pollution cost Canadians $36 Billion in 2015 alone!

Prague, Czech Republic – 26 May 2017: Diesel pollution is linked with heart damage, according to research presented today at EuroCMR 2017 (1).

“There is strong evidence that particulate matter (PM) emitted mainly from diesel road vehicles is associated with increased risk of heart attack, heart failure, and death,” said lead author Dr Nay Aung, a cardiologist and Wellcome Trust research fellow, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, UK. “This appears to be driven by an inflammatory response – inhalation of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) causes localised inflammation of the lungs followed by a more systemic inflammation affecting the whole body. ”

The current study examined whether PM2.5 may damage the heart directly. The study included 4 255 participants from the UK Biobank, a large community-based cohort study. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging was conducted to measure left ventricular volume (structure) and left ventricular ejection fraction (function). Annual average exposure to PM2.5 was calculated based on participants’ home address.

The association between PM2.5 exposure and heart structure and function was estimated using multivariable linear regression, a form of statistical modelling which adjusts for potential factors that could influence the relationship such as age, gender, diabetes and blood pressure.

Participants were 62 years old on average and 47% were men. The annual average PM2.5 level was 10 µg/m3. The investigators found linear relationships between ambient PM2.5 level and heart structure and function. Every 5 µg/m3 increase in exposure was associated with a 4–8% increase in left ventricular volume and a 2% decrease in left ventricular ejection fraction.

Dr Aung said: “We found that as PM2.5 exposure rises, the larger the heart gets and the worse it performs. Both of these measures are associated with increased morbidity and mortality from heart disease.”

The researchers also looked for potential factors that could modify the relationship. They found that people with degree-level education were less prone to having a larger heart and had a smaller reduction in ejection fraction when exposed to PM2.5 than people with a lower level of education.

Dr Aung said: “People who were highly educated were less likely to have harmful effects on the heart from pollution. This could be due to a number of factors including better housing and workplace conditions, which reduce pollution exposure. Educated people may also be more aware of their health, have healthier lifestyles, and have better access to healthcare.”

Regarding how pollution might have these negative effects on the heart, Dr Aung said PM2.5 causes systemic inflammation, vasoconstriction and raised blood pressure. The combination of these factors can increase the pressure in the heart, which enlarges to cope with the overload. The heart chamber enlargement reduces the contractile efficiency leading to reduction in ejection fraction.

Dr Aung said: “We found that the average exposure to PM2.5 in the UK is about 10 µg/m3 in our study. This is way below the European target of less than 25 µg/m3 and yet we are still seeing these harmful effects. This suggests that the current target level is not safe and should be lowered.”

He continued: “Our results suggest that PM2.5 is linked with negative changes in the heart structure and function that are associated with poor outcomes. Reducing PM2.5 emission should be an urgent public health priority and the worst offenders such as diesel vehicles should be addressed with policy measures.”

In terms of what individuals can do to decrease their risk, Dr Aung said: “Avoid times and places where there is a high level of pollution. If you want to cycle into work and there is heavy traffic around that time then try to find a quieter route. Walk on the part of the pavement furthest from cars to reduce the amount of pollution you breathe in. Those with cardiorespiratory diseases should limit the time spent outdoors during highly polluted periods such as rush hours.” [If breathing fumes from fracking, flaring and facilities inside the home and at the workplace, such as on a ranch, or going to school or residing in a seniors facilitiy where such activities and pollution is permitted next door, limiting exposure is impossible. Emphasis added]

ENDS

Notes to editor

ESC Press Office
Tel: +33 (0) 4 89 87 34 83
Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

SOURCES OF FUNDING: This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) funded the manual analysis of cardiovascular magnetic resonance images. Dr Nay Aung is funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship.

DISCLOSURES: None.

References and notes
(1)Dr Aung will present the abstract ‘Impact of fine particulate matter air pollutant on cardiac atrial and ventricular structure and function derived from cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging – evidence from the UK Biobank’ during the BEST Oral Abstracts session which takes place on 26 May at 09:45 in Main room 1.

***

Live in Alberta? Hold your breath all day and night long:

Endless oil and gas industry emissions, many carcinogenic, many from diesel trucks running 24/7:

Photos of industry fracing air and families in Alberta municipalities by FrackingCanada

2012 night frac in Alberta, hold your breath, all night long

What about particulate pollution from Alberta’s oil and gas facilities in nearly every community? How many heart attacks and diseases in Alberta are caused by oil & gas industry air pollution?

March 12, 2014: Cochrane Interpipeline Gas Plant NW of Calgary

Hold your breath all day and night long.

***

Traffic-Related Air Pollution Linked to DNA Damage in Children, Study Shows Telomere Shortening in Youth with Higher Pollution Exposure by Dr. John R. Balmes in Newswise, May 19, 2017, Article ID: 675053, Source Newsroom: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Children and teens exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution have evidence of a specific type of DNA damage called telomere shortening, reports a study in the May Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Young people with asthma also have evidence of telomere shortening, according to the preliminary research by John R. Balmes, MD, of University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues. They write, “Our results suggest that telomere length may have potential for use as a biomarker of DNA damage due to environmental exposures and/or chronic inflammation.”

The study included 14 children and adolescents living in Fresno, Calif.—the second-most polluted city in the United States. The researchers assessed the relationship between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a “ubiquitous” air pollutant caused by motor vehicle exhaust; and shortening of telomeres, a type of DNA damage typically associated with aging.

As the exposure to PAHs increased, telomere length decreased in linear fashion. Children and teens with asthma were exposed to higher PAH levels than those without asthma. The relationship between PAH level and telomere shortening remained significant after adjustment for asthma and other factors (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) related to telomere length.

The study adds to previous evidence that air pollution causes oxidative stress, which can damage lipids, proteins, and DNA. Research has suggested that children may have different telomere shortening regulation than adults, which might make them more vulnerable to the damaging effects of air pollution.

“Greater knowledge of the impact of air pollution at the molecular level is necessary to design effective interventions and policies,” Dr. Balmes and coauthors conclude. With further research, telomeres could provide a new biomarker to reflect the cellular-level effects of exposure to air pollution. Telomeres might also provide new insights into the understanding how pollution exposure leads to adverse health outcomes. [Emphasis added]

###

About the Author

Dr. Balmes may be contacted for interviews at jbalmes(at)berkeley.edu

Air pollution causes 7,700 premature deaths in Canada each year: report by Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press, Jun. 01, 2017, The Globe and Mail

Air pollution cost Canadian families an estimated $36 billion in 2015 due to premature death and illness, a new research report says.

The report, Costs of Pollution in Canada, is a compilation of scientific data on all aspects of pollution, from smog to oil spills and fertilizer use. It is being released today by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“The more scientists look at the costs of air pollution, the more they find those costs are large,” said Robert Smith, a senior associate at the institute and the report’s lead author.

A 2008 Canadian Medical Association study concluded that about 2,300 people die prematurely every year because of air pollution — a study once considered the gold standard, Smith said.

More recently, that study was found to have vastly underestimated the impact; new research in 2015 suggested the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution is closer to 7,700 people a year.

“We now know the costs of air pollution are much higher than we thought they were,” Smith said. “The morbidity and mortality is much worse than we thought.”

The IISD report compiles scientific research on the impacts of pollution across a number of areas, including human and animal health and costs to business and government. It includes things such as the cost to clean up contaminated sites, the impact of acid rain, the deaths of honey bees, algae blooms and oil spills.

A lot of the costs of pollution are not known at all because the research simply isn’t there, the report notes.

Pathogens in tap water add another $895 million in costs. Climate change-related heat waves cost $1.6 billion in 2015, the report says.

Heat waves are the only consequence the study priced, since there is no clear picture what portion of other events such storms and droughts can be attributed to climate change, Smith said.

Scientists have been able to attribute about 50 per cent of heat waves to climate change, and the $1.6 billion cost reflects that figure, he noted.

While much of the world is taking steps to address air pollution largely by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, there is a fear the United States is poised to rekindle the use of coal to generate electricity.

President Donald Trump has famously promised to breathe new life into the struggling U.S. coal industry, which used to be responsible for more than half of America’s power, and now produces about one-third.

Regulations on coal-fired plants have put a damper on coal production, as have market forces that made other sources more attractive, such as natural gas from fracking. Burning coal remains the largest source of air pollution in the U.S.

As Trump now ponders withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement, Smith said fear of more coal has grown. Even though Canada isn’t going down that road, “pollution knows no boundaries.”

Toronto, which has finally started to see its air pollution levels go down, would get hit if there is suddenly a ramping-up of coal production in the Ohio Valley, Smith said.

In many ways, he added, the bright light these days is China, which recently shelved plans to open more than 100 new coal plants.

“I guess all we can, in some sense, pin our hopes on is the Chinese population — that their rising middle class isn’t going to put up with this.” [Emphasis added]

Air pollution results in 7,700 premature deaths in Canada each year, report says, Air pollution cost Canadians $36B in 2015 due to premature death and illness by The Canadian Press, Jun 01, 2017, CBC News

Air pollution cost Canadian families an estimated $36 billion in 2015 due to premature death and illness, a new research report says.

The report, Costs of Pollution in Canada, is a compilation of scientific data on all aspects of pollution, from smog to oil spills and fertilizer use. It is being released Thursday by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. …

Scientists have been able to attribute about 50 per cent of heat waves to climate change, and the $1.6 billion cost reflects that figure, he noted.

While much of the world is taking steps to address air pollution largely by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, there is a fear the United States is poised to rekindle the use of coal to generate electricity.

‘Pollution knows no boundaries’

U.S. President Donald Trump has famously promised to breathe new life into the struggling U.S. coal industry, which used to be responsible for more than half of America’s power, and now produces about one-third.

Regulations on coal-fired plants have put a damper on coal production, as have market forces that made other sources more attractive, such as natural gas from fracking. Burning coal remains the largest source of air pollution in the U.S.

As Trump now ponders withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement, Smith said fear of more coal has grown. Even though Canada isn’t going down that road, “pollution knows no boundaries.” [Emphasis added]

In glutted diesel fuel market, Alberta to open first refinery in decades, The $8.5-billion refinery in Sturgeon County, 45 kilometres northeast of Edmonton employs about 2500 people by Robert Tuttle, May 30, 2017, Bloomberg News in Calgary Herald

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

When Canada’s government decided to fund the nation’s first new refinery in three decades in 2012, a diesel shortage had just caused some truckers to be turned away from filling stations, and demand was climbing. Oilsands producers were ramping up output and crude prices topped $100 a barrel.

Fast forward to 2017, and North West Refining’s Sturgeon plant in Alberta is poised to add 40,000 barrels a day of diesel to an already glutted market. Crude is hovering around $50 amid surging North American output, oilsands producers have shelved expansions and Alberta has just emerged from a two-year recession.

“Diesel demand is dropping in Alberta,” John Auers, executive vice president at energy consultant Turner Mason & Co., said by phone. “Any time you are adding more supply, you are going to impact the price negatively.”Diesel demand is lower than it was two years ago, and truck fuel prices relative to crude oil are half their level from three years ago.

The Sturgeon plant, Canada’s first new refinery since 1984, will begin turning oilsands bitumen into diesel by the end of the year, according to Ian MacGregor, chairman of Northwest Redwater Partnership, which owns half the project in partnership with Canadian Natural Resource Ltd. Bitumen is a molasses-like substance extracted from oil sand that is so thick, it has to be blended with condensate or upgraded into synthetic oil to be processed.

Near Supply

Located southwest of Alberta’s oilsands, home to the world’s third-largest crude reserves, Sturgeon is about 90 percent built, with bitumen scheduled to be injected into the plant by the end of summer, MacGregor said. It will process 80,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen at the end of its first phase, scheduled for completion this year.

The Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, an agent of the provincial government, will provide 75 percent of the feedstock used by the $8.5 billionrefinery, or about 37,500 barrels a day, along with loans, equity and fees, according to government documents published last year, which estimated the total package at about $25 billion over 30 years.

That much bitumen alone is worth about $20 billion at the current market price of about $48 a barrel, according to Bloomberg calculations. Oilsands producers supply the bitumen as a royalty payment to the province.

Changing Market

The diesel market that the refinery will supply has also changed radically in the years since the project got off the drawing board, with swelling quantities of the trucking fuel. The surplus of diesel produced by Alberta refineries in the 12 months through January was 45 percent bigger than in the same period three years before, the latest government figures show.

Diesel at a fuel rack in Edmonton, Alberta, has traded at a 32-cent premium to New York futures over the past three months, almost half its price three years earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

But demand may rise longer term. The country’s National Energy Board projects that vehicles that move freight, such as diesel-burning trucks, will use 5 percent more energy in 2020 from 2016. Energy demand for freight vehicles will rise 1.6 percent this year alone.

“If you look at any long-term forecast, it’s showing that Alberta will be diesel short, so there will be economic sense for the refinery,” Dinara Millington, vice president of research at the Canadian Energy Research Institute. “If that doesn’t transpire, we could potentially export diesel.”

Export Options

Canada is a net exporter of diesel to the U.S. The country sent 71,000 barrels a day across the border in 2016, down from 118,000 barrels a day the year before, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show. Most of that goes to the U.S. East Coast, which has access to production from Eastern Canadian refineries. Western Canada’s biggest export market for diesel is the U.S. West Coast, which is connected to Alberta via the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

By 2020, the diesel will find ready buyers on the Pacific coast as new low-sulfur bunker fuel rules go into effect worldwide, Turner Mason’s Auers said. World distillate demand will rise as much as 1.5 million barrels a day, creating a “slug” of demand that refiners may struggle to fulfill.

That said, the refinery probably isn’t worth the money, Auers said.

“They are paying $9 billion to build that plant and its only processing 50,000 barrels a day of bitumen,” he said. “It was not good investment by the crown.” [Emphasis added]

Canada to open first refinery in decades despite oversaturated fuel market, “Any time you are adding more supply, you are going to impact the price negatively,” says John Auers, executive vice-president at energy consultant Turner Mason & Co. by Robert Tuttle, May 30, 2017, Toronto Star

[Refer also to:

2016 08 21: Rocky View County Alberta: Municipal councilors fail to support clean air and water, Voted clean air and water out of bounds, OK for frac’ers to poison families and environment

2016 07 18: 8-year frac health study shows fracking associated with increased asthma attacks: “Those who lived closer to a large number or bigger active natural gas wells were significantly more likely…to suffer asthma attacks” … “The highest risk for asthma attacks occurred in people living a median of about 12 miles from drilled wells. The lowest risk was for people living a median of about 40 miles away.”

2016 05 16: New Study: Alberta’s tar sands leading source of air pollution in North America, Tens of thousands of people living within reach breathing elevated levels of fine particles linked in previous studies to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes

2016 05 12: Another New Peer-Reviewed, Published Frac Health Harm Review: Harmful chemicals used in, produced by unconventional oil & gas pose serious threat to infants & children

2016 04 26: New peer-reviewed published paper on unconventional natural gas development (excluding CBM/CSG) impacts: “At least 685 papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that are relevant to assessing the impacts of UNGD. 84% of public health studies contain findings that indicate public health hazards, elevated risks, or adverse health outcomes; 69% of water quality studies contain findings that indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination; and 87% of air quality studies contain findings that indicate elevated air pollutant emissions and/or atmospheric concentrations”

2015 09 22: Alberta premier Rachel Notley tells business leaders energy industry must clean up its act. Do energy industry business leader terrorists give a damn about Alberta or Albertans?

2015 03 04: MUST (LONG) READ! Special Issue of Journal Environmental Science and Health, Part A: Toxic/Hazardous Substances and Environmental Engineering: Facing the Challenges – Research on Shale Gas Extraction

2015 05 18: Why Did New York State Ban Fracking? Massive study finds health, safety and environmental uncertainties regarding fracking’s dangers have ‘grown worse over time’

2015 07 15: Another new study showing frac harms to health: Hydraulic fracturing linked to increases in hospitalization rates in the Marcellus Shale

2014 07 24: Harper government enabling the frac harm cover up? Environment Canada criticized for leaving fracking chemicals off pollutant list saying not enough frac chemicals used – 362,000 litres of diesel invert lost underground near Alberta family home

2014 08 14: Fracking Beyond the Law: Despite Industry Denials, Investigation Reveals Continued Use of Diesel in Hydraulic Fracturing

2014 02 12: Holding One’s Own on Lost Circulation: “Some of the fluids they are drilling with are extremely toxic, diesel-based muds”

2014 02 11: USA: Fracking With Diesel Gets New VOLUNTARY EPA Standards, Voluntary yet industry still fought to prevent them

2015 11 24: Promise of Fracking Three Part Series by Tom Wilbur: Was it too good to be true? “It continues to be the driller’s dirty secret: Play nice and you get water. Buck the system and you’re on your own.”

2014 02 18: Big Oil, Bad Air: Where has the College been all these years? Why not SUPPORT ALL ALBERTA DOCTORS treating citizens and workers poisoned by oil and gas? Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons tells Peace River doctors it will support them in face of intimidation

2014 05 16: Texas Judge John D. Rainey Gives Oil Giant Citgo Slap On the Wrist for 10 Years of Illegal Operations; Restitution to Poisoned Families: “Absolutely Nothing”

2014 05 21: In Utah Oil Boom Town, Dramatic Spike in Infant Deaths after Drilling and Fracing Raises Questions; Industry Funded Study Intends to Leave Out 2013 – the Year with Most Infant Deaths

2013 10 06: Marcellus gas compressor stations and processing plants, near to one another or even linked, are evaluated individually for pollution to ensure that oil and gas industry doesn’t have to implement emissions controls; this is the same in Alberta

2013 01 24: Air Pollution and Cancer Spikes linked in Alberta; Alberta’s Oil Legacy: Bad Air and Rare Cancers, Sickening carcinogens now saturate Industrial Heartland, study finds

2012 08 17: Diesel still used to frack wells FracFocus data show

2012 09 02: Valley Chokes On Air; Doctor Says Drilling Only Making It Worse

2012 10 18: Frackers continue illegal use of toxic diesel fuels ]

This entry was posted in Global Frac News. Bookmark the permalink.