A “Public Health Emergency” – Report Details Extensive Human Health Harms of Fossil Fuels
Accelerating the shift to cheaper and safer clean energy is a “health imperative,” public health experts say.
Shell’s Norco Manufacturing Complex in Norco, Louisiana - one of the largest petrochemical facilities in the United States - is located in an industrialized corridor along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley. Credit: Dana Drugmand
The Niger Delta region in Africa is home to some 31 million people and the continent’s largest wetland ecosystem. More than half a century of oil extraction has also rendered it one of the most heavily polluted places on the entire planet. Massive oil spills have poisoned farmland and waterways, decimating farming livelihoods and contaminating 70 percent of the area’s freshwater sources. The contamination means that hydrocarbons are in the blood of the people and the fishes, and diseases from skin rashes to birth defects and cancers are common. Flaring is another way that hydrocarbons and toxins like benzene – a carcinogen – are released into the environment. “Gas flaring is one of the silent killers that we have in the Niger Delta,” Nbani Friday Barilule, director and founder of the Nigeria-based grassroots advocacy group Lekeh Development Foundation, said during a recent webinar hosted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The average life expectancy in the region is just 41 years, Barilule noted.
In the US state of Louisiana, petrochemical and fossil fuel facilities and infrastructure are concentrated in majority Black neighborhoods including areas that were former slave plantations. Around 200 of these polluting facilities can be found in an 85-mile-long corridor along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The area is so contaminated with toxins, it is known as Cancer Alley. In the community of Sulphur in southwest Louisiana, over a dozen fossil fuel and petrochemical plants continuously pump pollutants into the air that residents breathe. “Our air carries a stench of rotten eggs,” Roishetta Ozane, an environmental justice advocate and single mother of six from Sulphur, said during the webinar. One of her sons has epilepsy and her children suffer from other maladies like asthma and eczema. “Our communities are plagued by above average poverty rates, above average cancer rates, and with above average numbers of toxins in the air, which exacerbates our health crisis,” Ozane explained.
Unfortunately these are not isolated incidents. Across the United States and around the world, fossil fuels inflict extensive damage not just on the environment, but on people’s health. A report published last month by the Global Climate & Health Alliance (GCHA) details these negative health consequences in what it says it the “first comprehensive global overview” of the human health impacts of fossil fuels across their lifecycle, from extraction to end use and waste disposal. The findings, which draw from scientific literature and studies as well as personal testimonies, are devastating but not surprising.
“What we found in writing this report is that there is abundant evidence of the health harms of fossil fuels,” Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate & Health Alliance, said during the September 16 report launch event. The GCHA unites over 200 health organizations and partners across more than 125 countries to bring the voice and perspectives of health professionals into the climate change conversation.
“From the first extraction to the final emission, fossil fuels are the silent architects of suffering” - Dr. Lujain Alqodmani, immediate past president of the World Medical Association
“Fossil fuels have powered economies and societies for over a century,” the report states in its introduction. “However, the health costs of this energy system – across its entire life cycle have been profound and are accelerating.”
The evidence shows that fossil fuels harm human health at every stage of their lifecycle, and that virtually no part of the human body is immune. “Toxins from fossil fuels can harm every part of our body,” Miller said.
As the report explains, fossil fuel pollutants “impair lung function and exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases; increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and hospitalizations; disrupt cognitive function and mental health through impacts on the brain and nervous system; elevate the risk of cancers such as leukemia; cause reproductive damage; and contribute to premature mortality.”
Pregnant mothers and unborn babies as well as children are especially vulnerable to fossil fueled health impacts. “Before a baby is even born, it is saddled with health impacts of fossil fuel pollution,” Miller said. Exposure to this pollution in childhood, she noted, has been linked to asthma, lung damage, and childhood cancers (especially leukemia).
The scientific studies suggesting links between exposure to petrochemicals and plastics or fossil fuel pollution and adverse health impacts are voluminous. A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, for example, finds that exposure to nitrogen dioxide emissions, mainly produced by vehicles, is associated with increased breast cancer incidence in women.
In addition to the direct pollutants and toxins generated by fossil fuels, they also emit greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet and causing dangerous and deadly impacts, from more lethal extreme heat and other weather-related disasters to increased spread of vector-born diseases.
“From the first extraction to the final emission, fossil fuels are the silent architects of suffering, claiming lives and undermining the quality of countless others,” Dr. Lujain Alqodmani, immediate past president of the World Medical Association, writes in a foreword to the report.
“Even if carbon emissions were captured tomorrow, fossil fuels would still poison, displace, and destabilize,” said Shweta Narayan, report author and campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Not only are they a climate problem, fossil fuels are driving a global public health emergency.”
The warnings and calls to swiftly transition away from fossil fuels are not new; scientists and health professionals have been raising the alarm for years. In 2019, dozens of the leading medical organizations in the US issued a “call to action” urging elected officials, business and government leaders, and political candidates to recognize climate change as a health emergency. In 2022 the American Medical Association adopted a policy that declared climate change a public health crisis. Earlier this year in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Open Climate Change, scientists warn that fossil fuels are literally “killing us” and threatening a livable future.
Climate and health advocates and experts say it doesn’t have to be this way, as there are cleaner, safer and more reliable, and even cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels.
“A just transition away from fossil fuels is not only possible – it is a health imperative,” Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Center for Planetary Health, said in a video message during the report launch event. “By moving decisively toward clean energy, we can save lives, reduce suffering, and create healthier, more resilient societies.”
Clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in many parts of the world, and the case for accelerating the shift to renewables like solar and wind could not be clearer. “Yet,” as the report points out, “fossil fuel companies continue to delay this shift to protect their profits—at the expense of ecological, economic, and human wellbeing.”
Major oil companies are reneging on previous climate-related commitments and doubling down on their core oil and gas business, while the world’s top fossil fuel-producing countries are planning even more production through 2030 than would be compatible with pathways to meeting globally agreed-upon targets for limiting global temperature rise. Though it is now expected that planetary heating will exceed the 1.5°C target, the world’s top court – the International Court of Justice – clarified in a landmark advisory opinion this summer that countries are legally obligated to take all necessary actions to ensure this target can be collectively adhered to. The court also suggested that continued support of fossil fuels through actions like granting of exploration licenses, permitting of extraction and infrastructure, and subsidization could be internationally wrongful acts.
“The International Court of Justice has made a groundbreaking clarification saying that the extraction, the consumption, the licensing of new exploration for fossil fuels, and subsidies are illegal internationally,” Elisa Morgera, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, said during the report launch. Morgera issued a report several months ago on the imperative of “de-fossilizing” our economies in order to safeguard human rights. “Legally and scientifically, there is no doubt that we must prioritize the de-fossilization of our economies for our own and everyone’s wellbeing right here and right now,” she said.
The report makes a handful of policy recommendations, including: halt new fossil fuel exploration and development; end fossil fuel subsidies (and redirect them towards scaling solutions); clean up existing fossil fuel production through actions like enforcing stringent emissions standards; make polluters pay; ban fossil fuel advertising and sponsorships and exclude fossil fuel interests from UN climate conferences; and end fossil fuel finance.
“Enough is enough – around the world, policymakers must put an end to the damage the outrageous and irresponsible ongoing pursuit of fossil fuel production is inflicting upon our health,” Miller said. “No one is exempt from the toxic exposures caused by our addiction to fossil fuels. Political leaders already know the solutions for ending fossil fuel dependence and know that further delay is indefensible – all that is required is political courage.”