Will living near an oil well in California give you cancer?
The data doesn't show it, but you could still get a $1 million (less lawyer fees)
Everyone in Kern County, California should be dead or dying of cancer. They should be according to a popular logic that merely living CLOSE to an oil well is akin to pasting radium watch dials on your nipples and chain smoking menthol 100s with asbestos filters.
This thinking has become gospel in California, so much so that Governor Newsom wants to ban oil wells within 3,200 feet of, well, anyone. But he was stopped in 2023 when nearly a million voters qualified a ballot initiative to overturn the law (AB 1137) he signed. The matter will be decided by voters this November.
Other “me too” legislators have piled onto the Governor’s bid to kill the oil and gas industry by contriving their own legislation. One of these me-too dogs barking at the money tree is Assembly Bill 3155 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Burbank).
AB 3155 is essentially the same bill as Senator Lena Gonzalez’s (D-Long Beach) SB 556 from last year which was rejected by the state legislature. AB 3155 claims oil wells cause all types of illnesses in people living near them, specifically cancer, asthma and birth defects. The bill is highly prejudiced. If it becomes law, just about anyone who suffers from one these diseases can sue an oil and gas operator. Even if they don’t sue, district and state attorneys will be empowered to sue operators for costs paid for by the taxpayers.
This bill would, after January 1, 2025, make an operator or owner of an oil or gas production facility or well with a wellhead presumptively, jointly and severally liable for a respiratory ailment in a senior or child, a preterm birth or high-risk pregnancy suffered by a pregnant person, and a person’s cancer diagnosis…
Carefully note the word, “presumptively.” This means any illness is PRESUMED to be the fault of the operator. Operators will be burdened with proving their innocence, not exactly an all-American ethic. The penalty is severe:
The bill would also require a civil penalty of not less than $250,000 and not more than $1,000,000 per senior, child, pregnant person, or person diagnosed with cancer to be imposed on an operator or owner of an oil or gas production facility or well with a wellhead in an action brought pursuant to these provisions…
Assemblywoman Laura Friedman cites no evidence that living near oil wells causes these things other than the conclusions of a 15-member panel in 2021. That panel concentrated on birth defects and asthma and made only a passing reference to cancer. Citing this single panel’s conclusions, the bill reads:
(d) The science is therefore clear that proximity to an oil or gas production facility or well with a wellhead brings disastrous health impacts, including increased risk of asthma and other respiratory illnesses, preterm births, high-risk pregnancies, and cancer.
Hmm… The 2021 panel didn’t really address CANCER, but since it is in the bill and cancer is a fearsome disease, we should analyze it some. After all, the science is “clear” and “disastrous.” We should have no trouble discerning the effects in places where there are lots of oil wells, yes? I mean, it is CLEAR. And this journalism is “data-driven” and “fact-based” and all that loaded snark. So lets take a look at the data.
Below is a chart with age-adjusted cancer incidence rates from the Centers for Disease Control versus the number of oil and gas wells by county. Also included is each county’s median income. Any cancer correlation to the number of oil and gas wells is not discernible. In fact, it seems that counties with fewer wells are the more carcinogenic ones.
The king gorilla is Kern County where just about everyone lives near one of over 150,000 oil wells. One would think the whole county’s population would be under chemo-therapy, but it is not. Kern’s cancer rates are less than many coastal and northern counties praised for their clean living and fine French laundries. This is likely frustrating to the right honorable Assemblywoman.
Note that there is also no correlation between cancer incidence and median income. In fact, many of California’s most affluent counties have higher rates of cancer than does Kern County or Los Angeles where residents of Wilmington and Long Beach have lived on top of oil wells for generations.
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The map view of New Cancer incidence is below.
Friedman’s own district in Burbank, which has no oil wells, has the same cancer rate as does Wilmington and Long Beach which have hundreds.
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Admittedly, working in the oil and gas industry in the field is not the healthiest job (although making a solid middle-class income is pretty damn healthy, bub!) One is exposed to all kinds of dangers which are taken very seriously by companies and government. But the question here is not occupational exposure but rather mere proximity.
Perhaps my coarse analysis cannot reveal that? Perhaps the matter is too complex and subtle?
Mmmmkay… So let us now consider the incidence of some things we darn well DO know are linked to cancer. Surely we will see it in the numbers.
Above is a chart of the same CDC Age Adjusted Cancer Incidence Rate (2015 to 2020) versus the percent of a county’s population: diabetes, smokers and obesity from Countyhealthrankings.org. Air pollution is also stacked, but is not to scale. I added it for illustration.
Very healthy and wealthy San Luis Obispo County has a much worse cancer problem that do the fat, smoking, chimi-changa chomping, insulin jabbing smog breathers of Frenso County.
Them’s the numbers folks. DATA DRIVEN just like Governor Newsom likes it.
Of course there are many other factors that determine cancer incidence. There are genetic factors (age has been adjusted for by the CDC) like race and inheritance, there are indeed exposure problems such pesticides and drinking water, diet and exercise, different types of air pollution, etc. I did not include the data for asthma and birth defects for the sake of brevity, but there is also no obvious correlation. It is all very complicated AND THAT IS THE POINT.
If we cannot discern obvious correlations between what we know increases cancer incidence, then how can a law presume that mere proximity is the cause of a persons cancer? Well, it can’t. But that doesn’t matter in California.
No. What matters is (and this is the objective of AB 3155) that smaller operators be frightened out of business by the prospect that every illness or birth defect will be blamed presumptively on them. We tend to think all oil wells are operated by the Exxons of the world, but that is not so. Many wells are operated by small companies and family businesses. They will fail and take countless employees down with them… and all the businesses they frequent, etc.
Who will benefit? This is red meat to California’s trial lawyers who will draw a 3,200 foot circles around every well, old or new, abandoned or active, and solicit a lawsuit from everyone within, probably pro-bono. You can bet Laura Friedman will be getting some juicy campaign contributions from Dewey, Cheatham and Howe. She is “data-driven” after all.
AB 3155 has passed out of the subcommittees and is now with the appropriations committee. If Californians fail to repeal SB 1137 (the 3,200 foot law) in November, look for a feeding frenzy of lawsuits and the bankruptcies of many small oil and gas companies. The bigger companies will just move on, leaving Californians poorer and paying more at the pump.