Pregnant women who lived near the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility during and after its 2015 blowout had a higher chance of premature births and low-weight newborns compared to women from other communities, according to the findings of UCLA researchers studying the effects of the massive gas leak on nearby residents’ health.
Women who lived near Aliso Canyon during the massive gas leak in the Santa Susana Mountains that drove 8,300 families from their homes had a 50% higher chance of having babies with low birthweights than mothers in other Los Angeles County communities, UCLA scientists said during an in-person and virtual meeting on Feb. 20 at which they made their findings public.
Among women who lived near the Aliso Canyon facility and conceived their babies right after the persistent gas leak was finally plugged in 2016, “The prevalence of premature births was about 50% higher than expected,” said Dr. Kimberly Paul, an epidemiologist and an assistant professor of neurology at UCLA, during the meeting.
The gas leaked from a well in a vast underground storage facility owned by SoCalGas. A representative of the gas company wrote in an email that “the Health Research Study has not reached any final conclusions. Any further comment at this stage would be premature because the study’s methods, analysis and results are preliminary, subject to change and have not been peer-reviewed, according to the researchers.”
World Health Organization (WHO) defines low birth weight as babies who are born weighing less than 5 pounds and 8 ounces. Low-weight infants are 20 times more likely to develop complications and die compared to babies who are born at normal weight. They are also at the potential risk of developing cognitive deficits, motor delays, cerebral palsy, and other behavioral and psychological issues.
Nearly 13.4 million babies were born too early in 2020, meaning they were born before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Preterm birth complications are the main cause of death among children who are younger than 5 years old, according to WHO.
These discoveries were among several findings that researchers shared with the public during their presentation on the Aliso Canyon Disaster Health Research study, which is looking into the short-term and long-term effects of the gas leak on the health of residents who live near the facility.
The results of the study have not yet been peer-reviewed and are not final. The 2015 leak, which spewed gas for four months, released nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane, making it the largest methane gas release in U.S. history. Residents reported nosebleeds, dizziness and respiratory problems.
Michael Jerrett, professor at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA, and a principal investigator in the study, said the reason researchers study pollution exposures in pregnancy is because developing and unborn babies are sensitive to environmental toxins. Pollution exposure can also have immediate and long-term adverse health impacts on developing and unborn babies.
“Developing humans are uniquely sensitive to environmental toxins,” he said.
Jerrett added that “their immune systems are not fully developed. When they are babies, their breathing rates are higher for body weight than adults. As they grow into children, their outdoor activity levels are greater than adults.”
Patty Glueck, a Porter Ranch resident and a co-founder of the Aliso Moms Alliance, a group that focuses on educating residents of the nearby communities about the potential health impacts, said she was shocked to find out the impact of the gas leak on pregnant mothers.
“This is heart-wrenching, that women who were pregnant at the time and even though they were full-term, they still had underweight babies,” she said. “This is something that everyone in the community should know about.”
Key research questions that the scientists are trying to answer during their ongoing study include whether pregnant women exposed to the gas leak experienced more adverse birth outcomes, including premature babies born in less than 40 weeks.
The team examined all available records of births that occurred between October 2010 and October 2019 in order to study births before, during, and after the 2015 gas leak among women living near the Aliso Canyon facility.
During that period, there were about 14,000 births in the 6-mile radius area around the Aliso Canyon facility, researchers said. That area includes communities in Granada Hills, Northridge, Porter Ranch and Chatsworth. Those births were compared to infants born in areas not near the facility.
When researchers compared mothers who lived within a 6-mile radius of Aliso Canyon to pregnant women who lived in the rest of Los Angeles County, they found that expecting mothers who were exposed to the leak during late pregnancy had roughly 70% higher chance of giving birth to babies who had low weight even though they had full-term 40-week pregnancies. That risk significantly dropped for expecting mothers who lived more than 6 miles away from the Aliso Canyon facility, according to Paul.
Aliso Canyon above Porter Ranch on Monday, August 7, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Paul said that before and after the disaster, the prevalence of premature births was about 30% higher than expected. Preterm births are defined as those in which the baby is born too early, before the 37-week mark.
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For women who conceived their babies following the disaster, she said, “The prevalence of preterm births was about 50% higher than expected.”
As part of the ongoing study, scientists will use Cancer Registry Data to search for unusual types of cancers in the area before, during and after the leak and look at the data that includes emergency room visits and hospitalizations for a wide array of health conditions, including respiratory and mental health issues.
But some residents in impacted areas such as Porter Ranch, which is located about a mile away, hope to see UCLA dig deeper into the health impacts in their communities.
Porter Ranch resident Craig Galanti said the findings are “scratching the surface of the true health implications of the blowout and it’s long, long overdue.”
While he wasn’t surprised by the findings about pregnant women and unborn babies, he was “horrified by the implications that it has because to me that just demonstrates that there are health concerns here — and they have been for a long time.”
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