Clearly, there’s no comparing the sparse population of Utah’s Uintah Basin and that of the mega-metropolis within the Los Angeles basin. So, how could both places possibly have similar volatile organic compounds (VOCs) levels?
Despite an area population of barely 30,000, Uintah County is home to a combined 11,200 oil- and gas-producing wells. Over time, their presence led to researchers’ discovery that the area exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) eight-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) level for ozone pollutants for 39 days last winter, placing it above the Los Angeles Basin’s typical summertime levels.
Those results were reported in Highly Elevated Atmospheric Levels of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Uintah Basin, Utah, a paper by a group of University of Colorado Boulder researchers like Detlev Helmig and Chelsea Thompson of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The paper made its way to this month’s Environmental Science & Technology journal, published by the American Chemical Society (ACS). For the rest of the story please clock the link to EcoWatch: http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/28/oil-and-gas-wells-utah-ozone/