Alberta’s oil and gas industry is supporting what experts say will be the world’s first study to expose human volunteers in a sealed chamber to hydrogen sulphide gas.
Hydrogen sulphide, or H2S, is the poisonous “sour” natural gas blamed by some landowners – including convicted northern Alberta oilfield saboteur Wiebo Ludwig – for causing health problems in people and livestock.
“This is the first study that I’m aware of that has actually applied low levels of hydrogen sulphide to humans,” says Gary Webster, manager of environment, health and safety at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).
CAPP has contributed $100,000 Cdn toward the study, which has an initial budget of $1.3 million US. The research, which still requires approval from an independent panel of ethical experts, would begin by this fall and last for at least one year.
The goal is to answer a question that has plagued Alberta since sour-gas development began in the mid-1960s: Is exposure to hydrogen sulphide – at the low levels that can be emitted by sour gas wells, gas-processing plants and other oilfield facilities – responsible for reported problems that range from flu-like symptoms and breathing difficulties, to miscarriages in women and livestock?
“There’s no (scientific) information out there to show what kind of impacts you might expect to see at low levels of hydrogen sulphide,” Webster says. This new study “is not going to give us all the answers, by any stretch of the imagination. But it’ll help us get down that road.”
Major drivers behind the study include growing public concern in Alberta about sour-gas operations, says study organizer Geoff Granville. However, participating organizations in the U.S. also want to ensure existing H2S exposure standards are supported by solid scientific research, says Granville, manager of toxicological and materials safety at Shell Canada Limited.
Another major driver for the study is the risk of liability in the litigious U.S. legal system, Granville says. “There are a whole bunch of lawsuits ongoing with people who say they’ve been exposed to hydrogen sulphide,” and claim to have suffered health damage as a result.
Lawsuits in the U.S. include those filed by workers who’ve been exposed to occupational levels of H2S. But some cases also involve citizens living downwind of oilfield facilities who allege they’ve suffered neurological damage even from exposure to extremely low levels of the gas.
The new study “would be a really important piece of information to help understand the concerns,” Granville says, noting that effects from H2S “are all a matter of dose.”
Most of the funding for the research is expected to come from the American Petroleum Institute, although organizers are also seeking contributions from the Alberta government, individual oil and gas companies, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers will employ sealed chemical-exposure chambers at an environmental and occupational health laboratory run by three universities in New York State. The laboratory and its scientists have conducted similar studies with volunteers on other chemical compounds, such as the gasoline additive MTBE, Granville says.
Each small glass-walled chamber is equipped with technology that delivers precise and continuously monitored concentrations of gas, distributed equally throughout the air in the chamber.
The study design calls for each volunteer to be exposed to levels of five parts per million, 0.5 ppm and 0.05 ppm hydrogen sulphide for a couple of hours at a time over a few days. In comparison, Alberta occupational regulations permit oil and gas workers to be exposed to up to 10 ppm of H2S for eight hours at a time.
The maximum 5-ppm concentration to be used in the study is also far above the H2S levels anyone living downwind of a sour-gas facility would be exposed to during normal operations, Granville notes. Provincial rules allow a maximum one-hour average of just 10 parts per billion – not parts per million – for ambient air quality near sour-gas facilities.
Paid study volunteers will be administered physiological tests and asked to perform tasks so their neurological functions, such as motor skills and problem-solving ability can be assessed.
Granville says the study’s findings should complement a separate $19.3-million western Canada study now investigating the health effects of oilfield gas flaring on livestock and wildlife. That study was supposed to have a human health component, but – as Business Edge reported in January – Alberta Health decided it wasn’t necessary.
CAPP’s Webster says independent scientists will do the new chamber-exposure study, with the work peer-reviewed by a separate panel of scientists and ethics experts. Even if the research finds that H2S doesn’t cause the symptoms reported by some Albertans, it might point to other explanations for people’s reactions to sour gas, Webster says.
Rocky Mountain House veterinarian Martha Kostuch, a longtime activist on the sour-gas issue, says that based on H2S exposures she has seen in people and livestock, she believes a certain percentage of the population is chemically sensitive to sulphur compounds like H2S. Sensitive people can suffer serious allergic reactions even at concentrations less than the ambient air quality level of 10 parts per billion, she says.
The new study should include volunteers who are chemically sensitive or allergic, Kostuch says. “If all they’re going to pick are healthy male adults that have never had a reaction, then the chances are they may not see anything, or they’ll see very minor effects that they’ll call just a nuisance.”
