The Oil and Gas Threat Map, a newly launched interactive map from two anti-fracking activist organizations, simply rehashes flawed research in an updated format.

The map, a product of Earthworks and the FracTracker Alliance, is a virtual tool with a dynamic user interface that purports to map out “threat zones” around the country where the groups claim communities are exposed to pollution as a result of living near oil and natural gas development, but provides exactly zero evidence that those living in these zones actually face any health threats.

In fact, the Oil and Gas Threat Map offers nothing in the way of new research or analysis, and instead relies on discredited research to push anti-fracking campaigns across the country.

As described on its own website, the Oil and Gas Threat Map is and overly simple concept that attempts to draw a direct line between development and perceived health threats:

• “Plots the location of all active oil & gas production facilities in the United States,

• draws a ½ mile health threat radius around all of those facilities,

• and counts the residents, and enrolled students and schools they attend, within that health threat radius.”

The activist groups behind the map used “peer-reviewed science to determine that ½ mile is a conservative distance within which oil and gas air pollution can be detected such that residents should be concerned.” The map’s authors cite several studies as support for the “½ mile health threat radius” designation, but none of the studies establishes that proximity to oil and natural gas development is a proxy for exposure to pollutants.

To back up the assertion that proximity to oil and natural gas development is related to health risks, the map’s backers lean heavily on two studies authored by Dr. Lisa McKenzie of the University of Colorado School of Public Health.

In a 2014 study that the groups used to justify the map’s threat radius, McKenzie claimed to find “an association between those who lived within a 10-mile radius of (oil and gas development) and congenital heart defects and possibly neural tube defects.” However, the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment expressed skepticism over the study’s conclusions, as well as its alarmist framing: “[W]e disagree with many of the specific associations … [and] a reader of the study could easily be misled to become overly concerned.”

The map’s authors compiled a “literature review” of research that forms the basis of the map’s half mile “threat radius” designation. However, a 2019 literature review by the Health Effects Institute’s Energy Research Committee evaluated 25 studies focused on the relationship between oil and gas production and health outcomes – including several cited as evidence for the “threat radius” – and found no direct association between fracking and illnesses. The HEI literature review concluded that the studies, evaluated individually and on aggregate, did not establish whether a certain health outcome actually originated from oil and gas development.

The groups behind the map seem to acknowledge the shortcomings of the studies they rely on. Since the research does not support a claim that individuals living in the “threat radius” are at greater risk of health impacts, the map’s creators instead state that communities within the half mile radius have a “cause for concern.”

“…dangerous levels of toxics do not always exist within a ½ mile radius of an active facility. Consequently the Radius indicates that those within it have cause for concern about potential health impacts from oil and gas pollution. It is not a declaration that those within it will have negative health impacts. It does not quantify the threat posed by this pollution.” (emphasis added)

Yet, the activist groups behind the map never articulate what exactly that “cause for concern” actually is.

Media outlets covering the threat map are not so careful in their language. In New Mexico, KUNM Radio ran a misleading headline saying “thousands of New Mexicans at risk for health impacts from oil and gas industry.” Another New Mexico radio outlet, KOB-4, incorrectly described the map as a “study.”

However, it’s unlikely that Earthworks and the FracTracker Alliance will correct the coverage. If the creators of the map are following a similar playbook to the researchers of the studies their map relies on, this kind of inaccurate and alarmist coverage is precisely the goal.