Air pollutants from U.S. oil and gas operations are causing 91,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of health issues each year — with racial and ethnic minority populations bearing the biggest burden, a new study has found.

The outdoor contaminants, which include fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone, taking the biggest toll on Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic groups, according to the study, published on Friday in Science Advances.

While the U.S. has one of the world’s largest oil and gas industries, the associated air pollutants and health impacts have thus far been poorly characterized, the study authors noted. As such, they sought to quantify severe outcomes like asthma, preterm birth and early death — as well as where these effects tak

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