Kuwait Oil Well Fires Threaten Health, Crops

Smoke from an estimated 200 burning Kuwaiti oil wells will spread toxic soot particles throughout the region, causing potential harm to the health of local populations and possibly even tainting crops, scientists and environmental experts said Saturday.

The amount of environmental damage will largely depend on how long the wells continue to burn, an uncertainty that hinges on the kind of wells aflame and their locations. One oil-firefighting expert from a Houston firm estimated that it will take six months to two years to extinguish the fires in all of the wells now ablaze.

“In general, the consensus among scientists is that (the fires) will not cause worldwide effects,” said F. Sherwood Rowland, a renowned atmospheric scientist from the University of California at Irvine. “But if the clouds formed by the smoke stay there long enough, then it could certainly obscure the sun.”

The Gulf already seemed to be suffering the effects of the inferno on Saturday, apparently experiencing pollution from smoke and soot that air quality officials say contain carcinogens and can cause lung irritation.

An environmental official in Bahrain, about 250 miles from Kuwait, said a “bizarre” black haze darkened the sky throughout much of the afternoon. He said samples of the pollution have not been fully analyzed in the laboratory.

“There was a distinct heavy oil smell in the air,” said Walter Vreeland, adviser to the Bahrain Environmental Protection Committee. “It was so hazy you couldn’t see the sun.”

Some of the more pessimistic scientists say that if the smoke persists for months, crops in southern Iran, Pakistan and northern India could be hurt because of the darkening of skies, possible reduced temperatures and the fallout of toxic soot.

If the fires were put out within weeks, there would be little effect, said Richard Turco, an atmospheric scientist at UCLA.

But if the smoke persists for months, “regionally, there will be a lot of pollution,” he said. “Darkness. Cold. Agriculture will be dicey at best.”

The soot will be heavy. “It will be hard as heck to keep your shirt clean,” Turco said.

Crops now under cultivation in the Gulf include tomatoes, cauliflower, leeks, carrots, beets, cucumbers, zucchini and peppers, which will be harvested between now and mid-April, according to Bahrain’s Vreeland. The crops are consumed domestically.

“I would say that if this were to keep up for a period of time, you could taint a lot of crops, if nothing else,” said the government environmental adviser. “If you got a bit of oil on them, you could ruin the crops and make them inedible.”

In a January report prepared for the Pentagon, a Los Angeles consulting firm dismissed the likelihood of smoke-induced climate changes but warned that fires at Kuwait’s 363 producing wells would create “massive and unprecedented pollution.”

“It would impact the ecology of the Persian Gulf and fall out on a wide swath across southern Iran, Pakistan and northern India,” said the report by Pacific-Sierra Research Corp. “The impact on human population and desert ecosystem from such prolonged soot fallout is unknown.”

Southern California’s Air Quality Management District, using reports prepared by Japanese scientists, has tried to quantify that impact and make it understandable by contrasting it to pollution emissions in the Los Angeles Basin.

But AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly cautioned that it is impossible to predict health effects without knowing the proximity of the fires to people, the direction of winds and how the smoke and fumes are dispersing.

Nevertheless, he said, the daily emissions of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides from Kuwait’s oil fires as of last week, when there were only 40 to 50 fires, exceeded what is spewed into the Los Angeles Basin every day by 100 to 200 times.

Sulfur and nitrogen oxides cause respiratory irritation and can produce an acidic fallout. In addition, nitrogen oxides can reduce resistance to infection, Kelly said. The air quality official added that he has heard unconfirmed estimates that 50,000 tons a day of soot are being produced by the oil fires. Soot contains carcinogens.

Although the pollution may be dispersed hundreds of miles, Kelly said he believes the most harmful health effects would be felt only in the immediate area of the fires.

“It is more of an ecological threat in that it could damage crops or ecosystems if these fires continue long enough,” Kelly said.

If the fires burned for a year, more carbon dioxide would be produced than the amount emitted annually by Japan and West Germany combined, he said.

Carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to the greenhouse effect, a build-up of gases in the atmosphere that traps the Earth’s heat and could cause global climate changes.

UCI’s Rowland said the increase in emissions would be roughly equivalent to a boost brought on by global fuel price drops and consequent increased consumption--”not enormous” but not insignificant.

James Tuppen, who fights oil fires for Houston-based Boots & Coots, Inc., said the Kuwaitis are expected to hire four American oil-firefighting companies that will each send crews of four to six firefighters to the region when circumstances permit it.

Boots & Coots, which fights oil fires around the world, is just about to sign a contract with the Kuwaitis to help with the job, he said.

“I would say (extinguishing all the fires) would take from six months to a year and a half to two years, just depending on how bad the fires are,” Tuppen said. “Of course, you never know until you get over there and look at them.”