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Capital & Main
Capital & Main
Jennifer Oldham

The Oil Wells Near the Denver Suburbs Worried Her. The Health Risk Alarmed Her Even More.

Oil pumpjacks stand idle on farmland in Weld County, Colorado. Photo: Milehightraveler/Getty Images

Public health researcher Lisa McKenzie remembers her first aerial view of the landscape-altering impacts of fossil fuel production on the picturesque mesas that rim the western slope of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

“It was well pad, after well pad, after well pad,” said McKenzie, a recently retired associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health. “I remember thinking to myself, that’s like 7,000 point sources of benzene.”  

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