Increase in fertility following coal and oil power plant retirements in California

Joan A Casey¹, Alison Gemmill², Deborah Karasek³, Elizabeth L Ogburn⁴, Dana E Goin⁵, Rachel Morello-Frosch⁶

Affiliations

¹ Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 13B University Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94729, USA. joanacasey@berkeley.edu.
² Program in Public Health, Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook University, HSC, Level 3, Room 071, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-8338, USA.
³ Preterm Birth Initiative, University of California, San Francisco, CA, 550 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA.
⁴ Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Room E3620, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA.
⁵ Division of Epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 50 University Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94729, USA.
⁶ Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.

PMID: 29720194
PMCID: PMC5932773
DOI: 10.1186/s12940-018-0388-8

Increase in fertility following coal and oil power plant retirements in California

Joan A Casey et al. Environ Health. 2018.

. 2018 May 2;17(1):44.

doi: 10.1186/s12940-018-0388-8.

Authors

Joan A Casey¹, Alison Gemmill², Deborah Karasek³, Elizabeth L Ogburn⁴, Dana E Goin⁵, Rachel Morello-Frosch⁶

Affiliations

¹ Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 13B University Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94729, USA. joanacasey@berkeley.edu.
² Program in Public Health, Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook University, HSC, Level 3, Room 071, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-8338, USA.
³ Preterm Birth Initiative, University of California, San Francisco, CA, 550 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA.
⁴ Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Room E3620, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA.
⁵ Division of Epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 50 University Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94729, USA.
⁶ Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.

PMID: 29720194
PMCID: PMC5932773
DOI: 10.1186/s12940-018-0388-8

Abstract

Background: Few studies have explored the relationship between air pollution and fertility. We used a natural experiment in California when coal and oil power plants retired to estimate associations with nearby fertility rates.

Methods: We used a difference-in-differences negative binomial model on the incident rate ratio scale to analyze the change in annual fertility rates among California mothers living within 0-5 km and 5-10 km of 8 retired power plants between 2001 and 2011. The difference-in-differences method isolates the portion of the pre- versus post-retirement contrast in the 0-5 km and 5-10 km bins, respectively, that is due to retirement rather than secular trends. We controlled for secular trends with mothers living 10-20 km away. Adjusted models included fixed effects for power plant, proportion Hispanic, Black, high school educated, and aged > 30 years mothers, and neighborhood poverty and educational attainment.

Results: Analyses included 58,909 live births. In adjusted models, we estimated that after power plant retirement annual fertility rates per 1000 women aged 15-44 years increased by 8 births within 5 km and 2 births within 5-10 km of power plants, corresponding to incident rate ratios of 1.2 (95% CI: 1.1-1.4) and 1.1 (95% CI: 1.0-1.2), respectively. We implemented a negative exposure control by randomly selecting power plants that did not retire and repeating our analysis with those locations using the retirement dates from original 8 power plants. There was no association, suggesting that statewide temporal trends may not account for results.

Conclusions: Fertility rates among nearby populations appeared to increase after coal and oil power plant retirements. Our study design limited the possibility that our findings resulted from temporal trends or changes in population composition. These results require confirmation in other populations, given known methodological limitations of ecologic study designs.

Keywords: Birth certificates; California; Coal; Environmental epidemiology; Fertility; Live birth; Natural experiment; Power plants.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The State of California, Committee for the Protection of Humans Subjects and the Committee for Protection of Humans Subjects at the University of California, Berkeley approved this study (Protocol # 2013–10-5693).

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

**Fig. 1**
Location and names of 8 coal and oil power plants in California with year of retirement

**Fig. 2**
Identification of exposed and unexposed births based on last menstrual period among California mothers, 2001–2011

**Fig. 3**
Unadjusted annual fertility rate (number of live births per 1000 women aged 15–44 years) by area bin and power plant before and after power plant retirement. Purple bars represent the closest area bin (< 5 km), orange bars the 5-10 km bin, and green bars the 10-20 km bin. Within area bin, the more saturated bars denote the pre-period and the less saturated bars the post-period. The power plants are ordered by the average number of women aged 15–44 years of age living within 20 km, ranging from 820 women near the Portola plant to 464,599 within 20 km of the Hunters Point plant

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