The City of Los Angeles is home to the largest urban oil field in the country. Yet, it lacks any buffers or setbacks from neighborhood oil drilling. Homes, schools, and playgrounds can be just 6 feet away from an active drill site. The City of LA, pushed by a coalition of environmental justice groups, is considering a buffer or setback ordinance.  This paper examines the role of buffers and setbacks as important policy structures for protecting community health. Using evidence from protective buffer policy from smoking ordinances to pesticide drift policies as well as emergent buffer policies from oil and gas drilling sites in cities across the country, we consider the paramaters, assumptions, relevance, and politics of buffers and setbacks appled to a neighborhood urban oil drilling context.  Despite growing evidence of environmental and public health impacts from unconventional natural gas drilling, little data exists on impacts in denseley populated urban places such as LA from conventional neighborhood oil and gas production. Communities living adjacent to urban oil fields consistently report health symptoms, such as nosebleeds and headaches. This study follows from a community based participatory research partnership between Occidental College and STAND LA (Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling).  Research on buffers and setbacks follows from a neighborhood survey study on health and experiences of living amidst active oil development near two urban oil production sites in LA. We gathered 250 surveys within a 1500 foot buffer of two Los Angeles oil production sites, a study that informs this current buffer/setback research.