A new study provided more ammunition for what public health experts and environmental activists have been saying since fracking became widespread in the last half decade: chemicals used in the natural gas drilling process can be hazardous to health.
The Yale-based research team that produced the study looked at families in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region who use ground-fed water wells.
The study “Proximity to Natural Gas Wells and Reported Health Status: Results of a Household Survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania,” published yesterday in Environmental Health Perspectives,found that people who live near fracking sites have more health problems than those who don’t.
The Yale-based research team that produced the study looked at families in southwesternPennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region who use ground-fed water wells. Surveying 492 individuals in 180 households, researchers found a significantly greater number of skin and respiratory problems among those who lived within one kilometer of a natural gas well than those who lived two kilometers away.
Washington County has 624 active gas wells with 95 percent of those fracked.
“Despite assurances by the drilling industry and numerous government officials that fracking chemicals do not pose a risk to nearby populations, scientists and environmentalists have repeatedly voiced concern over the high volume of chemicals used in the process and the potential for both groundwater and airborne contamination,” writes Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams.
The researchers explained the impetus for the studying saying, “Little is known about the environmental and public health impact of unconventional natural gas extraction activities including hydraulic fracturing that occur near residential areas.”
“While much of the hydraulic fracturing process takes place deep underground, there are a number of potential mechanisms for chemicals used in the fracturing process as well as naturally occurring minerals, petroleum compounds, and other substances of flow back water to enter drinking water supplies,” they warned. “If contaminants from hydraulic fracturing activities were able to enter drinking water supplies or surface water bodies, humans could be exposed to such contaminants through drinking, cooking, showering, and swimming.”
They also suggested that there could be airborn contamination through flaring, operation of diesel equipment, and leakage. And with stress from the noise and other activities around the wells mentioned by many respondents, they suggested this could be impacting health outcomes as well.
Their conclusion: “While these results should be viewed as hypothesis generating, and the population studied was limited to households with a ground-fed water supply, proximity of natural gas wells may be associated with the prevalence of health symptoms including dermal and respiratory conditions in residents living near natural gas extraction activities. Further study of these associations, including the role of specific air and water exposures, is warranted.”
They also warned of even greater potential danger lurking down the road. Since most of the wells are only five or six years old, they said, “one would not yet expect to see associations with diseases with long latency, such as cancer. Furthermore, if some of the impact of natural gas extraction on ground water happens over a number of years, this initial survey could have failed to detect health consequences of delayed contamination.”
It would be difficult to live without oil and gas. But it would be impossible to live without water. Yet, in our mad rush to extract and sell every drop of gas and oil as quickly as possible, we’re trading precious water for fossil fuels. A recent report, Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Stress, shows the severity of the problem. Alberta and B.C. are among eight North American regions examined in the study by Ceres, a U.S.-based nonprofit advocating for sustainability leadership.
Nearly half (47 percent) of oil and gas wells recently hydraulically fractured in the U.S. are in regions with high or extremely high water stress. One of the most disturbing findings is that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is using enormous amounts of water in areas that can scarcely afford it. The report notes that close to half the oil and gas wells recently fracked in the U.S. “are in regions with high or extremely high water stress” and more than 55 percent are in areas experiencing drought. In Colorado and California, almost all wells—97 and 96 percent, respectively—are in regions with high or extremely high water stress, meaning more than 80 percent of available surface and groundwater has already been allocated for municipalities, industry and agriculture. A quarter of Alberta wells are in areas with medium to high water stress.
Drought and fracking have already caused some small communities in Texas to run out of water altogether, and parts of California are headed for the same fate. As we continue to extract and burn ever greater amounts of oil, gas and coal, climate change is getting worse, which will likely lead to more droughts in some areas and flooding in others. California’s drought may be the worst in 500 years, according to B. Lynn Ingram, an earth and planetary sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley. That’s causing a shortage of water for drinking and agriculture, and for salmon and other fish that spawn in streams and rivers. With no rain to scrub the air, pollution in the Los Angeles area has returned to dangerous levels of decades past.
Because of lack of information from industry and inconsistencies in water volume reporting, Ceres’ Western Canada data analysis “represents a very small proportion of the overall activity taking place.” Researchers determined, though, that Alberta fracking operations have started using more “brackish/saline” groundwater instead of freshwater. The report cautions that this practice needs more study “given the potential for brackish water to be used in the future for drinking water” and the fact that withdrawing salty groundwater “can also adversely impact interconnected freshwater resources.”
Although B.C. fracking operations are now mainly in low water stress regions, reduced precipitation and snowpack, low river levels and even drought conditions in some areas—likely because of climate change—raise concerns about the government’s plan to rapidly expand the industry. The report cites a “lack of regulation around groundwater withdrawals” and cumulative impacts on First Nations lands as issues with current fracking.
Ceres’ study only looks at fracking impacts on freshwater supplies, and offers recommendations to reduce those, including recycling water, using brackish or wastewater, strengthening regulations and finding better ways to dispose of fracking wastewater. But the drilling method comes with other environmental problems, from groundwater contamination to massive ecosystem and habitat disruption—even small earth tremors—all done in the name of short-term gain.
It’s important to heed the conclusions and recommendations of this study and others, but given the problems with fracking, and other forms of extraction, we must find ways to control our insatiable fossil fuel demand. That burning these—often wastefully—contributes to climate change, and our methods of extraction exacerbate the problems, should make us take a good look at how we’re treating this planet and everything on it, including ourselves and generations to come. It’s a reminder that we need to conserve energy in every way possible.
In the short term, we must realize that we have better ways to create jobs and build the economy than holding an “everything must go” sale on our precious resources. In the longer term, we must rethink our outdated economic systems, which were devised for times when resources were plentiful and infrastructure was scarce. Our highest priorities must be the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that provides food and the biodiversity that keeps us alive and healthy.
a concern, an assignment, a student learns the horrifying truth about fracking...
Why RAPE Our Mother?
Patti Kelly
Rape here defined: • "...ORIGIN late Middle English (originally denoting violent seizure of property, later carrying off a woman by force): from Anglo-Norman French rap (noun), raper (verb), from Latin rapere ‘seize.’" "...figurative: the wanton destruction or spoiling of a place or area." (Oxford American Dictionaries).
As I researched this topic of "fracking," I found myself deeply saddened for the violations put upon our Earth. The term 'rape' seemed most fitting and so the title was borne.
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a method of drilling into shale deposits in the earth to obtain natural gas. It has grown in popularity and has become a very profitable industry as the need for fossil fuel is high. Although, it can be seen as economically beneficial, it appears to be having a more harmful effect, on such greater issues concerning our health and the environment. Controversy over this issue and its government regulations persist, as more and more people address and face the ill effects of this practice.The immediate and long term consequences have been overlooked in the name of profit. This is a major issue that poses great dangers to our well-being as residents of earth. All consequences of fracking must be taken into consideration when plans or projects are put forth.
The process of fracking involves the drilling of wells deep down into shale formations. According to an organization called the Food and Water Watch, it “involves the injection of more than a million gallons of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure down and across into horizontally drilled wells as far as 10,000 feet below the surface.The pressurized mixture causes the rock layer, in this case the Marcellus Shale, to crack.” (Not So Fast, Natural Gas 2).
The cracks allow for the gas to flow up into the wells. The fracking process can be carried out vertically or horizontally. The horizontal method is most common and can reach into more fractures and extract more gas. As stated above, this process requires chemicals which is where much of the concern lies.
The United States House of representatives state: “While most underground injections of chemicals are subject to the protections of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), Congress in 2005 modified the law to exclude “the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities” from the Act’s protections. Unless oil and gas service companies use diesel in the hydraulic fracturing process, the permanent underground injection of chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing is not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”
This is of particular concern, given the long range ill effects of toxic chemicals within the layers of the Earth. The statement above reveals that the chemicals used in the process are exempt from regulation, meaning that the gas and oil companies can be injecting anything into our earth. This example is part of a report by the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Minority Staff published in April 2011, on the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing between the year 2005 and 2009 (2). The study found 750 chemicals and other components used. They found 29 toxic chemicals that are known human carcinogens, regulated under the SDWA for their risks to human health and listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. These 29 chemicals were found in more than 650 products used in fracking. It is also stated that many of the oil and gas companies were unable to provide the Committee with a full chemical make up of the hydraulic fracturing fluids they used in which they deemed as “propriety” or a trade secret. Although, some were able to provide this information others did not even have the capability to access it and so some companies are injecting fluids they themselves are unable to identify. This is certainly not a practice that serves the well being of our Earth or humanity. Another point to consider is the natural gas itself. The natural gas that is acquired is largely composed of methane. As stated in the journal, Climatic Change, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential that is far greater than that of carbon dioxide.
As one considers the testimony of individuals and families and the devastation brought to their properties as well as unanticipated economic loss, one needs to access benefit versus destruction.
According to a report posted on December 15, 2011, by Alter-Net, "Last week, more than a hundred activists from Pennsylvania and New York, including actor Mark Ruffalo, brought thousands of gallons of drinking water to 11 families in Dimock, Pa., who had been left dry after Cabot Oil and Gas stopped their water deliveries . . . At issue was the safety of well water symbolized by a jug filled with brown fluid taken from Dimock resident Scott Ely's well . . . Paul Rubin, a hydrogeologist, painted a grim picture, laying out a future of continued water contamination. The Ely water had arsenic, manganese, aluminum, iron, and lead at several times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for safe drinking water."(Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Gas Drilling Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands, Nina Berman).
It is obvious that brown drinking water is not a good thing nor the chemicals contained in it. This is just not tolerable. According to the BBC News, Lancashire, How Fracking affects a community in Pennsylvania, Peter Marshall states: "I asked one woman: "What's fracking doing to this community?" "Raping it," was her stark reply. "Tearing our roads apart - not to mention what it's doing to the countryside. Have you seen it? I had. Huge clearings cut through hillside forests to allow for pipelines - well pads dotted around the landscape. And traffic. So much traffic."
Depicted above is the destruction of communities. Fracking is destroying peoples home land. Not only is our health at risk but the earth’s sacred body is being compromised. Adverse health consequences to fracking have been claimed by residents where fracking has taken place. "Hair dresser Crystal Stroud claimed that within days of drilling starting near her home her hair started falling out and she became seriously ill" (BBC News, Peter Marshall).
The difficulties faced by many people are not easily or immediately resolved. Many have legal claims against these oil and gas companies for these side effects. It has been further reported that: "Many of these legal cases have lagged on for years, leaving residents dependent on bottled drinking water and "good neighbor" gestures by drilling companies that deny blame but temporarily supply water, until they decide to stop as Cabot did in Dimock." (Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Gas Drilling Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands, Nina Berman).
Here, one can see that the correlation of the contaminated water and the fracking is undeniable. Companies actually have water shipped to the home and yet continue to deny the fracking is of any cause. Something sure smells fishy. According to the article, EPA:Fracking May Cause Ground Water Pollution: "... The EPA's found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells.." (Mead Gruver) Residents were encouraged by this report. Another statement from this report: "Environmentalists welcomed the news of the EPA report, calling it an important turning point in the fracking debate.."
Finally, there is solid evidence to prove the harm of fracking and nonetheless coming from the environmental protection agency. The devastation of fracking is believed to not only have dire consequences for the immediate areas where fracking takes place, but may be responsible for creating the onset of earthquakes. An earth quake of 5.8 magnitude shook people up and down the east coast in Virginia, and many believe that the recent rise in fracking is the culprit (Fracking Could Have Caused East Coast Earthquake, Scott Olsen).
“The odds of a quake exceeding a magnitude of 5.5 occurring in central Virginia are so slim that Dominion Power determined only around six quakes of that size would occur in the area over the next 10,000 years.” (Fracking Could Have Caused East Coast Earthquake, Scott Olsen).
There have been a sudden swarm of earthquakes in Arkansas, where there has been an increase in fracking also. Geologists don’t believe fracking to be the cause but Steve Horton, an earthquake specialist at the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information, is worried by a correlation of the earthquake swarm and a side effect of the drilling. “Mayor Ted Reynolds said. "We haven't had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes."(Earthquakes in Arkansas May Be Man-Made, Experts Warn, Alec Liu).
It is clear that there is a pattern staring to form here in regards to fracking and it’s effects. These troubling reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, and industrial disasters and explosions are ubiquitous and growing as fracking spreads. Below is a map charting out fracking areas around America. It charts out what is described as as “Fraccidents”, meaning accidents correlated to fracking.
(Earth Justice) As depicted in the map, one is able to get an idea about how widespread this process is and can identify the effected areas. Many are becoming aware of this important issue and beginning to take action.
Here is the haiku of Mark Ruffalo, an oscar-nominated actor who is fighting to protect water.
“Walk into the day Make it known that you are here Stand for your water!
Come out and speak up Water is under attack The fish and frogs watch.
There is no waiting He who hesitates is lost The stream is dying”
( Mark Ruffalo: Why I Fight Against Fracking)
A very powerful call to bring awareness to this serious cause is presented in these lines. The power lies in the people and so it urges one to take a stand for what matters.
When considering both the formal testimonies of those involved in the environmental sciences, and the direct experiences of those personally suffering the ills of what fracking has brought to their communities, it seems that the most reasonable position regulatory and governmental agencies are to take, would include a moratorium on any further fracking. There may be other means by which to access our natural resources without bringing both harm to the Earth and consequences of illness to people. I appreciate the need for natural gas, yet cannot accept the notion that we are to further destroy our Earth and put our water supply and all of life at risk.
A Post Script...
and so...
This be but one drop... this essence of ALL ...
Waters
waters of this earth a Libation sweet honored they shall ever be the streams, the rivers, the oceans, the seas the fields that yield by its grace to all life its flow we trace hold to the purity that Creation gives contaminate not by false truths we live contaminate not by false truths we live.
Rose Marie Raccioppi Poet Laureate Orangetown, New York
This post was prompted by a loss of life resulting from the ill effects of fracking. The ill fate of properties from fracking is more than overwhelmingly devastating... This MUST BE STOPPED!!
and so it is... Children care... let us take responsible action... put a STOP to fracking...
Workers check the sand flow at Southwestern Energy Co., natural gas production site during fracture stimulation in Camptown, Pennsylvania.
Workers check the sand flow at Southwestern Energy Co., natural gas production site during fracture stimulation in Camptown, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Julia Schmalz/Bloomberg
Transport trucks are parked at a water treatment plant that separates oil, sediment and water mixed during the hydraulic fracturing process.
Transport trucks are parked at a water treatment plant that separates oil, sediment and water mixed during the hydraulic fracturing process. Photographer: Jason Janik/Bloomberg
A worker cleans and lubricates the head of the machine, after the stimulation hydraulic fracturing of one segment of the well is finished, at Southwestern Energy Co.'s natural gas production site at the Marcellus Shale formation in Camptown, Pennsylvania.
A worker cleans and lubricates the head of the machine, after the stimulation hydraulic fracturing of one segment of the well is finished, at Southwestern Energy Co.'s natural gas production site at the Marcellus Shale formation in Camptown, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Julia Schmalz/Bloomberg
Water and sand are mixed and then pumped through the tubes at pressures over 6,600 psi into the well during fracture stimulation (fracking) at the Marcellus Shale formation in Camptown, Pennsylvania.
Water and sand are mixed and then pumped through the tubes at pressures over 6,600 psi into the well during fracture stimulation (fracking) at the Marcellus Shale formation in Camptown, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Julia Schmalz/Bloomberg
Smelling gas one morning, a southern Pennsylvania farmer almost passed out when he went outside to check on his bellowing cows.
One of the animals did keel over, kicking its feet in spasms. A couple of days later, a calf was fighting for its life, the farmer said. It died.
Something awful is happening over the Marcellus Shale, the vast geological formation in eastern North America where energy companies are looking for natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process for extracting gas by injecting high volumes of water and chemicals into deep wells, has sparked complaints about ruined landscapes and fouled groundwater. Increasingly there is evidence, mostly anecdotal, that animals are suffering.
A new study by veterinarian Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, a professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University, chronicles case studies of dozens of farmers and pet owners in six states over the Marcellus Shale.
Their findings, published in “New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy,” are a harrowing account of sudden deaths of cattle, as well as reproductive and neurological problems in horses, cats, dogs and other animals.
The Pennsylvania farmers I spoke with have lost cows, calves, a horse, a couple dozen chickens. Many of the animals succumb in the same way: seizure-like symptoms, gasping for breath and a quick wasting away. A Rottweiler and a Dalmatian also fell ill and died.
Crops Lost
These farmers are getting out of the beef business, in part over concern that their animals will become delivery systems for contaminants.
An organic farmer from southeast Ohio told me he has abandoned his cash crop, ginseng, for now, concerned that contaminants would enter his product. He began noticing changes around his 20-acre property in 2007, when a fracking operation began dumping wastewater nearby. He lost quite a few deer that were drawn to the brine and antifreeze in the fluid.
Energy representatives dismiss the veterinarians’ study. They say that health indicators have actually improved in areas with shale development.
“The paper is little more than a collection of personal testimonials that cannot be independently assessed or verified,” says Steve Everley, a spokesman for industry group Energy in Depth. “The paper is full of bold assertions about oil and gas development, but empty of any facts or scientific evidence to support those opinions.”
Causal Link
Establishing a causal link between fracking and specific health threats is tricky. Energy companies are not required to disclose the composition of fracking fluids for proprietary reasons, so they don’t.
Like a lot of people who live near fracking operations, many of the farmers I interviewed are in litigation with an energy company and wish to remain anonymous.
“We don’t know what the chemicals are in a lot of these cases,” says Bamberger. “It gets very frustrating when you start saying: What was in the tissue? What killed these animals exactly?”
In 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture quarantined 28 head of cattle after they drank wastewater from a fracking site in Tioga County. The fear was that a radioactive contaminant in the water, strontium, would end up in beef.
In December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency linked water pollution to fracking for the first time, after examining contaminated water in central Wyoming.
Note to New York
Last month the federal agency announced it would test water in dozens of homes around Dimock, Pennsylvania, a hotbed of fracking activity. It also told New York it would need to improve safeguards for drinking water before tapping into the Marcellus Shale.
New York placed a moratorium on fracking in 2010 so it could revise the rules governing the practice. Bamberger and Oswald are among those who contributed to the tens of thousands of public comments on the draft regulations, which were closed last month.
Bamberger submitted the published study; Oswald contributed 15 pages of his own to denounce the inadequacy of the proposed rules.
“There are so many flaws in the document,” he says. “It is unlikely to be able to protect us from the industrialization of our landscape and hydraulic fracturing.”
Now, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation will review comments and revise regulations as necessary. It seems inevitable that the state will be fracking eventually, so the question is whether the industry can proceed safely -- for humans and animals.
New Yorkers should listen to the stories of farmers, hunters and vets before making the same fracking mistakes that are being made elsewhere.
(Mike Di Paola writes on preservation and the environment for Muse, the arts and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Mike Di Paola at mdipaola@nyc.rr.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff in New York at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
