http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...
Dirk DeTurck had a years-old rash that wouldn't go away, his wife's hair came out in chunks, and anytime they lingered outside their house for more than an hour, splitting headaches set in.
They were certain the cause was simply breathing the air in Greenbrier, Arkansas, the rural community to which they'd retired a decade ago. They blamed the gas wells around them. But state officials didn't investigate.
Of course they "didn't investigate." Thanks to the Republican-dominated majority of the United States Supreme Court, any state or local elected official who finds him or herself standing between oil, shale extraction and mining companies and their outsized profits is now
simply drummed out office by smearing attack ads financed by millions in untraceable, "dark money." For local politicians and state governments, thwarting these companies with rude and unsettling "investigations" into their practices is tantamount to painting a large red bulls-eye on your back. And for those officials in charge of state agencies, issues of public health and safety tend to rapidly fade in importance in an environment where billionaires can destroy political careers and livelihoods with a few clicks on their mousepads. As a consequence, an aura of "inevitability" and resignation steamrolled the whole debate about the safety of fracking, a result carefully cultivated by the industry:
"The state's all in on this industry," said DeTurck, who's 59. "One legislator ... told me to my face, If you don't like it, move, because that's the future."
That's the future that's been
dictated to us, we the people who live in these states who've had our groundwater poisoned, our lands contaminated, and our questions and complaints silenced. It's why state governments have sold off "public" lands and sold out their citizens' health and safety--as a burnt offering to the
inevitable "promise" of natural gas and the staggering profits that come with it. It's why governors like Ed Rendell and Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania rolled over and played dead while the energy companies scratched their tummies and promised them treats for just a few thousand more hectares of our last wilderness to drill in. These decisions were made, contracts signed, deals done without any real input from us, the actual citizens of the states. They occurred in a millisecond of political time, and in secret. We woke up one morning and large chunks of our states were
sold--bye bye! The language of these agreements was opaque, conditioned on "confidentiality" and "covenants not to sue" as the companies poured unknown and indescribable carcinogens into the shale underlying our lands and aquifers.
But strangely enough, for all their massive public relations efforts, the Halliburtons, Koch Industries, Chesapeake and Duke Energies of the world still haven't found a way to reshape the laws of science to their liking. In a peer-reviewed study for the journal Environmental Health released on October 30 2014, researchers examined the air quality at 96 separate sites near hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") operations in five states, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio and Wyoming:
In 40 percent of the air samples, laboratory tests found benzene, formaldehyde, or other toxic substances associated with oil and gas production that were above levels the federal government considers safe for brief or longer-term exposure. Far above, in some cases.
According to the study, eight compounds were commonly found in the air around fracking sites. "Benzene, formaldehyde, and hydrogen sulfide were the most common compounds to exceed acute and other health-based risk levels."
The industry's response has been to attack the people conducting the study:
The Independent Petroleum Association of America referred questions about the study to Energy in Depth, an outreach campaign it launched in 2009. Energy in Depth spokeswoman Katie Brown criticized the involvement of Global Community Monitor, the nonprofit that had trained DeTurck and other volunteers to gather the samples.
"It's difficult to see how Global Community Monitor, a group that dubiously claims no amount of regulation will ever make fracking safe, could make a constructive contribution within the scientific community,"
But there is nothing "unique" about the study's findings.
The study comes amid a growing body of research suggesting that the country's ballooning oil and gas production—often next to homes and schools—could be endangering the health of people living or working nearby. For the past 18 months, the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News have been investigating this topic, focusing mainly on the Eagle Ford Shale formation of south Texas.
A study published in Environmental Health Studies in September found that Pennsylvania residents living less than two-thirds of a mile from natural gas wells were much more likely to report skin and upper-respiratory problems than people living farther away.
A Colorado School of Public Health analysis published in April found 30 percent more congenital heart defects in babies born to mothers in parts of that state with lots of gas wells than in babies born to mothers with no wells within ten miles of their homes.
And a 2013 study done for the state of West Virginia found benzene, a carcinogen, above levels considered safe by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry near four of seven gas-well pads where air was sampled.
The Global Community Monitor organization develops air quality monitoring regimes to be performed by local residents near areas where fracking operations occur. The critical difference between GCM's methodology and the methodology typically employed by state-run (and usually industry-funded) monitors is that it captures contaminants in a single moment in time, rather than averaging out concentrations over a period of weeks. The latter method, according to GCM, permits findings that are diluted and miss critical peak instances of contamination, the sporadic instances of airborne poisoning that pose the greatest risk of acute harm. As the study's proponents freely acknowledge, their methodology permits local residents to measure air quality at the same time instances of foul odors and health complaints are actually occurring, rather than the much broader time frame in which they are not, because by utilizing "averages" over time such agents have an opportunity to dissolve or dissipate.
The article cites the example of Wyoming, in which long-term state-funded monitoring has indicated no problems with fracking-based contaminants. The actual affected residents felt otherwise, and conducted monitoring of their own, at the time the foul odors and health problems of people were actually manifesting themselves. The community study was the study was organized by Deb Thomas, a community organizer, environmental activist and director of an environmental data-collection organization called Shale Test. Thomas's concern about air quality was prompted by the rabid pushback by energy companies when the EPA found that fracking had likely contaminated groundwater in and around the small town of Pavilion, Wyoming. She immediately agreed to GCM's proposal to conduct resident-based air testing in Wyoming areas potentially impacted, and was shocked by what she found:
What startled her were the results around her own town, Clark, where tests of the air samples showed high levels of benzene, a chemical that can be emitted by oil and gas production.
The worst sample had 110,000 micrograms per cubic meter of air, 12,000 times the safe level for brief exposure set by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Several other Wyoming samples also tested high for benzene, though far lower than the worst one.
The article notes that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is paying more attention to the issue, and nine separate studies are currently in progress. In the interim, we have the conclusions from the GCM study:
Results:
Levels of eight volatile chemicals exceeded federal guidelines under several operational circumstances. Benzene, formaldehyde, and hydrogen sulfide were the most common compounds to exceed acute and other health-based risk levels.
Conclusions:
Air concentrations of potentially dangerous compounds and chemical mixtures are frequently present near oil and gas production sites. Community-based research can provide an important supplement to state air quality monitoring programs.
The industry's response thus far has been to dismiss the issue. Unfortunately, the people actually living where fracking occurs don't have that luxury:
Exposure to benzene increases the risk of leukemia, along with dangerous respiratory problems. Hydrogen sulfide can cause short and long term neurological, upper respiratory, and blood-related symptoms and formaldehyde is known to cause cancer.