Le 2 octobre 2011
Commentaire sur la proposition de Lucien Bouchard et article sur les conséquences pour la santé de l'exploitation du gaz de schiste
Bonjour
Comme vous le savez sans doute déjà, Lucien Bouchard – un homme autrefois grandement estimé qui, hélas, semble avoir égaré sa boussole morale alors que, grassement payé, il défend aujourd'hui les intérêts de l'une des industries les plus polluantes de la planète – proposait il y a quelque jours un nouveau stratagème tordu et cousu de fils blancs pour tenter de faire accepter à la population québécoise d'endurer la pollution tous azimuths que généreraient plus de 20,000 puits de fracturation chimico-hydraulique dans l'ensemble de la vallée du St-Laurent sous le couvert d'une meilleure rentabilité - en réalité, un mirage et une fraude - en impliquant l'État québécois dans l'exploitation du gaz de schiste. Bien sûr, cette idée saugrenue, compte tenu du très faible rendement de cette filière en raison de la surabondance actuelle de gaz de méthane sur le marché nord-américain et des prix déprimés qui s'en suivent, a immédiatement soulevé un tollé d'objections toutes plus fondées les unes que les autres (voir les 2 liens ci-dessus). Or, je viens de tomber sur un article (voir ci-après) fort révélateur sur les désolantes conséquentes pour la santé de l'exploitation du gaz du schiste, tout juste publié par ProPublica, une entreprise américaine de journalisme d'enquête indépendant, qui vient de se mériter pour une deuxième année consécutive le Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
Même s'il est vain d'espérer que M. Bouchard ait un sursaut de conscience, s'il advenait qu'il prenne connaissance de ces faits, et réalise ainsi le peu de jugement dont il a fait preuve en associant sa bonne réputation à une association de malfaiteurs industriels qui, partout dans le monde, se foutent éperdument des incalculables conséquences environnementales de leurs désastreuses activités et affichent ouvertement leur mépris pour la santé humaine et la qualité de vie des millions d'êtres humains ainsi affectés, il faut à tout le moins espérer que les acteurs du magnifique mouvement d'opposition populaire qui a réussi jusqu'ici à tenir ces malfrats en échec au Québec et à enrayer la machine gouvernementale vendue à l'avance aux intérêts de ces sbires de la pollution, continuera à marteler leur message et à mobiliser les gens contre l'inévitable désastre que représenterait un feu vert à cette industrie, en faisant notamment mieux connaître le triste sort subi par ces hommes, femmes et enfants qui ont eu le malheur de subir le drame qui nous attend si nous abaissons notre garde et laissons les fossoyeurs de la vérité et du bon sens nous vendre leur salade contaminée par l'argent sale de cette industrie anti-écologique et anti-vie.
Jean Hudon
L'Anse-Saint-Jean
PS Si vous n'avez pas la patience de lire en entier ce long article, j'ai mis en italique quelques passages pertinents. Ne manquez pas de lire les quelques commentaires à la fin cet article et les extraits d'autres articles publiés par ProPublica que j'ai sélectionnés pour vous à la fin. Ah oui! Je ne peux m'empêcher de dresser un parallèle avec le dossier des fameux compteurs WiFi qui fait la manchette depuis quelques jours - voir De nouveaux compteurs qui inquiètent et Des compteurs d'Hydro dans des locaux du clan Rizzuto et LE VÉRIFICATEUR GÉNÉRAL DOIT AVOIR UN ACCÈS LIBRE ET ENTIER CHEZ HYDRO-QUÉBEC et bien sûr voir Compteurs intelligents : Derniers développements, car les conséquences pour la santé humaine de l'exposition constante à des émetteurs WiFi qui, selon le scientifique Daniel Hirsch, génèrent en réalité des radiations électromagnétiques plus de 100 fois supérieures à celles émises par un téléphone cellulaire, ne pourront qu'être dramatiques et considérablement plus généralisées que celles liées au gaz de schiste... Mais ça, c'est une autre histoire – dont on n'a pas fini d'entendre parler !
Cet envoi est archivé au http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2011/BouchardGazSchiste.htm
PPS Les graves conséquences environnementales de l'exploitation du gaz de schiste pâlissent en comparaison de celles de l'exploitation des sables bitumineux. Pour mieux en discerner l'ampleur, je vous encourage aussi à lire...
Environmentalism’s Last Stand: Tar sands and the future of our eco-system (Sept 6, 2011)
http://www.fairsharecommonheritage.org/2011/09/06/environmentalisms-last-stand-tar-sands-and-the-future-of-our-eco-system/
(...) Lloyd Alter of TreeHugger.com lists some of the major impacts of Canada’s massive tar sands projects:
- Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.
- At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing.
- Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes.
- The toxic tailing ponds are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world.
- The ponds span 50 square kilometers and can be seen from space.
- Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.
To which, the Sierra Club adds:
- Greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times those of conventional oil and gas production
- Tar sands development is already Canada’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gases
- In the US, growing interest in tar sands development could increase greenhouse gas emissions from new tar sands projects from 27 to 126 million tons by 2015. CLIP
Voir aussi ...
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline Could Have 91 Serious Spills in 50 Years
Our way of life is the problem
Meat and Climate Change: It's Even Worse Than We Imagined
Save the Yasun rainforest: Ecuador must not drill for oil in this natural wonderland
Ecuador's Imperilled Paradise - One of the World's Most Important, If Least-Known Battles
From: http://www.propublica.org/article/science-lags-as-health-problems-emerge-near-gas-fields
Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields
by Abrahm Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz -- Sep. 16, 2011
On a summer evening in June 2005, Susan Wallace-Babb went out into a neighbor's field near her ranch in Western Colorado to close an irrigation ditch. She parked down the rutted double-track, stepped out of her truck into the low-slung sun, took a deep breath and collapsed, unconscious.
A natural gas well and a pair of fuel storage tanks sat less than a half-mile away. Later, after Wallace-Babb came to and sought answers, a sheriff's deputy told her that a tank full of gas condensate—liquid hydrocarbons gathered from the production process—had overflowed into another tank. The fumes must have drifted toward the field where she was working, he suggested.
The next morning Wallace-Babb was so sick she could barely move. She vomited uncontrollably and suffered explosive diarrhea. A searing pain shot up her thigh. Within days she developed burning rashes that covered her exposed skin, then lesions. As weeks passed, anytime she went outdoors, her symptoms worsened. Wallace-Babb's doctor began to suspect she had been poisoned.
"I took to wearing a respirator and swim goggles outside to tend to my animals," Wallace-Babb said. "I closed up my house and got an air conditioner that would just recycle the air and not let any fresh air in."
Wallace-Babb's symptoms mirror those reported by a handful of others living near her ranch in Parachute, Colo., and by dozens of residents of communities across the country that have seen the most extensive natural gas drilling. Hydraulic fracturing, along with other processes used to drill wells, generates emissions and millions of gallons of hazardous waste that are dumped into open-air pits. The pits have been shown to leak into groundwater and also give off chemical emissions as the fluids evaporate. Residents' most common complaints are respiratory infections, headaches, neurological impairment, nausea and skin rashes. More rarely, they have reported more serious effects, from miscarriages and tumors to benzene poisoning and cancer.
ProPublica examined government environmental reports and private lawsuits and interviewed scores of residents, physicians and toxicologists in four states—Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania—that are drilling hot spots. Our review showed that cases like Wallace-Babb's go back a decade in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, where drilling has taken place for years. They are just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale drilling boom began in earnest in 2008.
Concern about such health complaints is longstanding—Congress held hearings on them in 2007 at which Wallace-Babb testified. But the extent and cause of the problems remains unknown. Neither states nor the federal government have systematically tracked reports from people like Wallace-Babb, or comprehensively investigated how drilling affects human health.
"In some communities it has been a disaster," said Christopher Portier, director of the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Center for Environmental Health. "We do not have enough information on hand to be able to draw good solid conclusions about whether this is a public health risk as a whole."
Exemptions from federal environmental rules won by the drilling companies have complicated efforts to gather pollution data and to understand the root of health complaints. Current law allows oil and gas companies not to report toxic emissions and hazardous waste released by all but their largest facilities, excluding hundreds of thousands of wells and small plants. Many of the chemicals used in fracking and drilling remain secret, hobbling investigators trying to determine the source of contamination. The gas industry itself has been less than enthusiastic about health studies. Drillers declined to cooperate with a long-term study of the health effects of gas drilling near Wallace-Babb's town this summer, prompting state officials to drop their plans and start over.
These factors make a difficult epidemiological challenge even tougher. Doctors and toxicologists say symptoms reported by people working or living near the gas fields are often transient and irregular. They say they need precise data on the prevalence and onset of medical conditions, as well as from air and water sampling, to properly assess the hazards of drilling.
"There are considerable issues about health effects," said John Deutch, former director of the CIA and a professor of chemistry at MIT, who heads a Department of Energy panel examining the environmental effects of shale gas drilling, with an emphasis on hydraulic fracturing. "Frankly, I'm not even sure ... what serious public health work has been done in making a connection."
The health questions are intensifying at a moment when communities and states are already weighing the benefits and costs of drilling for natural gas. Drilling has brought much-needed jobs and cash infusions to some of the nation's poorer regions; bullish estimates of U.S. gas reserves promise plenty of drilling development in the future. At the same time, fracking's lasting environmental toll—particularly the threat it may pose to water supplies—has become the subject of intense debate. Since 2008, ProPublica has reported about hundreds of cases of water contamination in more than six states where drilling and fracking are taking place as well as the difficulties of handling the vast quantities of waste the drilling processes produce.
Medical and government groups are beginning to sound alarms about drilling's potential to damage health.
In May, Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa., wrote to Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state officials, asking them to investigate illness clusters in Pennsylvania. "Despite being above the normal rate, these disease groupings are often dismissed as statistically insignificant," Casey wrote.
In July, when the EPA proposed new emissions rules for the drilling industry, it warned that without them there could be an unacceptably high risk of cancer for people living close to major facilities. In August, a national association of childrens' doctors published a fact sheet detailing concerns about fracking and warning that children are more susceptible to chemical exposure. The group called for more epidemiological research and disclosure of chemicals used in drilling.
The gas drilling industry says it supports such research and that health concerns should be taken seriously, but that the public should be careful of jumping to conclusions. "Sound science does exist on these issues," wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in an email. Tucker pointed to a case in Pennsylvania where a woman alleged that drilling had contaminated her water and made her sick. A state investigation found that her water was indeed foul, but that it had been that way long before drilling began. "Eventually, pretty firm conclusions can be made with respect to potential causes and effects. Unfortunately, it takes time to do all that in a rigorous, data-driven way."
No such research is under way on a significant scale, however.
Portier, whose agency is a sister agency of the CDC and charged with determining the toxicity of industrial chemicals and preventing exposure to them, says the anecdotal evidence of environmental illness is sufficient to warrant a more serious and systematic approach to studying it. His agency, in conjunction with the EPA, is performing at least five health consultations for communities concerned about health impacts, including two in Pennsylvania. These smaller-scale studies assess health risks based on data already collected, giving a snapshot of a community at a particular moment. But what's needed is a nationwide study that tracks people living close to drilling over time, Portier said. That could cost upward of $100 million. "We can't do everything yet," Portier said. "We only have so much money available."
* * *
The number of new natural gas wells drilled each year in the United States has skyrocketed, from 17,500 in 2000 to a peak of more than 33,000 in 2008. Fracking technology, once used in just a small percentage of wells, has made it possible to get gas out of deeply buried reserves and has become an essential part of drilling almost every new well. At the same time, fracking has opened up vast new reserves in the eastern United States. The wells are now being drilled in heavily populated parts of Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and even into urban neighborhoods of Fort Worth.
Alongside the growth in drilling, reports of fouled water, bad odors and health complaints also have increased. In the few places where basic environmental sampling has been done, the results confirm that water and air pollution are present in the same regions where residents say they are getting sick. Last spring, the EPA doubled its estimates of methane gas leaked from drilling equipment and said the amount of methane pollution that billows from fracking operations was 9,000 times higher than researchers had previously thought.
In Colorado, the ATSDR sampled air for pollutants at 14 sites for a 2008 report, including on Susan Wallace-Babb's property. Fifteen contaminants were detected at levels the federal government considers above normal. Among them were the carcinogens benzene, tetrachloroethene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene. The contamination fell below the thresholds for unacceptable cancer risk, but the agency called it cause for concern and suggested that as drilling continued, it could present a possible cancer risk in the future. Even at the time of the sampling, the agency reported, residents could be exposed to large doses of contaminants for brief "peak" periods.
"Since residents may be repeatedly exposed to these peak concentrations of benzene," the ATSDR report said, "the concentrations ... warrant careful monitoring and exposure evaluation."
In Pavillion, Wyo., where residents have complained of nerve damage and loss of sense of taste and smell, EPA superfund investigators found benzene and other hydrocarbons in well water samples, as well as methane gas, metals, and an unusual chemical variant of a compound used in hydraulic fracturing. A health survey conducted there by an environmental group in late 2010 found that 94 percent of respondents complained of health issues they thought were new or connected to the drilling, and 81 percent reported respiratory troubles. The ATSDR, in consultation with the EPA, advised at least 19 families in Pavillion not to drink their water and to ventilate bathrooms when they bathed, in part because volatile organic compounds can become airborne in a shower. But the government stopped short of saying that drilling caused the contamination or their symptoms.
In 2009, an environmental-sciences firm also found widespread air contaminants in Dish, Texas, a small town in the heart of the Barnett Shale just north of Fort Worth. Wolf Eagle Environmental, hired by the town's mayor and local residents, collected readings from seven monitoring stations and detected 16 chemicals, including benzene and other known and suspected carcinogens. Benzene exceeded Texas' exposure standards at three of the stations.
Wilma Subra, the environmental consultant who ran the survey in Pavillion, also surveyed Dish residents about their health. About 60 percent of respondents reported symptoms that would be expected in people exposed to high levels of the chemicals found in the air samples, Subra said.
Texas' Commission on Environmental Quality reviewed Wolf Eagle's work and agreed that the contaminants could pose a long-term health risk to residents. This year, it followed up with air monitoring of its own in nearby Fort Worth. While the agency determined that contamination levels did not present a public health risk, emissions at five test sites violated state regulatory guidelines. The state documented high levels of benzene and formaldehyde—both carcinogens—in those spots.
"Evidence like that really gives our agency a bit of urgency in its work," said Al Armendariz, the EPA's regional administrator for south central states, based in Texas.
* * *
One of the byproducts of the natural gas boom has been that environmental agencies set up to handle issues of permitting and waste disposal are grappling with questions of health and epidemiology, subjects in which they have little training or experience.
In Pennsylvania and Colorado, regulators are still taking the first awkward steps toward developing processes to track and investigate reports of illness related to drilling.
Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has received 1,306 drilling-related complaints since 2009—45 percent of which alleged water pollution—but officials acknowledged they couldn't separate out how many involved health issues. Officials with the state Department of Health said they coordinated with the DEP on drilling-related health complaints but would not respond to questions for this story and denied ProPublica's request for complaint records, citing privacy concerns.
Pennsylvania's secretary of health has urged the creation of a registry to track health complaints in the state's drilling areas—at an annual cost of about $2 million—but so far, the governor has not acted upon the recommendation.
Records show Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission received 496 complaints between mid-2006 and the end of 2008. But officials there, much like their Pennsylvania counterparts, have no way to separate those related to health—even the ones passed on by the state Department of Public Health and Environment—from those concerning spills, or noise, or other disruptions.
In an internal government report, the commission separated out complaints related to odors for this period. There were 121. But there are limited public records reflecting what state officials did in response to these reports. Often, records show state officials pursued or fixed the source of an odor, but not whether they tracked any possible health effects connected to the odors.
"Those are allegations, they're complaints, they may or may not be valid complaints," said Debbie Baldwin, the commission's environmental manager. "Given the number of people in the state, the number of wells in the state and the amount of activity associated with oil and gas ... that's a small number."
It is unclear from available records whether the commission ever independently evaluated Susan Wallace-Babb's assertion that toxic emissions harmed her health. The agency's report shows that inspectors confirmed her story about an overflow and fumes and asked Williams, the company drilling near her home, whether dangerous pollutants had been emitted. The company said no, assuring inspectors "this is a non-incident," records show. In the segment of the incident report labeled "resolution," the agency also noted that the company suspected Wallace-Babb "may have been influenced by others annoyed with local gas-field operators."
In response to a request for comment, Williams referred ProPublica to a letter it submitted to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform committee after Wallace-Babb testified in 2007. In the letter, the company says that it placed a cap on an open tank near Wallace-Babb's home and conducted its own air monitoring for pollutants that would post a health risk, finding none. State and federal air monitoring also did not find levels of emissions that would clearly pose a health risk, the company said. "We had employees or contractors at the well site on a regular basis and none of them ever complained about feeling sick as a result of being near the tank," Williams’ letter states.
Colorado's health department responded to questions by email about how the state tracks health complaints from people in drilling areas. The department's spokesman said the state had insufficient data to show a relationship between drilling and health issues. "There continues to be much interest in the potential health effects of gas production activities," wrote Mark Salley. "This department will continue to work with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to protect the public's health."
* * *
In September 2009, Range Resources began drilling a natural gas well near the home of Beth Voyles in one of the most heavily drilled counties in southwestern Pennsylvania. The following spring, Range began filling a giant waste impoundment near Voyles' home, and wastewater accumulated in puddles on the dirt roads, where the water was sprayed to hold down the dust, according to a lawsuit Voyles filed against the state and interviews with ProPublica. The family immediately noticed a stench, and its dog, which lapped the fluid from the puddles, got sick.
A veterinarian determined that the dog had been exposed to ethylene glycol, a component of antifreeze that is also used in hydraulic fracturing. The dog's organs began to crystalize, and ultimately failed, the vet told Voyles, and the family had to euthanize the dog. A short time later the family had to euthanize a horse after it exhibited similar symptoms, Voyles told ProPublica. "If it's crystalizing their organs," Voyles said of her animals, "just how long before it's going to do that to us?" Then the whole family started getting rashes, aches and blisters in their noses and throats. Her doctors couldn't pinpoint what was causing their symptoms.
"You feel like you're drugged because your brain's not thinking," she said. "We want our life back."
When Voyles began to suspect drilling might be the cause, she had her doctors run blood tests for chemicals known to be used in the processes. The results came back showing high levels of benzene, toluene and arsenic.
In August 2010, after several complaints from the area, according to Voyles' lawsuit, the state Department of Environmental Protection asked Range to treat the impoundment pond for hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas that can be fatal at high levels and cause nausea, vomiting and headaches in lower amounts. The impoundment was briefly emptied in June, Voyles said, but then filled again in August. Now the rashes are back, she's lost much of her sense of smell and she says everything tastes like metal.
Voyles is suing the DEP, which she says ignored her concerns that the chemicals in her blood could be from the waste in the impoundment nearby, never advised her that its tests showed that her well water was also contaminated with an industrial solvent and never issued any violations to Range. Among the clear violations that DEP overlooked, she alleges, was that the waste impoundment did not meet minimum state regulatory requirements. Her lawsuit does not seek compensation, but asks that the agency investigate her complaints according to state regulations. The DEP did not respond to calls requesting comment.
Range Resources did not respond to a call from ProPublica about Voyles' case either. In an earlier report, the company denied there were problems with the impoundment near her home.
After seeing several medical specialists and epidemiologists, Voyles still doesn't know what to do about her family's health.
"They don't know how to treat us," she said.
* * *
In assessing Voyles' case and others like it, environmental epidemiologists warn that proximity and correlation don't add up to proof. Even when symptoms and contamination occur in the same place, they say, it doesn't necessarily mean the contamination caused the symptoms.
"You have a community where there is a putative exposure, and a community with putative illness," said Daniel Teitelbaum, a toxicologist who has spent years examining health issues around drilling and helped frame some of the early research in Colorado. "But you can't say whether the people exposed are the people who are ill."
In the Pennsylvania case pointed out by industry spokesman Chris Tucker, for example, a woman complained for years of symptoms similar to Wallace-Babb's. She alleged that drilling activities had contaminated her water with barium. She spoke at anti-drilling rallies and environmental groups used her case. But when Pennsylvania officials investigated, they found her intense exposure to barium hadn't come from drilling—it was a natural seepage into her well.
Teitelbaum says that collecting measurements of contaminants in the air and water is an essential first step. But he said epidemiologists then set out to track an "exposure pathway," comparing people exposed to pollutants to people not exposed and then identifying how the exposure occurred. No such scientific protocol has been developed to examine the gas fields. Without one, the more common respiratory and skin ailments are increasingly accepted as being related to pollution, Teitelbaum said. But whether the more serious symptoms have anything to do with drilling is a complete unknown. "You hear and see everything you can possibly imagine, from miscarriages to multiple sclerosis to brain tumors," he said. "There is no way to document whether those things are real or not real."
That's why a health registry—a database to cross reference patterns of symptoms and locations where they occur with water and air tests—is so important, he said. Without this context, complaints from residents may not be taken seriously by doctors or environment officials, partly because people respond to chemical exposures differently. Their symptoms can vary widely and can be difficult to recognize.
"If someone comes in and just says I can't think straight, or I'm really tired or I have headaches, that's not measureable," said Dr. Kendall Gerdes, a Denver-based physician who specializes in ecological exposure cases and has seen a number of patients complaining about the gas patch. "Therefore it's considered psychosomatic by most doctors' training."
Gerdes said many of the symptoms roughly fit what ecological-disorder specialists in ecological disorders call multiple chemical sensitivity. It's a sort of catch-all to explain intense reactions to chemical compounds ranging from skin maladies to nerve damage.
According to Gerdes, those predisposed to chemical sensitivity are likely to have the most pronounced reactions to chemical exposures in drilling areas. "Characteristically that person will know they can't be around fresh paint, or can't wear perfume," he said. "So to me, it is an unrecognized vulnerability that, when put together with significant exposures, is enough to cause troubles."
The more people with chemical sensitivity are exposed, the more sensitized they get, Gerdes said. Before Susan Wallace-Babb passed out in the field by her truck, she had felt wooziness and headaches. In the weeks after, she couldn't bear the slightest exposure in places where she had previously felt safe.
"I would wake up in the middle of the night in pain and vomiting and so sick I could barely make it to the bathroom," she said. "And that was with the house closed."
Gerdes and others experts say that whatever affected Susan Wallace-Babb likely also affected others in her community, but they may not have exhibited the same symptoms or reacted as quickly.
For all the mysteries surrounding Wallace-Babb's condition, one thing was clear: When she was away from home, she felt better. When she returned, her symptoms worsened. "That's probably the clearest association you can make," Gerdes said. "When it happens several different times there is a correlation."
Wallace-Babb reluctantly decided to move.
"My body could not rid itself of the toxins," Wallace-Babb said. Her doctor warned her that if she didn't leave, she would never get better. "I thought gosh, there is my dream house. There is my dream all gone and what am I going to do?"
* * *
By late 2009, stories like Wallace-Babb's had become common in Garfield County, Colo., where she had lived and the natural gas production had jumped eightfold in the previous eight years.
Rick Roles, whose ranch is dotted with gas wells and used to be near a set of large open-air waste pits, complained of intense fatigue. His eyes and throat burned relentlessly, he told ProPublica during a visit in 2008. Light work made his heart race, and, like in the case of Voyles, doctors detected benzene in his blood. Roles was a smoker, which could explain the benzene. But he also raised goats with prized bucks, and after the wells were drilled, many of the kids were stillborn or deformed.
A few miles away another woman, Laura Amos, was diagnosed with a rare adrenal tumor she believed was caused by drilling chemicals that are used in fracking. In 2001, her water well exploded with methane and gray sediment the same day drillers pumped fluids underground to frack a well nearby. By 2003 she was sick. After her lawyers obtained documents from the drilling company, EnCana, showing that the suspected chemical was used in nearby wells, Amos accepted a multimillion-dollar settlement. The terms remain confidential, except for the fact that Amos is no longer allowed to talk about her case. Colorado fined EnCana for failing to contain its drilling waste properly. EnCana has said it disagreed with the state action and that there was no proof that fracking caused Amos' well problems.
Another local couple, the Mobaldis, experienced symptoms similar to those of Wallace-Babb and Voyles, but worse. Steve Mobaldi testified about his wife's condition at a 2007 congressional hearing. "Chris began to experience fatigue, headaches, hand numbness, bloody stools, rashes, and welts on her skin," he said. "Tiny blisters covered her entire body. The blisters would weep, then her skin would peel. ... Canker-type sores appeared in her mouth and down her throat, and they would disappear the next day. ... The racking pain was unbearable."
Chris Mobaldi developed a pituitary tumor and died in 2010 from a complication in her treatment.
In response to these cases and others, state and county health officials conducted a series of monitoring projects that found that gas drilling was the area's largest source of several hazardous air pollutants, including benzene and ozone-forming emissions. For several years, with the cooperation of federal health officials, Colorado monitored air quality in Garfield County, determining repeatedly that while pollution in the area did not exceed health standards, it probably meant there was a slightly elevated risk of cancer and other health effects. But none of those steps were sufficient to help officials determine the precise risk level. They didn't have a way to systematically record health complaints or to track which residents might have been exposed to which pollutants and when—the essential link in completing an epidemiological study.
Still, the incremental studies underscored concern among residents.
When Antero Resources announced plans in the spring of 2009 to drill 200 more wells in Battlement Mesa, a golf-course community almost within sight of Wallace-Babb's old home, about 400 residents petitioned the county to study the potential health impacts before they permitted the drilling.
In February 2010, the Garfield County board of commissioners hired researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health to conduct another health impact assessment, analyzing air samples collected by federal and state officials over the years to gauge the dangers of new drilling and how best to mitigate them. Whereas previous research had analyzed samples of emissions from sites across the county, this time researchers focused on the risk to one small, well-defined area, trying to assess the potential of risk increasing over time. The researchers also were tasked with designing a long-term plan to collect data on the drilling once it began, tracing how emissions affected residents. The two-pronged effort promised to be one of the most in-depth analyses so far of gas field health effects in the nation.
In a draft of the health impact assessment released in February 2011, the School of Public Health researchers concluded that without pollution control measures, emissions from drilling would likely be high enough to cause disease in Battlement Mesa, including respiratory and neurological problems, birth defects and cancer. The report said that air pollution was a greater risk than water pollution and pointed to fracking as the stage of drilling that released some of the most toxic emissions. The conclusion was starkly different from past government assessments, which were limited to determining whether pollution was dangerous at the time the samples were taken. The School of Public Health's view was that the drilling was clearly emitting carcinogens and that sooner or later this would lead to problems, according to Roxana Witter, an assistant research professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and the lead author of the study.
The authors stressed that data from the long-term monitoring phase of their research were needed to fill crucial gaps in evaluating the risks from drilling emissions, but the project wouldn't get that far.
The draft findings were immediately controversial.
"It got political," said John Martin, one of the Garfield County commissioners who oversaw the study. Martin said environmental groups wanted to use the study to stop drilling. "It got blown completely out of proportion and they took advantage of that issue to further their agenda."
The drilling industry was highly critical of the draft and its authors and pressed county officials to delay issuing its final report by extending the period for public comments. Money from outside interest groups had been flowing into elections for Garfield County commission seats, and in November 2010 a commissioner seen as a supporter of more health research was defeated.
In May, the commission decided not to extend the researchers' contract, and a final draft of the report was never produced, limiting the impact of its conclusions.
"The study wasn't finalized," said David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. "We always have to be careful about using draft documents which haven't been finalized."
Martin, one of the commissioners who voted against paying to finish the project, said the commissioners had already gotten what they were looking for: general recommendations for how to mitigate potential health effects. If there are larger uncertainties about how drilling can affect public health, Martin said, that's for state and federal agencies to study.
"We have limitations and this is beyond the scope of what we need to be doing," he said.
For the next phase of the study—the long-term monitoring project—the county and the School of Public Health sought the help of Colorado's health department. The department had planned to apply to the EPA for funding to measure drilling emissions and track their movement as drilling progressed.
But in August, local gas drilling companies informed government officials they would not cooperate with the study unless Garfield County and the state agreed to replace Witter's team with other academic researchers and start over.
"GarCO operators have collectively decided a Garfield County air study, conducted by the Colorado Public School of Health [sic], is unworkable and one they are unable to participate in moving forward," wrote David Ludlam, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil & Gas Association, in an Aug. 3 email that was forwarded to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Antero did not respond to requests for comment. In an email to ProPublica, Ludlam explained the industry wanted to see a scientific organization like Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science do the work, rather than Witter. "It is less about a tangible bias and more about an overall environment of distrust in Garfield County resulting from their previous work product being politicized by outside parties," he wrote.
The state health department abandoned, for the time being, its plans for the research one week after receiving Ludlam's email, withdrawing its application for federal funding.
The project's demise has left the state's leading environmental doctors discouraged. "It is tragic," said Teitelbaum. "We are going lickety split ahead with the drilling along the East Coast and nobody knows what the hell is going on. And nobody wants to spend any money on it."
While Teitelbaum and others wait for answers, Wallace-Babb continues to grapple with the ailments that drove her from Colorado.
In 2006, she moved to Winnsboro, Texas, a small town two hours east of Dallas. For three years her symptoms gradually improved, until she could work in her garden and go about her normal daily routine. Then, early last year, Exxon launched a project in an old oil field 14 miles away and began fracking wells to get them to produce more oil. Within months, Wallace-Babb's symptoms returned. Again, she wears a respirator to visit the grocery store. Again, she is looking to move.
"It's one thing if you choose to work for that industry and you get damaged from that exposure," Wallace-Babb said. "At least they made money. But if you are just living and minding your own business and your life gets torn asunder, it's different.
"I made nothing. I got all the damage."
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HERE ARE SOME OF THE 51 COMMENTS POSTED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE:
me2 - Sep. 16
I can’t stress enough, people need to read the book “INCONCLUSIVE BY DESIGN,” PDF download, free on the net. This will answer WHY science always lags behind, or NEVER CATCHES UP to the reality.
Regulatory Agencies protect the perpetrators, NOT THE PEOPLE.
Nancy Sep. 16
But fracking is totally safe. Natural gas companies and republicans say so. Science? What science? I feel like we’re living in an alternate universe where America has been taken over by greedy monsters. Have we?
Stuart Davies Sep. 16
Compare the list of symptoms that people suffer near fracking wells to those who have been exposed to the dispersant corexit in the gulf states. The similarities is not surprising, given that many of the same highly toxic chemicals are used in both areas, including 2butoxyethanol. Here is a good site with a fairly detailed list of many of the nasty chemicals used in fracking: http://www.frackcheckwv.net/2011/04/17/investigation-yields-list-of-chemicals-used-in-fracking-many-are-known-carcinogen.
All of this poisoning of groundwater and people all over the world, in order to create another opportunity to fleece investors in another elaborate scam, otherwise known as the great shale gas “bonanza” that has been hyped so much in the corporate media of late.
The story about the vast new reserves of natural gas supposedly made available by this extraction method has been reported as fact over and over, and continues to be reported as such, in spite of the reports from numerous gas industry insiders which have been leaking out for many months that indicate it is a campaign of mass deception on the magnitude of the ENRON scam.
Here are a few links to some good articles on that aspect of the fracking outrage: http://www.frackcheckwv.net
The Delusional People Who Want to Frack This Country Up
http://www.alternet.org/story/148870/the_delusional_people_who_want_to_frack_this_country_up
bicbic - Sep. 16
Natural gases coming from the ground are odorless and cannot be detected by their odor.
Gas companies add hydrogen sulfide so household gas can be detected.
Being gases they are wafted around by breezes, etc and are present sometimes, so symptoms of exposure can be transient.
Controlled tests are needed to determine toxicity and carcinogenity. I suggest exposing gas company executives to known concentrations and monitoring their symptoms and health over time.
Alex - Sep. 16
A musical tribute to the public relations assault by the industry and kid glove treatment by certain media networks to make it seem so harmless and job-producing:
http://soundcloud.com/alexnestor/shale-shakin
Perhaps the proper encouragement for safer practices would be a regulation requiring energy executives to live on site of an active well, 24/7 for one month out of every year (with no protective gear other than a hard hat.)
Canucnik - Sep. 16
The “Big Plan!”
Seriously over estimate the amount of Natural Gas Reserves in North America so that you can seriously totally exploit the Alberta Tar Sands sooner rather than later as was the original plan…slower, cleaner, safer and use a way less water…
Note 1: the heavy crude is extra to the daily refinement of the oil that goes on in the 150 of 300 oil refineries and requires a lot more gas in the process.
Enbridge to expand with another big pipe, piggy back, to the present “Big Pipe Line to Texas” from 500,000 to 800,000 to 1,000,000 barrels a DAY (projected to 2 million barrels). The extra gas and fresh water required will be enormous…it will totally wipe out what is left of the fresh air in Texas.
Note 2. Chesapeake Energy with 2 million acres in the Marcellus Shale Field is the number one long term investment in the oil patch right now!
So New York be ready they are coming for ya!
In order to refine and off-shore (It’s not for North America) this heavy crude at 2,000,000 barrels a day, these boys are going to have to hydraulically fracture every shale gas field and gas well, old and new, in North America.
Can you imagine the water used up to frack just one well 7 times to make sure Exxon gets all of it…
The secret chemicals alone will cost Halliburton a small fortune…
The water, the air, the landscape…we, all North Americans, are going to be living in our own science fiction movie!
Kim Feil - Sep. 16
In my Barnettshalehell.wordpress.com blog, I detail the shortcomings of the million dollar Ft Worth air study that the rest of the country may look at and think it is just compressor stations that failed the air tests…but the recent feedback has been that the study IS INCONCLUSIVE BY DSEIGN. As I type this here in Arlington TX downwind from 22 gas wells at UT Arlington, I dread going to sleep at night only to be awaken by severe joint pain (my husband’s shoulder hurts too). I have had hip pain for a year now, my 14 year old has had the whole BP symptom - 10 day lethargic, dizzy, eyes dilated when we think he was exposed to a cooling inversion that pushed the toxins to ground level. A friend also living downwind to a drill site was gassed when the well near her went off line after a storm, her 200 lb dog couldn’t walk right the next day. I wear a respirator sometimes outside the air is so bad. We need a revolution to stem this flow of gas drilling….the only way I can describe this is that ” we are being poisoned like a NAZI DEATH CAMP, only it is our homes where it is happening over time and we have to endure this until it kills us.
Juanita Sneeuwjag
Sep. 16, 11:25 p.m.
We have the same problems here in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwestern Virginia as those stated above. Will anyone listen or take us seriously? NO! As far as EQT, CNX, and Range Resources are concerned, we are just expendable. Our County and State leaders look the other way. It appears everyone who could and should do something about the contamination brought on by fracing gas wells is on the payroll of big gas companies. Cheap energy?
David McFatridge
Sep. 17, 12:26 a.m.
In Texas the regulatory (TCEQ) agencies have been compromised by the polluters. Rick Perry has been given over $1,000,000.00 per year by Big Oil & Gas, he inturn appoints the agency heads that are pro business to TCEQ. To see how TCEQ operates check out these news videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyCvOgJPIXw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNGYWjus72o. This is just the tip of a very big iceburg!
ibsteve2u
Sep. 17, 8:43 a.m.
@“Mike H”...
Seems like when you flat-out contradict something and throw in another statement that infers collusion to commit wrong-doing you should provide links to the data that supports your statements.
Liz Rosenbaum
Sep. 17, 9:50 a.m.
PA Governor Corbett has cut $165 million from the PA DEP budget this year. Yet DEP Secretary Krancer assures us that Pennsylvania doesn’t need the EPA or the multi-state Delaware River Basin Commission to protect its citizens from the adverse health effects of shale drilling - it would be “redundant.” At the recent Shale Gas Industry Expo in Philadelphia, they were actually laughing, saying that renewable energy exists only in “fantasy land.” Pennsylvania has become one big Fact-Free zone. Science is mounting, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. It’s time to get these frackers out of office…. KeepTapWaterSafe.org
Sharon
Sep. 17, 10:48 a.m.
I live in an extremely conservative district and the commissioners want the hydraulic fracturing because it’s money for the county. It will take 80% of the population sickened for them to realize these energy companies are not out to help them but to make a profit at the expense of their health. It’s sad that Americans has been dumped down to the point that thier life has to be ruined before they will stop buying into the propaganda. It’s true for all areas in medicine and the financial crisis, we simply aren’t getting it. I just hope that these problems wake up Americans to what is being done to them before it is too late.
Susan Marie
Sep. 17, 11:11 a.m.
Same old thread running through all the environmental articles, be it about fracking, contaminants in water, food, drugs, soil, nukes, dioxin, pesticides, etc.
Guaranteed response from the official spokesmen of companies or supposed government agency officials assigned oversight of the problem: “We need further study.” “We lack complete information.” “Let’s set up an advisory committee to monitor the situation.”
In the meantime nearby residents become ill or die from continuous exposure to poisons, inadequate regulation and lack of response from the government bureaucrats.
There should be no “proprietary” ingredients kept secret from the public, who deserve and are entitled to be informed about toxics being used around them, instead of being told that there are no “immediate” or “significant” health effects. The truth is that the bureaucrats either are totally ignorant or totally deceptive.
CLIP
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MUCH MORE REVEALING INFORMATION THROUGH http://www.propublica.org/series/fracking
SUCH AS...
Does an Old EPA Fracking Study Provide Proof of Contamination? (Aug. 4, 2011)
http://www.propublica.org/article/does-an-old-epa-fracking-study-provide-proof-of-contamination
For years the drilling industry has steadfastly insisted that there has never been a proven case in which fracking has led to contamination of drinking water. Now Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization engaged in the debate over the safety of fracking, has unearthed a 24-year-old case study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that unequivocally says such contamination has occurred. The New York Times reported on EWG's year-long research effort and the EPA's paper Wednesday. The 1987 EPA report, which describes a dark, mysterious gel found in a water well in Jackson County, W.Va., states that gels were also used to hydraulically fracture a nearby natural gas well and that "the residual fracturing fluid migrated into (the resident's) water well." The circumstances of this particular well are not unique. There are several other cases across the country where evidence suggests similar contamination has occurred and many more where the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing have contaminated water supplies on the surface. ProPublica has written about many of them in the course of a three-year investigation into the safety of drilling for natural gas. But the language found in the EPA report made public Wednesday is the strongest articulation yet by federal officials that there is a direct causal connection between man-made fissures thousands of feet underground and contaminants found in well water gone bad. The explanation, presented in the EPA's own words, stands in stark contrast to recent statements made by EPA officials that they could not document a proven case of contamination and a 2004 EPA report that concluded that fracturing was safe."This is our leading regulatory agency coming to the conclusion that hydraulic fracturing can and did contaminate underground sources of drinking water, which contradicts what industry has been saying for years," said Dusty Horwitt, EWG's senior counsel and the lead researcher on the report. CLIP
Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking (May 9, 2011)
http://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking
For the first time, a scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire. The peer-reviewed study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stands to shape the contentious debate over whether drilling is safe and begins to fill an information gap that has made it difficult for lawmakers and the public to understand the risks. The research was conducted by four scientists at Duke University. They found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself. “Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide,” the article states.The group tested 68 drinking water wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling areas in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York State. Sixty of those wells were tested for dissolved gas. While most of the wells had some methane, the water samples taken closest to the gas wells had on average 17 times the levels detected in wells further from active drilling. The group defined an active drilling area as within one kilometer, or about six tenths of a mile, from a gas well.The average concentration of the methane detected in the water wells near drilling sites fell squarely within a range that the U.S. Department of Interior says is dangerous and requires urgent “hazard mitigation” action, according to the study. CLIP
Natural Gas Drilling: What We Don’t Know (Dec. 31, 2009)
http://www.propublica.org/article/natural-gas-drilling-what-we-dont-know-1231
(...) ProPublica has uncovered more than a thousand reports of water contamination from drilling across the country, some from surface spills and some from seepage underground. In many instances the water is contaminated with compounds found in the fluids used in hydraulic fracturing. ProPublica also found dozens of homes in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado in which gas from drilling had migrated through underground cracks into basements or wells. But most of these problems have been blamed on peripheral problems that could be associated with hydraulic fracturing – like well failures or leaks – without a rigorous investigation of the entire process. ProPublica has also found that drilling procedures that can prevent water pollution and sharply reduce toxic air emissions – another frequent side effect -- are seldom required by state regulators and are mostly practiced when and where the industry wishes.Another uncertainty arises from the enormous amounts of water needed for “fracking.” The government estimates that companies will drill at least 32,000 new gas wells annually by 2012. That could mean more than 100 billion gallons of hazardous fluids will be used and disposed of each year if existing techniques, which often involve 4 million gallons of water per well, are used. Proposals for new regulations that might prevent many of these problems almost always lead to a fight. And more often than not, that fight devolves into stark, overdrawn choices between turning on the lights or having clean drinking water; getting rich or staying poor. Energy lobbyists portray skeptics as hysterical and would-be-regulators as over-reaching. Environmentalists cast the dangers as more proven than is the case, and as unsolvable. In less contentious settings, even the industry acknowledges the lack of science on key issues.
Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies? (Nov. 13, 2008)
http://www.propublica.org/article/buried-secrets-is-natural-gas-drilling-endangering-us-water-supplies-1113
In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.Sublette County is the home of one of the nation's largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation's increasingly precious drinking water supply. CLIP
Underused Drilling Practices Could Avoid Pollution (Dec. 14, 2009)
http://www.propublica.org/article/underused-drilling-practices-could-avoid-pollution-1214
As environmental concerns threaten to derail natural gas drilling projects across the country, the energy industry has developed innovative ways to make it easier to exploit the nation's reserves without polluting air and drinking water.Energy companies have figured out how to drill wells with fewer toxic chemicals, enclose wastewater so it can't contaminate streams and groundwater, and sharply curb emissions from everything from truck traffic to leaky gas well valves. Some of their techniques also make good business sense because they boost productivity and ultimately save the industry money -- $10,000 per well in some cases.Yet these environmental safeguards are used only intermittently in the 32 states where natural gas is drilled. The energy industry is exempted from many federal environmental laws, so regulation of this growing industry is left almost entirely to the states, which often recommend, but seldom mandate the use of these techniques.
(...) Interviews with state officials and industry executives in states across the country show the industry tends to use these environmental safeguards only when political, regulatory, cost or social pressures force it to do so.When states have tried to toughen regulations aimed at protecting the environment or institutionalizing these practices, energy companies have fought hard to defend the status quo. They argue that current laws are sufficient, that mandating practices imposes specific solutions on regions where they may not work best, and that the cost of complying with additional laws and safeguards would bankrupt them.
(...) Few notions have sparked more hope among environmentalists than the possibility of replacing toxic chemicals used in drilling with what are being called "green" or non-toxic drilling fluids.A review of scientific documents and interviews with drilling companies and the chemists who supply them shows that the transition is more than theoretical. It's starting to happen.EnCana, a Canadian company that operates on both sides of the border, recently said it stopped using 2-Butoxyethanol, a solvent that has caused reproductive problems in animals. BJ Services, one of the largest fracturing service providers in the world, has discontinued the use of fluorocarbons, a family of compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants.Neither company would say what it is using to replace these chemicals. But a presentation made by Denver-based Antero Resources and obtained by ProPublica says that plant-based oils are occasionally replacing mineral oil and that soy can replace some toxic polymers. David Holcomb, director of research for the Texas-based drilling chemistry company Frac Tech, offered more specifics: He uses orange citrus to replace some solvents, and palm oil in place of a common slicking agent that has been prohibited in Europe but is still allowed in the United States.The "single biggest move" the industry has made to reduce the toxicity of its fluids, according to David Dunlap, chief operating officer for BJ Services, is phasing out diesel fuel, a solvent that contains the potent carcinogen benzene.
(...) Despite these improvements, it is still difficult to say how safe the drilling and fracturing fluids are for people, and for the environment. The EPA says "green" chemistry should not be dangerously toxic and should not build up in plants or organisms. But because there are no laws that dictate what chemicals can be used for drilling on U.S. soil -- and because most companies still keep the exact makeup of their fluids a secret from state and federal regulators -- the definition of "green" remains subjective. "Green" is often shades of gray.New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation raised the "green" issue in its new environmental review for drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The report said that while non-toxic fracturing fluids would be preferable, "it may not be feasible to require the use of 'green' chemicals because presently there is no metric or chemicals approvals process in place in the U.S."Actually, such standards do exist, but only for the fracturing fluids used in offshore drilling. Both European law and the regulations of the U.S. Minerals and Management Services dictate that chemicals used in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico must be safe enough that they won't kill fish and other organisms if they are dumped overboard."You can always do it," said BJ Services' Dunlap, whose company has been a leader in innovating sustainable materials. But, Dunlap said, the chemistry costs more, and is justifiable to his shareholders only because the regulations for offshore drilling left no choice. CLIP
My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=timfvNgr_Q4
The song is based on ProPublica's investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling (read the full investigation here: http://www.propublica.org/series/fracking
