Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields
People who live close to natural gas drilling in four states complain of similar health symptoms, ranging from respiratory infections to lesions and neurological problems, but there is little science or study to get at the cause of their ailments.
Susan Wallace-Babb, wearing the oxygen mask she has to wear almost every day outside, walks with her dog at home in Winnsboro, Texas, on Sept. 12, 2011. (Erin Trieb for ProPublica)
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."
Fracking: Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat
The promise of abundant natural gas is colliding with fears about water contamination.
The Story So Far
The country’s push to find clean domestic energy has zeroed in on natural gas, but cases of water contamination have raised serious questions about the primary drilling method being used. Vast deposits of natural gas, large enough to supply the country for decades, have brought a drilling boom stretching across 31 states. The drilling technique being used, called hydraulic fracturing, shoots water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to break up rock and release the gas.
51 comments
me2
Sep. 16, 2011, 6:34 p.m.
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, 2011, 6:50 p.m.
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?
Mike H
Sep. 16, 2011, 8:02 p.m.
I’ll have much more to say about this later, but now its the “fumes”. First Lustgarden and co alleged, repeatedly, that produced fluids were either migrating from shale beds or from leaks in well casements. Then the Duke study, as well as several others that Lustgarden and co ignored, pretty much put that to rest, finding no such evidence to support that conclusion, so it looks like they are abandoning that tired thinly supported arguement.
So fumes is the new angle ... sounds to me more like some one has a case of the vapors. In fact, the whole case sounds a lot like the Hinkley California case.
Its also worthwhile to note that the Laura Amos case was comprehensively investigated and the contamination issues she claime were conclusively not traced back to drilling. Her well was shared with a neighbor who has continued to use it with no complaints. The 2BE she complains about is found in window and oven cleaners.
You all remember that one, where PG&E shelled out $100’s of millions in damages just to find out 20 years after that epidemiologists got around to conlcuding that there werent any adverse health impacts.
Stuart Davies
Sep. 16, 2011, 8:09 p.m.
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/2011/04/17/investigation-yields-list-of-chemicals-used-in-fracking-many-are-known-carcinogen
http://www.alternet.org/story/148870/the_delusional_people_who_want_to_frack_this_country_up
bicbic
Sep. 16, 2011, 8:11 p.m.
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, 2011, 8:20 p.m.
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.)
James Barth
Sep. 16, 2011, 8:24 p.m.
“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.”
I’m not sure what is going on in that quote from the article, but that woman did not complain “for years”. She complained for about two months by my recollection. This just happened in 2011, about May and June.
What’s going on here? I know Chris Tucker is a propagandist who would eat dirt and say it tasted good if it served the shale gas extraction interests, but why are Lustgarten and Kusnetz quoting this energy-in depth fellow?
They go on to write that PADEP investigated the incident, but found the barium to be pre-existing, and “naturally occuring” but WHO BELIEVES PADEP? Why was this woman not complaining, or suffering, prior to the drilling of the gas well? She is also a very young woman.
People I know pronounce that agency’s initials as ‘PAY DEP, the DEP of which actually stands for “department of economic propaganda”. This is an initial investigation by PAYDEP? People need to hold that pathetic agency’s feet to the flaring flame.
Do people think that Governor Corbett, and Secretary Krancer, are guardians of the Commonwealth’s health? They are shale gas lackeys.
Canucnik
Sep. 16, 2011, 8:41 p.m.
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, 2011, 10:24 p.m.
In my Barnettshalehell dot wordpress dot 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, 2011, 10:25 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. 16, 2011, 11:26 p.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, 2011, 7:43 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, 2011, 8:50 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, 2011, 9:48 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, 2011, 10:11 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.
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 10:57 a.m.
Interesting… I made three attempts to post a comment yesterday, all were blocked. Am I being censored here?
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:01 a.m.
OK, nothing to controversial there, and the post went up no problem. Let’s try the same post from yesterday again…
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 are 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, just 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/2011/04/17/investigation-yields-list-of-chemicals-used-in-fracking-many-are-known-carcinogen
http://www.alternet.org/story/148870/the_delusional_people_who_want_to_frack_this_country_up
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:09 a.m.
Well, it seems that it is specific content that is being blocked here. I just tried again to post my comment from yesterday… no profanity or overboard personal attacks of any sort, but it does have some links to a site which give details on the nasty ingredients used for this shale gas extraction process, as well as links on other articles on the whole inflated gas reserves scam related to it. Who is blocking these posts?
Barbara Harper
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:17 a.m.
As an environmental health professional, this story is not surprising. This is the way it always goes. It’s all claimed to be psychosomatic until there are no many demonstrably ill people that it can’t be denied. Every health professional in the US knew that the 9/11 ash was toxic and would lead to huge health problems, but EPA was pressured into saying it was safe. Now we have proof. It will be the same for fracking - people will have to file massive class action toxic tort claims and collect massive amounts of their own epidemiological data before regulators are allowed to take action by politicians. And national security will get in the way again by saying that it is unpatriotic to get in the way of energy independence, just as it was unpatriotic to suggest that the 9/11 first responders should not go in without respirators, and peole should not go back to work so quickly in ash-contaminated offices and homes. This is another great classroom example used for teaching preventive medicine and community health.
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:19 a.m.
Alright, here is an attempt to post my comment without the links, let’s see if we can determine what it is specifically that is offending the censors:
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.
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.
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:31 a.m.
OK, it was one of the links, as I suspected. They probably are blocking the one that gives details on the chemicals used in fracking… this is proprietary information, you understand. Private corporate property, a special recipe for making and end run around environmental regulations, thereby “legalizing” the injection of numerous insanely toxic chemicals into groundwater. And we are not even allowed to DISCUSS what these chemicals are, because, once again, this cocktail of toxins is a PROPRIETARY RECIPE - a trade secret…. incredible.
I will try to post the links separately to see if any are acceptable here…
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:32 a.m.
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 .
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:39 a.m.
Here are a couple of good articles on the bogus shale gas “bonanza” scam which reveal the inflated reserve estimates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=1
http://www.alternet.org/story/148870/the_delusional_people_who_want_to_frack_this_country_up
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:40 a.m.
Here is a good article on the bogus shale gas “bonanza” scam which reveal the inflated reserve estimates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=1
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 11:53 a.m.
Okaaay. None of these links are acceptable… even one to a New York Times article detailing numerous gas industry insiders who are calling the whole shale gas “bonanza” a big scam aimed at sucking in unsuspecting investors with the inflated gas reserves estimates.
Let’s try it this way… no link, you will have to google it - for a good site which gives details on fracking ingredients, look up frack check vw Investigation Yields List of Chemicals Used in Fracking; Many are Known Carcinogens, Regulated Pollutants
For a couple of good articles on the inflated gas reserves scam, look up the NY times article Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush, and look for the alternet article called The Delusional People Who Want to Frack This Country Up
Stuart Davies
Sep. 17, 2011, 12:15 p.m.
I apologize for the multiple posts, and hope everyone can see why it was done. A couple of last points about this “proprietary” fracking recipe… at least some of these chemicals are known carcinogens and are subject to federal regulation. How is it that, when they are combined into a multi-chemical toxic brew, they can be used in ways that clearly contravene the existing regulations regarding levels of public exposure for individual chemicals…. by virtue of the fact that the MIXTURE is a freaking trade secret?
We might want to remember that this whole development came to pass due to Dick Cheney’s direct involvement - he was a very key player when the whole groundwork for this scheme was put in place. A good buddy of Ken Lay’s as well - ENRON was a major contributor to the (Bush) Cheney campaign.
Keep in mind that the whole Canadian tar sands project, and thus the keystone pipeline, are intimately tied into this shale gas fracking scam. The tar sands rely on massive amounts of natural gas in the extraction and refining process.
Mary
Sep. 17, 2011, 2:44 p.m.
Keep posting Stuart!
Jim Travers
Sep. 17, 2011, 3:07 p.m.
A correction to the lead photo caption is needed.
The mask Ms Wallace-Babb is NOT an Oxygen mask, it is a Chemical Cartridge Respirator capable of filtering fine particulates and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
Too busy to write more now. Thank you for reporting this. Keep up your good work.
Geoff Swenson
Sep. 17, 2011, 3:20 p.m.
While the fracking fluid could have some dangerous chemicals in them, there is also a high likelihood that the fracking process itself releases toxic chemicals, such as benzene or methane into air. The process pulverizes the rock and release chemicals that have been tightly bound for millions of years. These have been acted on by heat and underground microbes that probably have created a large variety of complex organic compounds bound together with heavy metals and halogens.
Some of the companies are trying to invent fracking fluids with mostly non-toxic ingredients, but I doubt that this will solve the health problems.
G. Goble
Sep. 17, 2011, 4:27 p.m.
My daughter the philosopher said when she brought home the car with a dented fender, “Gee dad nobody is perfect.”
We are drilling through the aquifer to get to the shale. If we make a mistake then the aquifer can be damaged. Here we go “Gee dad nobody is perfect.”
If we damage the aquifer then we will be bringing potable water to thousands of people.
So the business reply is let the market provide the answers. Royal Dutch Shell is building this huge ship to provide LNG in vast quantities. Guess what, they are betting that “Nobody is Perfect.” and that the frackiing work will make a mistake and now with a large demand for LNG they will have the means to fill the need.
So here we go place your bets.
John Mayo
Sep. 17, 2011, 5:07 p.m.
A friend of mine asked reps from Exxon to conduct an air tox study while fracking a few hundred feet from his home here in east Texas. They refused to pay for one, or share the cost, and even tried to talk him out of conducting an air quality study himself. They warned him to stay away from his home while the frac was in process and paid him to hide his family away in a local hotel. (They also said their employees were at risk too, in a bizarre attempt to assuage guilt?)
So, here Exxon had a chance to prove there is no air toxicity while fracking, but abstained. What are they afraid of? The answer to that rhetorical question is obvious, eh?
Bob Braunstein
Sep. 17, 2011, 5:10 p.m.
I can not beleive our Government (either Dem’s or Republicans) would permit these health hazzards. It boggles my mind. If it can be proven that fracking was safe from begining to the end,(the storage and disposal of chemicals). I would be all for it.
But, it seems like it will take another “Love Canel” disaster, before the Gov will take ation
Elizabeth
Sep. 17, 2011, 6:22 p.m.
Why isnt the dog wearing a mask? It’s so dangerous for the human. isn’t just as dangerous for the dog she loves? What about the dog????
CarmanK
Sep. 17, 2011, 7:40 p.m.
I do remember a time, before Reagan, that we as citizens could trust and rely on the information produced in govt reports. that is why we as citizens, created the EPA, The FDA etc.. to be the watch dogs of the common good after years of abuse by the industrial titans. It was Bush who really desimated the integrity of the federal govt and its agencies. We know that WH staff altered or didacted reports to assure they matched their political objectives. The Bush/Cheney’s had trouble with truth across the board. They corrupted the office of Mineral Management, politicized the DOJ with unqualified appointees and incompetent hires. We know they Lied us into two wars, they instigated fear and issued bogus “terror alerts”. They set the federal govt up to FAIL at every turn. FEMA is another stark example of wholesale incompetence. the latest mismanagement is the USPS. It was set up as a private/public partnership. but the Republicans so hamstringed its operation in favor of private enterprise, that the most outstanding federal govt agency with a proud history of service is in financial trouble. The Repugs never wanted to make govt more efficient by running it like a business, it was always, always manipulated to fail the common good.
Carol
Sep. 17, 2011, 7:48 p.m.
Government studies are meant for establishing levels of concern for the future. But, to think that there is a need for such studies before people are protected in an emergency situaiton is stupid and lethal or sublethal. Claims that studies are needed to show causaiton are smoke screens that industry hides behind and will continue to hide behild, I’ll bet for decades. Affected people need to remove themselves. Sounds harsh, but there is no one else that wll protect them. Remember, it took more than 60 years to let the public know that smoking inded causes cancer. Before that time, all the lies were free to have a robust life. There are many other chemical crimes out there, operating with impunity. Those who are affected must remove themselves from these exposures or suffer. Remember that frog, the one in the pot on the stove, who stayed in the water as it gathered heart, slowing cooked the frog. Jump out. Don’t stay.
Erika
Sep. 17, 2011, 10:05 p.m.
There’s a new fun problem we like to call Wind Turbine Syndrome. It’s not related to natural gas industry. But normal citizens living near wind turbines towering 400 feet above the landscape suddenly when they are turned on have a variety of symptoms ranging from can’t sleep at night, irritability, nausea, tinnitus, lack of apetite, cognitive deficits, etc. Symptoms which get worse the longer you live near a wind turbine. Not everyone gets these symptoms. But for people who do doctors can’t find anything wrong, sometimes elevated blood pressure, the wind power proponents scream NIMBY and destroy credibility of citizens who complain. It’s a real problem and it’s getting worse. The federal and state government have a quota for these monstrous electricity generators and innocent people who suffer from this malady, who built their dream home, are going to have to abandon their property and move away if they want any quality of life. We are working to keep them from towns they have not yet got a foothold in. It’s a scary battle. Wind proponents are well funded and the green movement gives them carte blanche to put the towers up anywhere.
Michael Babb
Sep. 18, 2011, 11:04 a.m.
Susan is my wife. Yes, she has to wear a respirator not a gas mask. Unfortunately, she must carry it every where she goes because she never knows what will activate her symptoms. Her life has changed from a vibrant, active woman to one whose quality of life has been diminished beyond description. Now, I have the constitution of a Rhino and am rarely sick but even I get burning eyes, skin, and lungs when I am in the vicinity of hydro-fracking activity. The point is, even though I can navigate through the environment with little problem, the restrictions on where Susan can live or travel become my restrictions too. Am I complaining? Not on your life. She is my wife and her burdens are my burdens but to know that this didn’t have to happen creates frustration beyond belief.
As far as frac fluid goes, it is as bad and generally worse than described. Dr. Theo Colborn of Paiona, CO has dedicated her career to this issue. If you want to know just how toxic frac fluid is, contact her or read some of her studies. If you aren’t shocked at what big oil and gas are pumping into the earth, then you probably are a reptile working for Exxon. After all, Exxon is the company that is trying to change the name of Tar Sands into Oil Sands to create another smoke and mirrors act. Problem is, for those on the far right, nothing seems to convince them that they are patsies for oil and gas and dismiss good science if it dosen’t fit with their convoluted idea of reality.
We have to save ourselves, not the President, Congress, nor the regulatory agencies are going to do it for us. I sure wish the “Monkeywrench Gang” were active. If you are too young to remember this book, it is a must read.
Stuart Davies
Sep. 18, 2011, 11:21 a.m.
It does appear to me, after reading up on it a bit, that it is a good idea to have a setback of about 1.5 miles between windmills and residences, offices, hospitals, and schools. Apparently a fairly small minority of people who spend time closer than this to windmills can experience problems with sleeping, concentrating, headaches, irritability, and other non fatal effects.
If your point is that fracking is ok because even windmills can cause problems, that is pretty silly. For one thing, the problems from windmills are comparatively minor, and they are confined to a predictable localized area and can be addressed with adequate setbacks.
There simply is no basis for comparison between the the above mentioned symptoms that a few people apparently experience from remaining in proximity to windmills and the very serious health effects caused by extremely toxic chemicals contaminating the air and water from fracking wells. These health effects include cancers and other permanently debilitating and often fatal diseases, and could reach millions of people at great distances from the actual fracking wells due to the contamination of drinking water.
John
Sep. 19, 2011, 10:18 a.m.
Looking at this clinically, this doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult investigation to conduct. We have sick people who can be tested for poisoning and contamination. We have the air and water they take in. We have the “open air pits” with the waste. And if the companies won’t disclose what they use, it shouldn’t be too hard to find their supply chain.
The article mentioned someone with benzene poisoning. Was their property tested for benzene? If not, why not? It’s obvious that the company is going to protect itself first (“it’s better to be feared than loved”) and the EPA isn’t good for anything beyond making impotent rules. The affected citizens are going to need to make sure their case is airtight, otherwise you get exactly the treatment you see of, “well, maybe the well just went bad or they’ve just been sprinkling benzene on their food, we don’t know.”
Stuart, I get the impression that all URLs are held for moderation to make sure it’s not spam. But I also get a message when it happens to me, whereas you seemed unaware it was happening.
Michael, keep in mind that “monkeywrench” activities are bringing things to the corporation’s field of expertise. They can hire better security and lawyers than any movement ever can, and care much less than you do that someone got shot to death. But where outright sabotage might not work, sabotaging the human factors hits hard enough to be bringing down entire countries. Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy” is a good outline of what works.
Erika, the same is true of CFLs and LED lightbulbs, to be fair—the spectra in commercial bulbs damage eyesight and sleep cycles, but the government is trying to ban everything else from the market. It’s unpleasant, and studies need to be undertaken to resolve the problem (it’s probably just a matter of shielding the turbine and/or sinking the windmill’s foundation further down to dampen vibration), but selling a nice house isn’t exactly a catastrophe.
Mary Sweeney
Sep. 19, 2011, 11:52 a.m.
When they frack, they mix a variety of different chemicals together and the chemicals are also mixed with water from a local supply. Not all water is the same—some places may have hard water, the PH may vary, etc. It’s not clear to me that anyone knows how fracking chemicals may interact with one another and/or the local water. Then that fluid goes into the ground, where it may interact with whatever substances it encounters there. With all of this intermixing, does anyone really know what substances are being created by chemical reactions along the way? And if we don’t know for sure what substances we may be dealing with, how can we test the water for those substances?
Susan Wallace-Babb
Sep. 19, 2011, 1 p.m.
To Elizabeth: Yes, it is just as dangerous for animals. When I lived in Parachute, CO, the level of toxins in the air caused my horse’s hooves to come apart, my barn cat to urinate blood, my chickens to die for no apparent reason, and I was unable to raise a garden on previously fertile ground.
My current location has only become a problem for me in the last 14 months. You are totally correct to wonder about my dogs. They spend most of their time inside. Unlike me, they haven’t ever received such an extreme exposure. It was the extreme exposure that changed my physiological tolerance for most chemicals. I was put on the fast track of learning the truth about natural gas development and fracking. Unitl I was “knocked down” I believed the industry’s lies that everything was safe and regulated. If I had even had an inkling about this industry, I would have never been anywhere near a well.
Final word, my barn cat moved with me. He, too, quit having symptoms and enjoyed his new barn.
Bruce
Sep. 20, 2011, 7:40 a.m.
Thanks Stuart Davies,
I apprciated your links.
Bruce
Sep. 20, 2011, 7:44 a.m.
Erika,
In Australia, Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) is inversely related to how much the energy companies pay you to put up a wind turbine. People who are paid to have them on their land report no problems. Nearby neighbours often complain of WTS though.
Bruce
Sep. 20, 2011, 7:47 a.m.
Bob Braunstein,
“I can not beleive our Government (either Dem’s or Republicans) would permit these health hazzards.”
Bob, I’m sorry to say that although we like to believe we voted for our Government, all too often they were bought by the people & companies who are responsible for these hazards.
james
Sep. 25, 2011, 8:59 a.m.
regulation, smegulation… corporations can be trusted to do what’s right for people and the environment - “they won’t make a product that’s dangerous, cause it won’t sell and they won’t make money!”
(oh yeh, the same republicans say pigs fly…)
Steve Hunter
Sep. 26, 2011, 10:17 a.m.
THe EPA has become the screen which corporations hide behind.
h4x354x0r
Sep. 29, 2011, 10:51 p.m.
Just reading the story makes me sick. “We don’t know…” “We can’t prove…” “Correlation is not causation…” “It’s only a draft study (and we killed off the final report) so it has no validity…” Yeah. Freaking. Riiiiiiiight. If it looks like a smokescreen, it probably is.
It really makes me want to shove these people’s heads down a fracking wellhead for a few minutes. It’s amazing we, as a species, slowly poison ourselves and one another for money and energy. But, who is going to choose immediate deprivation, instead?
The only real way to stop fracking is to stop energy demand. If we can’t do that, we need to start building desalination plants and water piplines to fracking areas. Ironic that we’ll be burning the fracking products to get the energy to desalinate the water. What to do about the air and ground contamination is even tougher. Bottled air? Hermetically sealed houses and clothes and respirators?
Fracking is bad news for the environment. We’re pooping in our own nest, big time. I hope we can find the will to stop it, soon.
Kim Hann
Sep. 30, 2011, 12:14 a.m.
The real problem is the power and money behind the industry, which has corrupted democratic processes wherever it goes around the world. Policies and laws that were put in place to protect public health and the environment are overridden. It does not seem to matter how many facts, case studies or petitions are presented to the industry or the government. Watch the movie Amazing Grace and you will see the parallels to what is happening today. This movie is about the long campaign to abolish the Slave Trade. The politicians and power brokers used the same arguments then as the oil and gas industry and government use today.
Jonny Hancock
Sep. 30, 2011, 10:37 a.m.
hypochondria |ˌhīpəˈkändrēə|
noun
abnormal anxiety about one’s health, esp. with an unwarranted fear that one has a serious disease.
ibsteve2u
Sep. 30, 2011, 2:32 p.m.
What do you know…Big Energy is passing out medical degrees now.
Commenting on this story is closed.