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Author: Hunter Marion

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Cancer Alley Pre-Teens Demand to Not Be Made into Another Sacrifice Zone

Photo credit: Josie Ygnatowiz

By Sharon Franklin.

In a recent op-ed, by Kamea Sibley Ozane and Roishetta Sibley Ozane in Teen Vogue, a Louisiana mother and daughter are followed on how they got involved in climate activism. Kamea is a 10-year-old who lives in Sulphur, Louisiana near the Gulf Coast with her mom and brothers and sisters. She recently learned that pollution from oil and gas was making her and her environment sick, as well as contributing to climate change. She talks about how one week before her 10th birthday party everything changed. Her skin started to burn, itch, and break out. She went to the doctor, and was told she had a skin disease, and could not have her birthday party. She was told her skin disease would heal, but it didn’t. She returned to the doctor and more tests were done and it was finally decided that her skin condition was caused by her environment and the polluted air was the reason her skin was peeling off. Then Kamea started to ask questions. “What is happening to me? What’s causing it? How do we stop it?”

Roishetta, Kamea’s Mom said, “It broke my heart to have to explain to my daughter and the rest of my children that the petrochemical facilities around us was poisoning our air.” She cites a recent report by Environmental Integrity, which concluded that oil refineries in Lake Charles “release about 675 thousand pounds of nitrogen pollution a year in the Calcasieu River, causing serious environmental harms.”

Kamea listened to her mom when she informed her that if these oil and gas companies continue to operate, not only will more children continue to get sick, but the effects of climate change will get worse. Even though her Mom told her not to worry she immediately decided to fight for her town. She started to organize by talking to her friends in school and making them more aware of the issues surrounding pollution and its connection to climate change. After speaking with her friends and family about the dangers of pollution and how it was affecting climate change, she realized it was a good first step. But she wanted to do more.

In April 2023, she helped her mom organize The Vessel Project of Louisiana in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Her mother told her that the gas industry is planning to build four huge gas export terminals in Southwestern Louisiana, which will be within five miles of each other, and ship gas to other countries. Kamea’s mom also told her that Lake Charles wasn’t the only community being sacrificed, that there were more than 20 gas export projects being proposed to be built across the Gulf.   

What are these Cancer Alley teens asking for? Kamea wants President Biden to stop approving these oil and gas projects. She asks “President Biden, please don’t let the Gulf Coast become a sacrifice zone.  We don’t want these facilities in our backyards because they are poisoning our water and our air.  It makes it harder for kids like me to spend time outside and enjoy our planet. We only have one Earth, and it is time we start acting like it.”

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Toxic Tuesdays

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PCBEs)

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

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Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE)

Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE) are chemicals that are flame retardants – meaning they are added to different materials to make them less susceptible to fires. PBDEs are found in various everyday materials, such as furniture padding, computers, rugs, and electrical wires. They are a synthetic (not naturally found in the environment) subset of the organobromine compounds, chemicals where a carbon molecule is bonded to a bromine molecule. There are 209 different forms of PBDEs, which vary based on what the carbon-bromine structure looks like.

PBDEs were discovered in the 1970s, and since then, several of them have been phased out of production (PentaBDE and OctaBDE), but other versions (such as DecaBDE) are still being manufactured. While some states, such as California and Washington, have banned specific forms of PBDEs from production, there is no national restriction on the production of this chemical as of 2023. It’s also important to note that even for PBDEs that have been banned or phased out of production, the waste from production and manufacturing remains in the environment and causes harm.

The lack of national attention to this class of chemicals is concerning because of the mounting evidence that PBDEs have negative impacts on human health. For example, these chemicals are thought to be endocrine-disrupting. The endocrine system, which oversees the regulation of hormones, is vital to human health. When this system is damaged, it can cause various adverse health effects, such as cancer, reproductive damage, and neurological damage. A case-control study found that exposure to PBDEs was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among post-menopausal women. Another study found that the BDE-28 compound was associated with an increased risk of papillary thyroid cancer. As for reproductive health, a study on infants reported that pregnancies that had PBDE chemicals in the umbilical cords, those infants were more likely to have lower birth weights. And a chemical that causes fetal abnormalities is called a teratogen, although PBDE does not carry this classification by the Environmental Protection Agency. Evidence of neurological damage has also been in animal studies, where PBDE was found to cause neurotoxic effects on memory, attention, and leaning ability.

Exposure to PBDEs during pregnancy is only one route of exposure to this chemical. Because PBDEs decompose slowly in the environment, they bioaccumulate and build up in the food chain. Fish and other marine life are especially prone to bioaccumulation. Thus, PBDE contamination could be of concern for people who consume a lot of seafood or rely on it as their primary protein source. Another way that people can be exposed to the chemicals is through water. PBDE waste can seep through the ground and contaminate the groundwater sources. Another exposure route, which accounts for an estimated 80% to 90% of exposure for the population, is inhaling contaminated dust particles. For example, PBDE can be found in the dust that accumulates in homes. One study found that individuals who had higher levels of PBDE in the dust at their houses had higher levels of the chemical in their blood serum levels.

PBDEs are considered persistent organic pollutants (POP), and many communities are fighting against this contamination in their backyards. For example, the Alaska Community Action on Toxins (ACAT) has been advocating for years to ban the use of PBDEs in the state. Another group that has been advocating for the ban on PBDEs are first responders, specifically fire-fighter organizations. When blood samples were taken from firefighters, they had brominated dioxins and furans in their bloodstreams. Fire fighters are more exposed to these chemicals because when a house fire occurs, all of the products that have PBDEs in them, such as furniture upholstery, burn up and release these toxic chemicals into the air that the first responders breathe in.

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Betraying the Public’s Trust – EPA’s Terrible Response to East Palestine, OH

Betraying the Public's Trust
Photo credit: Michael Swensen/Getty Images

By Stephen Lester.

Since immediately following the train derailment and intentional burn of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, OH, the USEPA has betrayed the public’s trust in government. The agency has put out a steady stream of statements telling people that everything is alright. They saw no reason to test for vinyl chloride, for example, even after the railroad company, Norfolk Southern, dumped 5 tankers cars into a ditch alongside the railroad tracks and then intentionally set it on fire. EPA did this with other chemicals as well.  

They continued to tell people that everything was fine even though they saw no reason to test for dioxin even though there was no question that dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals every tested, would be generated when the vinyl chloride was burned.

The Region 5 Administrator got into the act when she said that EPA couldn’t test for dioxin because they don’t know what the background is. Really? And when EPA reluctantly agreed to test for dioxin, they immediately said that they expected to find dioxins at levels consistent with background.

Soon after the testing began, EPA repeatedly and aggressively downplayed the presence of dioxins and other toxic chemicals in East Palestine while providing little if any data to back up their claims. The agency seemed much more concerned with controlling a predefined narrative than they were with honestly responding to the concerns and questions raised by the public.

This is confusing because the agency is very familiar with dioxins. They understand the serious health risks that exposure to dioxins poses. For more than 25 years, the agency studied the health risks of dioxins. Exposure to dioxins can cause cancer, reproductive damage, developmental problems, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, infertility in adults, impairment of the immune system, skin lesions and more. Yet the agency has been desperate to convince the public that there is no cause for alarm.

My guess is that they are pushing so hard because they don’t have answers to the many questions people are asking about dioxins. While it’s not easy to address these questions, it’s irresponsible for the agency to pretend that dioxins are irrelevant.

The EPA‘s mission is to protect human health and the environment. Clearly the situation in East Palestine is the place where EPA should follow its mission and do right by the people who live in this community. EPA must conduct testing for dioxins and other chemicals that is intended to tell people specifically what they have been exposed to and then analyze the results in a way that helps people understand the risks they face.

The people who live in East Palestine have a right to this information so they can make informed decisions about their future. If EPA continues to betray the public’s trust, then the agency will be responsible for people living for years without clear answers about what happened in East Palestine, OH.

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Climate Change Worsens Toxic Exposures

Flooded neighborhood
Photo credit: AP/ Jason Dearen

By Leila Waid.

Climate change is one of the leading environmental challenges facing our world today. This will wreak havoc on all aspects of society and in some instances it already has from increasing droughts and wildfires to stronger storms and hurricanes. But one consequence of climate change that gets overlooked is its effects on toxic waste sites.   

Toxic waste sites are those where the waste disposed is dangerous to human health. Waste is defined as being hazardous when it “may leach hazardous concentrations of toxic substances into the environment when disposed.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies such hazardous locations as a Superfund site. Currently, there are 1,336 active Superfund sites – meaning there is still toxic waste present at the site. There are also 38 proposed locations that could become a Superfund site.

These Superfund sites can be found in almost every state, excluding only North Dakota. The Northeast region of the country has the highest concentration of waste sites – with New Jersey coming in at number 1 with a total of 115 sites. On the West Coast, California has the most at 96 sites.

How can climate change impact all these different waste sites? One example is that flooding and heavy rain can free debris from coal operations that would then contaminate the groundwater in surrounding areas. That contamination can then further spread through storm surges or rising sea levels. After that has happened it becomes more difficult to track and clean the toxins.

Wildfires are another concern for toxic waste sites. For example, California has a Superfund site with extremely high levels of asbestos. A “worst-case” scenario for this site includes a scenario where the wildfire smoke carries off the asbestos to hundreds of miles away –  impacting thousands of people in the vicinity who might inhale the toxin-contaminated smoke. 

What can you do to act on this issue today? Contact your representative and let them know you support bill H.R. 1444, titled Preparing Superfund for Climate Change Act of 2023. The bill would require that clean-up efforts consider the impacts of climate change when deciding the proper clean-up techniques.

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What Do Paulsboro, NJ & East Palestine, OH Have in Common?

Photo credit: Paulsboro Fire & Rescue

By Sharon Franklin.

On November 30, 2012, the community of Paulsboro, New Jersey thought the vinyl chloride clouds were fog after a train derailment caused a rupture in a tank carrying chemicals. Zoë Read, reporter for WHYY, recently posted an article recounting this incident. Trisha Dello Iacono, a resident she interviewed, recalled that a train carrying a colorless flammable gas called vinyl chloride derailed less than four miles from her home, in Paulsboro, N.J. After researching the carcinogen, she placed towels around her windows and doors. But it wasn’t long before she felt a sugary burn in her mouth. She said “it [tasted] sweet, but it [tasted] like a chemical sweetness that you know something is not right. And then I started feeling like a tight band was around my head.” The Paulsboro accident led to the evacuation of hundreds of residents, and dozens of people sought medical attention afterwards. Conrail, the company responsible for the train, offered cash settlements after hundreds of residents filed lawsuits against the company. Fast forward to 2023 from Paulsboro, New Jersey to East Palestine, Ohio and this sounds very familiar.

Paulsboro Residents Are Still Feeling Health Impacts

Now, more than 10 years later, residents of Paulsboro still worry about long-term health impacts, and are still questioning whether enough has been done to prevent more accidents from occurring, especially after the Norfolk Southern freight train carrying the same product derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Dello Iacono was not evacuated. Despite not living in the evacuation zone, Dello Iacono said she and her son dealt with symptoms like headache, sore throat, and nausea. These symptoms lasted a few weeks. Her son Liam’s symptoms (nosebleeds) didn’t show up until six months after the train derailment. Later, when he started kindergarten his teacher noticed that he had short-term memory loss. In 2020, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. She still worries about the potential for serious health problems to arise in the future. She says, “The fear doesn’t go away.”

Very similar to the events surrounding East Palestine, shortly after the Paulsboro derailment, the New Jersey health department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Rutgers University conducted initial health evaluations for residents and first responders. The health department determined the chemical leak caused reversible, short-term but harmful health effects (eye and nasal irritation or headache). However, no state or federal agency had evaluated the long-term health impacts of those exposed, despite recommendations to do so. In Paulsboro, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) warned Conrail 23 times prior to the accident but the company failed to address the dangers. Mistakes were made by state officials, too, and after the accident, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection inaccurately told residents the chemicals had dissipated. Additionally, the volunteer firefighters weren’t adequately trained to respond to such hazards. They didn’t wear the appropriate protective gear, the state’s emergency response plan was insufficient, and the Paulsboro residents were not evacuated soon enough, according to the NTSB report.

What Do Communities Want?  

Dello Iacono said she wants Congress to pass legislation that forces rail companies to ensure their rails are safe.  In 2015, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez introduced legislation to impose stronger penalties on railroads that violated safety standards. However, the bill went nowhere.

Recently, Dello Iacono, traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend a hearing about rail safety. She said that she feels for the mothers of East Palestine, because “Knowing what I know now a decade later, we’re still dealing with health issues from our exposures, and to just think that’s what their future entails. It’s just really hard and my heart breaks for them.”

Hope for the Future

After East Palestine, legislation bills were introduced that would broaden the definition of a “high-hazard flammable train.” The bill would provide for stricter federal safety regulations and direct the Federal Railroad Administration to study wheel-related failures and derailments, enact new safety measures, and require large freight railroad companies to join a confidential “close call” reporting system. 

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Toxic Tuesdays

Isobutylene

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

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Isobutylene

Isobutylene is a colorless gas that comes from natural gas. Its highly reactive nature makes it useful in the synthesis of many products including gasoline, rubber, plastics, resins, and other chemicals. Little toxicity information is known about isobutylene, and no occupational exposure limits are established, but exposure can cause irritation, headache, dizziness, and fatigue. The most dangerous feature of isobutylene is that it has a flash point of -80°C, meaning that above this temperature, it can ignite. As isobutylene is often in the presence of other flammable chemicals, isobutylene ignition can cause large explosions.

On February 3rd, 2023 a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Twenty of the derailed cars contained hazardous chemicals, including isobutylene. Some cars released these chemicals into the surrounding air, soil, and water. On February 6th, Norfolk Southern made the decision to conduct a controlled burn of some of the remaining chemicals. Nearby residents were evacuated because of the health hazard of inhaling the smoke fumes. In addition to the fumes, release of chemicals into the surrounding environment could cause serious health problems. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources found that over seven miles of stream were affected by the chemical spill and thousands of fish died, raising concerns about dangers to residents in a large radius surrounding the spill. EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to identify and clean up contaminated soil and water. However, secrecy surrounding the scale of the accident and a reluctance to test thoroughly for all chemicals of concern has frustrated residents. EPA must prioritize the health of East Palestine residents and work transparently with them to identify and remediate the effects of this train derailment, chemical spill, and fire.

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East Palestine, OH – Repeating the Mistakes of Love Canal

Photo credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / Getty Images

By Stephen Lester.

Shortly after the horrific Norfolk Southern train derailment occurred in East Palestine, OH, I was invited to attend a town hall meeting organized by River Valley Organizing. The purpose of the meeting was to give people the opportunity to ask questions and hopefully, get some answers.

This was about 3 weeks after the rail company made the decision to spill the contents and then burn 5 tanker cars holding vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals into a ditch alongside the railroad tracks at the site of the 38-car derailment. This intentional burn unleashed a gigantic black cloud full of particulates that enveloped the surrounding neighborhoods and farms in both Ohio and Pennsylvania (the accident was just a few miles from the state border).

It is well documented that burning chlorinated chemicals like vinyl chloride will generate dioxins. Dioxin is the name given to a group of persistent, very toxic chemicals that share similar chemical structures. The most toxic form of dioxin is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or TCDD. TCDD is more commonly recognized as the toxic contaminant found in “Agent Orange”  and at Love Canal, New York and Times Beach, Missouri. Dioxin is not deliberately manufactured. Rather, it is the unintended by-product of industrial processes that use or burn chlorine. It is also produced when chemicals like vinyl chloride are burned, such as what occurred in East Palestine.

At the town hall meeting, people talked about what it was like when the black cloud reached their property. One person who lived 15 miles away described burned ash material from the fire that settled on her property. Another who lived 3 miles away described how the black cloud completely smothered his property. People repeatedly asked: Was it safe for my kids to play in the yard? Is it safe to grow a garden? What is going to happen to my farm animals?

As I sat there listening, I was struck by how similar the questions were to what I had encountered when working at the Love Canal landfill in Niagara Falls, NY more than 40 years ago. People were raising important questions that deserve to be answered. But there were no clear answers. Just as it was at Love Canal.

It was also eerie how similar the response by the government authorities has been. Just like at Love Canal, the people of East Palestine are being told there’s no cause for alarm, that all the testing shows that no chemicals have been found at levels of “concern.” And just like Love Canal, the people in East Palestine are not buying it because they know things are not right. They are suffering from a range of respiratory and central nervous system symptoms including headaches, nose bleeds, runny noses, tearing eyes, and more.

As occurred at Love Canal, government scientists are not being honest with the people at East Palestine. If they did that, they would tell them what they know and what they don’t know. That would be helpful. But government won’t do that, because if they do, if they acknowledge how little is known about the link between adverse health effects and exposures to mixtures of chemicals, the people of East Palestine would demand action in the face of the huge uncertainties. Actions like paying for people to relocate from the area so that they can stop being exposed to the toxic chemicals – which are still in the air – or getting the health care they need and moving on with their lives.

It’s also unfortunate that so little had changed in the science of what we know about what happens to people who have been exposed to mixtures of chemicals like what occurred in East Palestine. This might have been understandable 40 or so years ago, but not today. It’s inexcusable that we didn’t learn from Love Canal and are repeating the same mistakes because we still know very little about widespread exposures to chemical mixtures.

The people in East Palestine deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and that includes expecting their government to act to protect their health in the face of the many uncertainties that exist in understanding the adverse health effects that result from these exposures. It’s time to do right by the people of East Palestine.    

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Toxic Tuesdays

Epigenetic Toxicity

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

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Epigenetic Toxicity

The way scientists think about how chemicals cause their toxic effects is changing. Recent scientific research tells us that the traditional notion of how chemicals act is being replaced by a better understanding of the actual features of exposures that influence how chemicals express their adverse effects in people. These features include the timing and vulnerability of exposures, exposures to mixtures, effects at low doses and genetic alterations called epigenetics.

It wasn’t too long ago that scientists believed that the DNA in our cells was set for life, that our genes would be passed on from one generation to the next, and that it would take generations to change our genetic makeup. This is no longer the case.

A new research area, called epigenetics, is perhaps the fastest growing field in toxicology and it is changing the way we think about chemical exposures and the risks they pose. Epigenetics is the study of changes in DNA expression (the process of converting the instructions in DNA into a final product, such as blue eyes or brown hair) that are independent of the DNA sequence itself.

Researchers are learning is that the “packaging” of the DNA is just as important as a person’s genetic make-up in determining a person’s observable traits, such as eye color, or their susceptibility to diseases such as adult on-set diabetes or lupus.

We are learning that the environment is a critical factor in the control of these packaging processes. We may be born with our genes, but epigenetic changes can occur because of environmental influences and exposures during development and throughout life. These influences include reactions to the chemicals in the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and they appear to contribute to the development of cancer and other diseases.

Researchers have found that the genome, which is a person’s complete set of DNA, responds to toxic chemicals in the environment that a person is exposed to. It can lead to changes in gene expression, not by mutating the genes, but by sending subtle signals that stops gene activity or turns them on at the wrong times. Researchers believe that the genome has evolved from adapting to stressful survival situations to becoming more vulnerable to adverse environmental exposures, which leads to direct changes in people’s health based on how they respond to toxic chemicals in their environment. Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, put it this way: exposure to gene-altering substances, particularly in the womb and shortly after birth, “can lead to increased susceptibility to disease. The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, systems can be permanently altered.”

This growing field of epigenetic toxicity may explain the long-term effects of chemical substances and the predisposition to disease that some people have due to environmental factors including exposure to chemicals. Epigenetics may also help to explain why certain people develop diseases and others do not, or why the person who smoked for 30 years never developed lung cancer.

There is still much to learn, but an early lesson to take away from this emerging science is that we need to rethink our traditional ideas of how chemicals affect our health. This is especially true since regulators and public health scientists who make decisions about safe levels of exposure to toxic chemicals are not considering epigenetic toxicity in their evaluations and are missing a critically important piece of the toxic chemical exposure puzzle. This may help explain why government is constantly telling people that the testing that has been done shows no cause for concern, while the people who have been exposed have symptoms and illnesses with no explanation for why they are sick.  

For more information on epigenetic toxicity, see these resources:

1. https://www.healthandenvironment.org/environmental-health/social-context/gene-environment-interactions

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691517305240

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CTEH: The Fox in the Chicken Coop

Photo credit: Rebecca Kiger, The Washington Post/Getty Images

By Hunter Marion.

On March 12, 2023, ProPublica published an article in which CHEJ’s Science Director, toxicologist Stephen Lester, was commented as saying that “[Norfolk Southern] is responsible for the costs of cleaning up this accident.” The article went on to inform how the company was going about backing the bill for this cleanup.

Norfolk Southern has recruited the private environmental firm, Center for Toxicological and Environmental Health (CTEH), for the monitoring and removal of residual vinyl chloride and other chemicals. The problem with this choice is that CTEH has been the go-to company for alleged big polluters to utilize and sign-off on their controversial cleanups.

So, what is CTEH? It is an Arkansas-based company that, according to its website, is “committed to safeguarding your workers, your community, and the environment.” However, their record shows that this messaging is directed more towards compromised companies rather than harmed citizens. Starting in 1996, CTEH gradually gained prominence amongst alleged big polluters for performing toxicological evaluations and risk assessments that environmentalists would argue as being pro-industry.

  • In 2006, CTEH seemingly downplayed the health impacts of hydrogen sulfide in a report they wrote for the Chinese construction company, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, about their drywall. This drywall was later discovered to be highly toxic in 2009 and led to two giant class-action lawsuits in the U.S.
  • In 2008, 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash broke through a 57-foot dike maintained by the Tennessee Valley Authority and flooded the town of Kingston, TN. While assessing the largest industrial spill in U.S. history, CTEH allegedly failed to meet quality assurance standards and used inaccurate air monitoring procedures during an audit. Arguably, the results of these actions disguised the true extent of the airborne coal ash that was present.
  • In 2010, CTEH purportedly underwent covert operations to release Corexit (a highly toxic dispersant) upon millions of gallons of crude oil during the Deepwater Horizon ocean spill. This resulted in the appearance of oil removal, until the following winter when it was shown that the oil was pushed further underwater and diverted to nearby watersheds and protected wetlands.
  • In 2016, a Husky Energy pipeline burst and poisoned a river with roughly 250,000 liters of crude oil within the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. CTEH supposedly created a testing zone excluding the waterways most affecting the First Nations community. The results came back inconclusive, which likely justified Husky Energy to continue ignoring the community’s cries of concern.
  • In 2019, the International Terminals Company’s chemical storage facility in Houston, TX caught on fire. The resulting smoke cloud that covered most of the city released 9 million pounds of pollutants in one day, shutdown many municipal school districts with shelter-at-place advisories, and exposed the nearby city of Deer Park to extreme amounts of benzene (citizens later suffered severe symptoms). Afterwards, CTEH apparently performed insufficient air quality tests. Their dubious results were readily approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and EPA.

Numerous toxicologists and environmental experts have decried CTEH’s methods as being suspicious to sinister. Activists and even politicians have warned against using their services (most notably during the Deepwater Horizon fiasco). Now, CTEH has been given the authority to control the narrative about how many toxic chemicals are truly present in East Palestine. As observed by former Exxon chemical engineer, Nicholas Cheremisinoff, CTEH is “essentially the fox guarding the chicken coop.”

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Toxic Tuesdays

Hydrofracking: Radiation Risk

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

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Hydrofracking: Radiation Risks

Hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, is a process for accessing gas and oil deep within the earth. The process involves creating a well and drilling about one mile deep into the ground. Once it has been dug deep enough, cement is poured into the opening around a steel pipe to create a barrier between the fracking process and underground water sources. Then the drilling continues deeper into the earth, this time at an angle until it becomes horizontal. The length of that horizontal drilling can last up to three miles in length. Next, more cement is poured around the hole to create a barrier with the surrounding environment. Then a perforating gun is sent down the well into the horizontal section. There, it punctures the bedrock, creating multiple cracks that are 30 inches deep.

These cracks, or fissures, are created so that water, sand, and chemicals can be sent down into those newly made cracks. The water mixture causes further fracturing, like giant tree branches, in the bedrock that goes deep into the ground and releases oil and gas. The resource-intensive process can use up to 9.7 million gallons of water per one well. In addition, the wastewater that comes back from this process is radioactive and full of toxic chemicals that are hazardous to human health.

All that water then becomes unusable because of the naturally occurring radioactivity brought up from the ground with the waste. The health effects of the radioactive wastewater on humans are vast. The radioactivity is caused by the “naturally-occurring radionuclides” that are made up of uranium, thorium, and radium. These elements are hazardous to human health and can cause adverse health effects and even death with exposure to high levels, or concentrations, of the chemicals in the fracking water. Other than the radioactive chemicals found in fracking water, the industry also mixes over 1000 other chemicals into the water. These can include, but are not limited to, lead, PFAS (forever chemicals), ammonia, hormone disrupting chemicals, diesel, benzene and diesel. Exposure to these chemicals in the fracking wastewater can cause cancers, such as leukemia, hematologic (blood), urinary, and thyroid cancers. Exposure can also cause developmental health issues in children and neuromotor skill impairment. Heart disease is another area of concern, with communities close to hydrofracking sites having significantly higher heart attack rates.

Currently, most of the wastewater is stored in underground wells, but this storage solution can seep into the water supply in a variety of ways, as discussed in a peer-reviewed article published by Environmental Health Perspectives. Radioactive fracking wastewater can end up in so many different areas, from drinking water to consumer items. The reason why this is allowed has to do with the Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 and the creation of the Halliburton Loophole. The loophole prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating the fracking industry or its wastewater. That means radioactive wastewater can end up in drinking water, but the agency cannot confront the company responsible.

Despite claims from fracking companies that the fracking-contaminated water is appropriately handled, radioactive wastewater finds its way back into the environment. The fracking wastewater can even be found in store-bought items. For example, the product AquaSalina is a de-icer that is sold in stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s and contains the harmful chemicals. This product is available for public purchase and was even used by the state of Ohio. In 2019 alone, the Ohio Department of Transportation used a million gallons of the product. Outcry and protests from the impacted communities and environmental groups lasted for years until the state of Ohio agreed to ban the use of the product on their roads.

How can you take action on this issue? Contact your Congressional representatives today to let them know you support the reintroduction of H.R.2133, the FRESHER Act of 2021. The proposed bill would give the EPA the power to control wastewater discharge from oil and gas operations – meaning fracking wastewater would have regulation at the federal level.

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