NEW REPORT: The ‘Shocking’ Cost of Letting Companies Pollute for Free; This year alone, Fossil Fuels subsidized to tune of $5.3 Trillion

REPORT: The ‘Shocking’ Cost of Letting Companies Pollute for Free A new report offers a big-picture look at energy subsidies by Eric Roston, May 19, 2015, Bloomberg Business

But there’s another way to consider energy subsidies that takes a bigger picture and conceives of all manner of help—financial or otherwise—as a subsidy. In that context, letting companies pollute for free, when that pollution carries a real social cost, can be thought of as a subsidy.

That’s how researchers at the International Monetary Fund describe energy subsidies in a sobering new paper that puts a comprehensive price tag on global aid to the energy industry. The price tag, which IMF officials describe as “shocking,” is a big one: This year, the report estimates, fossil fuels are being subsidized to the tune of $5.3 trillion, or 6.5 percent of global gross domestic product. [Emphasis added]

THE REPORT How Large are Global Energy Subsidies? by David Coady, Ian Parry, Louis Sears, and Baoping Shang, May 15, 2015, International Monetary Fund

2015 05 15 IMF working paper, trillions in subsidies to oil gas and freedom to pollute

In Heavily Fracked Ohio County, Unsafe Levels of Toxic PollutantsNew study finds fracking releases cancer-causing chemicals into the air many times higher than the EPA considers safe by David Hasemyer, May 20, 2015, InsideClimate News

Emissions generated by fracking operations may be exposing people to some toxic pollutants at levels higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for long-term exposure, according to scientists from Oregon State University and the University of Cincinnati.

The researchers took air samples in Carroll County, the home of 480 permitted wells––the most in any of Ohio’s 88 counties. The team found chemicals released during oil and gas extraction that can raise people’s risk of cancer and respiratory ailments.

… Based on the data collected, researchers calculated the cancer risk posed by airborne contaminants in the Carroll County study areas. For the worst-case scenario––exposure 24 hours a day over 25 years––they found that a person anywhere in the study area would be exposed at a risk level exceeding the threshold the EPA deems acceptable.

The lifetime cancer risk in the study area estimated for maximum residential exposure was 2.9 in 10,000, which is nearly three times the EPA’s acceptable risk level of 1 in 10,000, according to the study. Anderson cautioned that the study numbers are worst-case estimates and can’t predict the risk to any individual. The EPA did not respond to questions about the findings.

The study mirrored other research conducted in heavily fracked areas of the country, including Texas and Pennsylvania, that have focused on volatile organic compounds. These chemicals, including benzene and toluene, also are carbon-based chemicals in the same chain as those studied in Ohio––and they present similar dangers to human health.

… The Ohio study, which appears in the journal Environmental Science & Technology’s online edition, is part of a project co-led by Cincinnati’s Haynes, OSU’s Anderson, her graduate student Blair Paulik, and Laurel Kincl, director of OSU’s Environmental Health Science Center. Anderson and her colleagues collected air samples from sites near gas wells in Carroll County over a three-week period in February 2014. The county sits on top of the Utica Shale formation, where oil and gas are extracted by hydraulic fracturing––fracking––a process in which the shale is shattered by a pressurized mix of water, sand and chemicals.

The county, 70 miles southeast of Cleveland, is booming with natural gas development, with 421 wells at the time of the study. That’s more than one well per square mile, the study noted. …

[Compare to the number of Encana wells at Rosebud, black dots are deeper wells. Scale below map shows one mile:

Encana shallow fracing at Rosebud before mandated Baseline Testing April 2006 shows location water tower that exploded in 2005

‘Growing Concerns and a Lot of Questions’

The study got its start when a group of citizens approached Haynes, a public health expert at the University of Cincinnati, seeking information about health risks from natural gas extraction near their homes.

“They were wondering about the smells and what was happening because of how close all of this was coming to their homes,” Haynes said. “And with more wells coming to the county, they had some growing concerns and a lot of questions.”

None of those people said they were sickened by breathing the air, but they wanted to know more about the potential consequences, Anderson said.

“There was some concern with all of the wells that were starting to go in around their homes,” Anderson said. “People want to know; wanted to get answers about how all the [fracking] activity might be affecting them.”

Anderson and her associates teamed with Haynes to design a study that relied on volunteers to collect air samples in Carroll County, which is home to about 30,000 people. After volunteers were recruited through a community meeting and word-of-mouth, air samplers were placed on the properties of 23 volunteers; they lived or worked at sites ranging from immediate proximity to a gas well to a little more than three miles away.

The aluminum box monitors contained specially treated material that absorbed contaminants. The volunteers were trained in proper handling of the samplers and documenting data.

At the conclusion of the study, the samplers were sealed in airtight bags and returned to Anderson’s lab at OSU for analysis.

The samplers picked up high levels of pollution associated with fracking in the areas studied, according to the report. Levels taken within one-tenth of a mile of a well were highest; they decreased by about 30 percent in samples taken a little more than three miles from a well.

David Brown, toxicologist and co-founder of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit environmental health organization, said the study’s findings should send a message to federal and state regulators that the rules governing exposure to emissions generated by fracking need revising to reflect the growing number of people being exposed. “You are starting to have sufficient information showing that something is going on, what the exposures are and what the associated health problems are,” Brown said. “Somebody, the EPA or state government, is going to have to step up and recognize the problems people face and what needs to be done to protect them.” [Emphasis added]

[Refer also to:

WE ARE EATING DRILLING & FRACKING WASTE

Frac Prosperity Prentice Style: Take $30 Million from Education, Give Hundreds of Millions (how many Billions?) to Oil and Gas Industry (and zip in royalties)

SPECIAL REPORT: Sour gas from oil wells a deadly problem in southeast Saskatchewan, Human and animal deaths linked to hydrogen sulphide emissions

“It looks like fracking has unearthed an unbargained for and serious cancer risk in peoples’ homes.” John Hopkins study links radon levels in Pennsylvania homes to fracking: “These findings worry us”

Companies Illegally Dumping Toxic Fracking Chemicals in Dawson Creek Water Treatment Systems, City to pay $4 Million and more for monitoring to try to stop illegal frac waste dumping

EnCana donates $200 to transition home for women and children in Dawson Creek

Study finds treated fracking waste water still too toxic

$250000 in community safety projects following Encana deadly sour gas leak

Nova Scotians think for themselves, say no to Triangle’s plan to dump millions of litres of 7 year old frac waste into Amherst water treatment system on Tantramar Marshes

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