Pennsylvanians Against Fracking Responds to New Yale Study Linking Fracking to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, Call on Governor Wolf to Implement a Statewide Moratorium on Fracking Press Release by Pennsylvanians Against Fracking, October 26, 2016
Pennsylvania – The following is a statement from Pennsylvanians Against Fracking in response to a new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers establishing a link between cancer-causing chemicals and fracking, including some that are known to cause childhood leukemia and lymphoma. The Yale team calls for additional research, specifically a list of 55 carcinogens that must be studied.
Yale researchers just gave Governor Wolf the perfect justification for a statewide moratorium on fracking, not that he’s looking for one. He has steadfastly ignored the mountain of peer reviewed studies that make a solid case for a halt to further drilling.
The paper comes just one day before a group that has dubbed itself the Moms of Fort Cherry School District in western PA plans to rally to stop a well from being constructed just over a half mile from the schools their children attend. A recent report from Environment America says that more than 8,500 Pennsylvania school children, grades K-12, attend classes within a half mile of drilling activities. The number grows to nearly 58,000 within a mile and to nearly 132,000 within two miles of drilling. The Moms of Fort Cherry School District is not the first group of concerned parents to organize to try to protect their children from fracking. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to be the last.
When Governor Wolf was elected, 425 peer-reviewed studies had been done on fracking. By the time he’d been in office six months, the number had jumped to 550. As of the most recent count in April by Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy, the number had topped 685.
Since then, studies have linked asthma attacks, migraines, fatigue, and chronic nasal and sinus problems to fracking, every one of them conducted in Pennsylvania. Governor Wolf has ignored them all. But the clear next steps laid out in the Yale study demand his attention.
Governor Wolf must impose a statewide moratorium on fracking and direct state health officials to conduct the studies required to fully understand the risks posed by the carcinogenic chemicals listed by the researchers. If he does any less, he must be prepared to quantify for the public exactly how many children he is willing to sacrifice to cancer in order to enable the natural gas industry. [Emphasis added]
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About Pennsylvanians Against Fracking
Pennsylvanians Against Fracking is a statewide coalition of organizations, institutions, and businesses calling for a halt to fracking in the Commonwealth. Steering Committee member organizations include Berks Gas Truth, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Food & Water Watch, Marcellus Outreach Butler, Marcellus Protest, Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water and Air, and Thomas Merton Center. Learn more about Pennsylvanians Against Fracking at paagainstfracking.org.
Fracking Linked to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, New YSPH Study by Denise L Meyer, October 24, 2016, Yale School of Public Health
An expansive new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers confirms that numerous carcinogens involved in the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing have the potential to contaminate air and water in nearby communities.
Fracking is now common in the United States, currently occurring in 30 states, and with millions of people living within one mile of a fracking site. The study suggests that the presence of carcinogens involved in or released by hydraulic fracturing operations has the potential to increase the risk of childhood leukemia. The presence of chemicals alone does not confirm exposure or risk of exposure to carcinogens and future studies are needed to evaluate cancer risk. [How many studies, for how many years? Until the families living frac’d, bathing in toxic water, breathing contaminated air, die of cancer? Who decides?]
“Because children are a particularly vulnerable population, research efforts should first be directed toward investigating whether exposure to hydraulic fracturing is associated with an increased risk,” said lead author Nicole Deziel, Ph.D., assistant professor. Childhood leukemia is a particular concern because of the severity and short latency period of the disease.
The study “Unconventional oil and gas development and risk of childhood leukemia: Assessing the evidence” is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
The team examined an extensive list of more than 1,000 chemicals that may be released into air or water as a result of fracking. “Previous studies have examined the carcinogenicity of more selective lists of chemicals,” said Deziel. “To our knowledge, our analysis represents the most expansive review of carcinogenicity of hydraulic fracturing-related chemicals in the published literature.”
According to the findings, the majority of chemicals (>80 percent) lacked sufficient data on cancer-causing potential, highlighting an important knowledge gap. [Just how industry and its enabling regulators and governments like it, and want to keep it?] Of the 119 compounds with sufficient data, 44 percent of the water pollutants and 60 percent of air pollutants were either confirmed or possible carcinogens. Because some chemicals could be released to both air and water, the study revealed a total of 55 unique compounds with carcinogenic potential. Furthermore, 20 chemicals had evidence of increased risk for leukemia or lymphoma specifically. This analysis creates a priority list of carcinogens to target for future exposure and health studies.
Fracking, also known as unconventional oil and gas development, has increased dramatically in recent years, and the practice is expected to grow in the future. The process involves drilling deep [and shallow and extremely shallow, and as shallow as drinking water aquifers, with companies, like Encana, sometimes intentionally frac’ing directly into them], as far as two miles, into the earth and releasing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals that fracture the rock and release the gas or oil trapped inside. While fracking increases the production of domestic oil and natural gas and decreases prices, it is controversial because of the significant amounts of water that must be used as well as transported to fracking sites, as well as the release of carcinogens.
The team has begun been testing air and water samples for some of these known and suspected carcinogens in a community with particularly intense exposure to fracking to evaluate whether people there are exposed to these compounds, and if so, at what concentrations. [Emphasis added]
[Refer also to:
2015 12 18: “What is the acceptable risk for increased risk for childhood cancer? It’s zero.”
Kimberly Mildenstein, Alberta mother of three boys, attends councilor Paddy Munro’s frac presentation to Mountain View County Council: “Fracking is crimes against humanity.”
The AER aims to ensure “the efficient, safe, orderly and environmentally responsible development of oil, natural gas, coal and oil sands throughout the province for the benefit of all Albertans.”
How do we know that energy developments are indeed “safe” as claimed? The AER has no jurisdiction for human health, and Alberta is famed for a chill against the medical community linking ill health to petrochemicals. To connect the dots, researchers first need publicly accessible data about environmental quality (air, water, earth, food), health, socio-economic factors and so on. This data must be sufficiently fine-grained and in formats easily meshed to see trends and conduct research. In an absence of evidence, how could the AER and Albertans possibly respond?
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Data-driven evidence and decisions are only as good as the numbers, and the AER relies principally on proponent-supplied laboratory results. The only commercial lab conducting specialist analyses for companies closed unexpectedly and abruptly in 2014. Coincidentally, that sudden shuttering took place one week after disclosure to the AER Peace River Proceeding of a “Canadian Detection Limit Policy” to maximize detection limits “to protect our clients’ interests.”
2015 08 12: Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals Not Protected…or Known
2013 11 29: Buyout packages allegedly silence Albertans struck with industry-related cancer
2013 09 29: Use of Chemicals for Fracking May Be Illegal Under REACH, European Commission Says
2013 08 17: Questions linger after Encana dumps toxic chemicals on northern Michigan roads
2013 08 13: EPA to gather data on hydraulic fracturing fluid chemicals
2012 10 24: Official urges EPA review, labeling of frac chemicals IT’S STILL NOT HAPPENING!
2012 09 28: Busted, Part Deux! Fracking Chemicals Found in Wyoming Water Supply
2012 08 27: Doctors fight “gag orders” over fracking chemicals
2012 06 11: Fracking chemicals could poison water: expert
2012 04 09: Potentially harmful fracking chemicals are considered secrets
2012 03 21: About That Dimock Fracking Study: Result Summaries Show Methane and Hazardous Chemicals
2012 03 19: Mystery of fracking chemicals worries Californians
2012 03 16: The 10 Scariest Chemicals Used In Hydraulic Fracking
2012 02 24: AER opens up about chemicals used in fracking process but as of October 2016, still not mandatory for companies to disclose what they inject(ed) into fresh water zones in Alberta, not even what they inject(ed) directly into community drinking water aquifers, and still not mandatory for companies to disclose drilling, cementing, acidizing, servicing, or perforating chemicals, or trade secret frac chemicals
2011 12 30: Fracking fears spur review of oilpatch regulations: Provinces commited to registry to disclose use of chemicals But, it’s still not happening, anywhere, for all chemicals injected, including trade secrets, and no jurisdiction mandates chemical disclosure before the chemicals are raced through communities and injected under privately owned lands and homes.
2011 12 14: Calgary Frac Company Trican Donates $5 million for cancer research
2011 12 14: Frac Company Trican Donates $5 Million to Fight Childhood Cancer
2011 10 29: AER was then and still is now, a big fat liar! ERCB (now AER) says frac chemicals publicly available upon request Ernst and many others have been asking the regulator and companies to disclose chemicals injected, with zero success. Alberta Rules of Court and a Court Order by Justice Wittmann can’t even make Enana disclose the chemicals injected into the drinking water aquifers that supply Ernst’s water well and other citizen wells, and the municipal water wells owned by Wheatland County that supply the businesses in and community of Rosebud.
2011 08 25: Wyoming regulators keep 146 fracking chemicals secret
2011 08 11: Department of Energy panel: Gas drillers should reveal fracking chemicals, manage impacts But, they don’t and governments and regulators do not compel them to, likely because it’s impossible to manage the many horrific frac impacts.
2011 07 08: A company that contaminated groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals banned from any future underground coal gasification (UCG) activities in Queensland How does that fix the groundwater?
2011 06 06: Family doesn’t pursue lawsuit in cancer death blamed on fracking chemicals
2010 07 19: Letter from US Congress to Encana and other oil and gas companies
Since February, the Subcommittee has sent letters to 14 oil and gas well service
companies requesting information on their hydraulic fracturing practices, In their responses, these companies identified well operators, rather than well service companies, as the entities most likely to maintain data on the proximity of specific wells to underground sources of drinking water. Similarly, the well service companies directed us to the well operators, such as your company, for information on the recovery and disposal of fluids and water that flow back to the surface of wells that have been hydraulically fractured,
To help inform the Subcommittee on these issues, please provide us with the following
documents and information:
1. A list of all oil and gas wells for which your company performed or hired another
company to perform hydraulic fracturing in 2008 and 2009 and for which that hydraulic fracturing occurred in, near, or above an underground source of drinking water as defined by the Safe Drinking Water Act. For each well, provide the name of the company or companies that performed hydraulic fracturing at that well.
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3. All tests performed to determine the chemical content off lowback and produced water from wells that were hydraulically fractured in 2008 and 2009. Identify documents related to the wells referenced in request #3 above.
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6. All documents relating to any allegations of harm to human health or the environment caused by hydraulic fracturing at your wells, including from improper on-site storage or spills of fluids recovered from your wells; improper on- or off-site disposal or discharge of recovered fluids; and contamination of drinking water.
Ernst asked Encana for a copy of their submission to US Congress because it’s extremely important and relevant to her contaminated water well and others in her community. Encana refused to provide it, claiming it’s not.
Encana did not file the company’s submission in document exchange with Ernst. Encana’s documents important and relevant to Ernst’s lawsuit were ordered by the court to be filed with Ernst no later than December 19, 2014.
2006: How Encana treats the environment and communities it operates in:
Encana chemical storage in the rain at Rosebud, Alberta
2005: Encana presentation on it’s frac experiments at Suffield National Wildlife Area
Encana did not disclose it’s “new and improved” frac chemical recipes in document exchange with Ernst or any of the toxic chemicals the company injected into about 200 shallow frac’d gas wells at Rosebud until the company reportedly cleaned up its toxic chemical act.