Families in proximity to drilling, fracking and trucking are at risk

From an Article by Kristina Marusic, Reporter for Environmental Health News Network, March 2, 2021

This is part 2 of our 4-part series, “Fractured,” an investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—In the spring of 2019, after years worrying about exposures from a fracking well about a half mile from her grandkids’ school, Jane Worthington decided to move them to another school district.

Her granddaughter Lexy had been sick on and off for years with mysterious symptoms, and Jane believed air pollution from the fracking well was to blame. She was embroiled in a legal battle aimed at stopping another well from being drilled near the school. She felt speaking out had turned the community against them.

“It seemed like practically everyone in the district had leased their mineral rights,” Jane told Environmental Health News (EHN). “We couldn’t get anywhere with the school board, and it seemed like they all had a reason to want us to just shut up and go away.”

The social strain combined with her granddaughter’s illness was enough to make her want to leave. Money was tight for Jane, who is a single caregiver, but she found a deal on a foreclosure in another school district.

The house, white with sage green shutters, sat on a quiet residential street. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but she didn’t mind the work—she just wanted a safe, comfortable home for her grandchildren, Lexy and Damien, who she’d raised since they were babies. At the time, Lexy was 15-years old and Damien was 13.

The kids fell in love with the house. There were still fracking wells nearby — they’re virtually impossible to avoid in Washington County — but there were none within a mile of the school, and they didn’t see any new wells being drilled close to the house.

Soon after moving in, though, they learned that their new home was within a mile and a half of a well pad with six wells already in production (meaning no longer being “fracked” or drilled, but producing natural gas and oil), and less than a half mile away from a large metal casting facility. An EHN analysis of the air and water at their new home, along with urine samples from the family, suggest they’re being exposed to higher-than-average levels of many of the chemicals they were concerned about at their old house. “We don’t seem to be able to get away from this,” Jane said.

In 2019, EHN collected urine samples, along with air and water samples, from five families in southwestern Pennsylvania and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking.

Here is how we conducted our study

Jane and her grandchildren were one of the five families we studied. We collected a total of nine urine samples from the family over a 5-week period and found 18 chemicals known to be commonly emitted from fracking sites in one or more samples, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and lesser-known compounds—all of which are linked to negative health impacts including respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, skin and eye irritation, organ damage, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk.

Some chemical exposures aren’t detectable in urine if the body has already processed them, so we also looked for breakdown products, or biomarkers, for harmful chemicals. Some of these biomarkers show up when people consume certain foods or beverages, so to determine whether the levels we saw in Pennsylvania families were normal, we compared them against those seen in the average American using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

We found that urine samples for Jane and her grandkids contained biomarkers for fracking chemicals at levels higher than the U.S. 95th percentile — the value that 95 percent of Americans fall below, according to that CDC data.

All of the family’s samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for mandelic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene. More than half of the family’s samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for phenylglyoxylic acid, another biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, and for trans, trans-muconic acid, a biomarker for benzene. A third of the family’s samples exceeded the 95th percentile for hippuric acid, a biomarker for toluene.

Exposure to these compounds is linked to eye, skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation; neurological, immune, kidney, cardiovascular, blood, and developmental disorders; hormone disruption; and increased cancer risk.

The family’s urine samples also suggested that they had higher-than-average exposures to biomarkers for toluene and xylenes, which are linked to skin and eye irritation, drowsiness and dizziness, and central nervous system damage.

There’s no way to know for certain whether the family’s exposures came from fracking emissions. We visited Jane’s home, had her complete an extensive survey about other possible sources of exposure, and recorded the family’s activities around the time of our sampling and did not find other obvious explanations, though the metal casting facility near Jane’s new home could also contribute to these exposures.

The exposures confirm Jane’s worst fears—that the children she’s tasked with protecting are exposed to harmful chemicals simply because of where they live. But the impacts run deeper. The family seemingly cannot escape the effects of an industry that wields tremendous power in the state and is allowed to operate within 500 feet of schools and homes housing children and other vulnerable residents. Researchers warn the impacts extend to the more out-of-sight aspects of health—people’s sleep, their social network, and their overall mental well being.

“I just wish there was more awareness that it really is dangerous for every family that lives here,” Jane said. “It isn’t as safe as we tend to want to make ourselves feel. This is proof.”

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See also: When the Kids Started Getting Sick, Eliza Griswold, New Yorker Magazine, March 2, 2021

After pressure from families, Pennsylvania has launched studies into whether fracking can be linked to local illnesses.

Good regulations or a full ban on fracking needed to “halt the harm”

From Ryan Clover, Halt the Harm Network, February 27, 2021

I wanted to make sure you heard about this before Monday, so sending this out on the weekend. Kristina Marusic, a reporter with Environmental Health News is dropping a major story about fracking and children’s health that is two years in the making.

In 2019, Environmental Health Sciences, a nonpartisan news and science organization, tested the air, water and urine of several families living in and around fracking operations in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The results of this groundbreaking study, being released on Monday, March 1, are breathtaking.

At 1:00 PM she’ll be giving a presentation along with EHN director Douglas Fischer to share the report. Click here to RSVP for the webinar.​

Do you or a loved one live near fracking operations? Do you know what’s in the air and water, and what may be migrating into your body – or the body of your children?

​In 2019, Environmental Health Sciences, a nonpartisan news and science organization, tested the air, water and urine of several families living in and around fracking operations in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The results of this groundbreaking study, released on Monday, March 1, are breathtaking.

We’re hosting a special webinar to go along with the report’s release. More details coming soon, but for now you can sign-up here and, mark your calendar for 1:00 PM on Monday, March 1st.

Join EHS director Douglas Fischer, reporter Kristina Marusic for a brief presentation and discussion on how EHS conducted the study, what the organization found, what to do next, and why we need more biomonitoring like this.

Here’s the link again, https://www.crowdcast.io/e/fracking-and-personal​

Thanks, Ryan Clover,
Halt the Harm Network

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​Supporting Your Fight Against The Gas Industry — Join The Discussion:

https://www.thecampaignnetwork.org​

Halt the Harm Network, 5335 Wisconsin Ave NW,
Suite 440, Washington, District of Columbia 20015

This bill has now passed the House and Senate

Letter to Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 12, 2020

As physicians, we prioritize the needs of our patients. While we do our best with modern medicine, climate change is a rising threat to our patients’ health. The juxtaposition of fossil fuels and personal health is readily apparent in our clinics and in hospitals across Virginia.

Jacob, a high school student seen in clinic, has asthma and is a starter on his soccer team. He is finding it harder to keep up with his peers, even when he steps up his inhaler regimen, due to crippling heat in spring and summer.

In Virginia, the warmest decade on record is causing more heat illness, insect-borne infections and stronger allergy seasons. In July 2019, more than 1,000 Virginians were admitted to emergency departments or urgent-care clinics for heat-related illness, almost double the number compared to 2018.

Tick populations are soaring in our state, with a 300% increase in Lyme disease over the past 10 years. Peak pollen counts are rising, with counts in Richmond reported to be 35% higher than in the 1980s.

That is why doctors like us have joined the fight for clean energy solutions to the climate crisis. The Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 would transition Virginia’s electric grid to 100% clean electricity by 2050, cleaning the air and protecting the health of all Virginians. A recent report found that in moving toward a 100% clean energy goal, Virginians would save $3.5 billion dollars in health care costs alone.

The Virginia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Kaiser Permanente and Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action all support this vital legislation as the necessary step to protecting health and safety in the commonwealth. This bill ensures a healthy tomorrow for all Virginians. We urge our lawmakers to make this future a reality by passing this legislation.

>>> Dr. Christine James, Institute for Asthma and Allergy

>>> Dr. Neelima Tummala, George Washington University,
School of Medicine and Health Sciences

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See also: Virginia Clean Economy Act passes, as debate reveals deep partisan and regional divides – Virginia Mercury, February 11, 2020

The product of weeks of negotiations, the 75-page VCEA encompasses at least a dozen goals clean energy advocates have been pushing for several years, including a mandatory renewable portfolio standard, binding energy efficiency targets, beefed-up distributed generation and raised power purchase agreement caps. Its supporters have painted it as a measured path toward zero-carbon emissions by 2050, one backed by not only environment and industry groups but also utilities.

But since the final legislation was unveiled last week, it has been hampered by State Corporation Commission and Office of the Attorney General warnings that it will raise customer bills by at least $23 per month by 2027-30. (This amount is under debate, however.)

James Hansen’s main office is EARTH

Essay by Justin Gillis, Contributing Opinion Writer, New York Times, June 23, 2018
·
The night before the day that would make him famous, James E. Hansen listened to a baseball game on the radio. But his mind kept wandering: What would he say to Congress the next day to convey that humans were endangering the planet?

He had long been trying to raise the alarm without success, and so had other scientists. But then, on June 23, 1988 — 30 years ago Saturday — a Colorado senator named Tim Wirth convened yet another hearing on the topic. Dr. Hansen was one of several scientists on the witness list.

Few people had ever heard of him, nor of the obscure NASA unit that he headed. He and a small group of colleagues studied the Earth’s climate, working in a suite of offices above the Manhattan diner that “Seinfeld” would later make famous.

He had conducted rigorous studies of historical temperatures, concluding that the planet was warming sharply. He had helped to pioneer computer modeling of the climate, and the results predicted further warming if people kept pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

June 23 turned out be a blistering day in Washington, and much of the nation was suffering through a drought and heat wave. Dr. Hansen took his seat in a Capitol Hill hearing room and laid out the scientific facts as best he understood them.

He had thought up a good line the night before, during the Yankees game, but in the moment he forgot to deliver it. When the hearing ended, though, reporters surrounded him, and he remembered.

“It is time to stop waffling so much,” he said, “and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

His near certainty that human emissions were already altering the climate caught the attention of a sweltering nation, catapulting Dr. Hansen to overnight fame. That year, 1988, would go on to be the hottest in a global temperature record stretching back to the 19th century.

With the perspective of three decades, it is fair to ask: How right was his forecast?

The question defies a simple answer. In 1988, Dr. Hansen had to offer a prognostication not just about how the Earth would respond to greenhouse gases, but also about how much of those gases humans would choose to inject into the air.

He did what any cautious forecaster would do: He offered low, medium and high scenarios. The warming over the past 30 years has indeed fallen well within his upper and lower bounds.

One of Dr. Hansen’s scenarios, Scenario B, has turned out to be a reasonably close match for fossil-fuel emissions as they actually occurred. Yet we now know Scenario B predicted too much global warming, by something like 30 percent.

Two reasons for that stand out. One is that Dr. Hansen had assumed a continued increase in certain refrigerant gases that warm the climate. Those gases were ultimately brought under control by a global treaty, the Montreal Protocol — proof that scientific warnings, if taken seriously, can be acted upon at a worldwide scale.

The bigger problem was that the computers he was using in the 1980s could not operate fast enough to give a realistic picture of the upper atmosphere; as a result, his model was most likely overestimating the Earth’s sensitivity to emissions. In the years since, computer modeling of the climate, though hardly perfect, has improved.

So while his temperature forecast was not flawless, in a larger sense, Dr. Hansen’s 1988 warning has turned out to be entirely on target. As emissions have soared, the planet has warmed relentlessly, just as he said it would; 1988 is not even in the top 20 warmest years now. Every year of this century has been hotter.

The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating. The great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarcticaare dumping ever-rising volumes of water into the sea. Coastal flooding is increasing rapidly in the United States. The Arctic Oceanice cap has shrunk drastically.

If his warning in 1988 had been met with a national policy to reduce emissions, other countries might have followed, and the world would be in much better shape.

But within a few years after he raised the alarm, fossil-fuel interests and libertarian ideologues began financing a campaign of lies about climate research. The issue bogged down in Congress, and to this day that body has taken no action remotely commensurate with the threat.

Dr. Hansen retired from NASA in 2013, but at age 77, he feels his work is not done. Today, from an office at Columbia University, he spends his time fighting the government he once served. He is an expert witness for a lawsuit that young people have filed in Oregonagainst the federal government, contending that its failure to tackle climate change is a threat to their constitutional rights of life and liberty.

His granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is one of the plaintiffs in the case, which has gotten much farther than many legal experts thought it would. The case may go to trial later this year.

Prophets of impending calamity are rarely thanked for their efforts, especially when they turn out to be right. But Dr. Hansen did receive a form of thanks recently, sharing half a of a $1.3 million prize for his attempts to warn the public about the risks of climate change.

The congressional failure to respond to his warning might be seen now as a harbinger of the political crisis that has since engulfed the United States. How can Congress tackle global warming if it lacks the capacity to solve far smaller problems?

Lately, Dr. Hansen has been thinking about the connection between the political crisis and the climate crisis. He is a strong proponent of a new system of voting, called ranked choice, that has been adopted in many other countries and a few parts of the United States, with the goal of recreating a political center.

“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”

>>> Mr. Gillis is a former New York Times environmental reporter and a contributing opinion writer. A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2018, on Page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: “He Was Right About The Climate.”

Greater Wheeling Homeless Coalition

WV Cost of Living, Child Poverty, Homeless

Article by Joselyn King, Wheeling Intelligencer, June 20, 2013 

WHEELING – When children don’t have a stable home they don’t achieve, and there’s currently a lack of affordable housing in Wheeling, state lawmakers learned Wednesday. 

The West Virginia Legislature’s Select Committee on Children and Other Issues met at Catholic Charities of Wheeling for a public hearing on poverty’s effect on children. The topic for discussion Wednesday was housing, said committee chairman Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley.

A large percentage of West Virginia’s children younger than age 8 have no stable home in which to live, he said. “This causes toxic stress, and inhibits development,” Unger said. “It creates uncertainty and anxiety, and affects child achievement.”

There are even instances in West Virginia where children are living in cars and abandoned trailers, he said. “The question now is what can we do to address the issue?” Unger asked.

Representatives of local social service agencies present told the panel it is often impossible for lower-income families to afford housing. The local monthly cost for a two-bedroom apartment with utilities can exceed $1,200, said Lisa Badia, executive director for the Greater Wheeling Coalition for the Homeless.

While she praised the presence of economic development in the area, Badia noted those working in the natural gas industry have an advantage over low-income residents in renting housing as their employers often cover the higher cost for rent. “Our folks working tables aren’t able to afford what the housing market is dictating,” she said.

Marlene Midget, executive director for Northern Panhandle Head Start, said affordable housing “has all but disappeared in the area.” “Now people are on the street because they don’t have affordable housing for their families,” she said.

Jodie Gardill, associate director of behavioral health advocacy at Legal Aid of West Virginia, suggested the area needs more public transportation. Not having transportation to a job leads to financial and housing insecurity, she said.

Committee members said they would continue to hold meetings on the issue during future interim legislative sessions.

NOTE: The federal Housing & Urban Development program will assist housing up to $615 per month for a two bedroom facility for a parent with children.  Housing is now more expensive. The influx of gas industry workers in Wetzel, Marshall, Ohio and Brooke counties has resulted in a shortage of available housing, increased housing costs, and an increase in the cost of living more generally.  There are now more West Virginians homeless in need of shelters and those coming in are requiring a longer stay. Needless to say, there is not space enough to care for the current needs.  (Lisa Badia explained these issues on “MetroNews Talkline” on June 27^th). DGN