.... many spoke out but few were listening ...

From an Article by Vivian Thomson, Virginia Mercury, January 9, 2020

On January 7, 2019, I posed the following question about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline compressor station proposed for Union Hill: “Is an African-American community in rural Virginia the right place to put a massive compressor station for a natural gas pipeline? This is the question the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board will consider at its meeting Tuesday.”

On Tuesday, exactly a year later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the air board’s decision to approve a permit for the compressor station, concluding that the board and the State Department of Environmental Quality failed to consider “whether this facility is suitable for this site.” The court also found “arbitrary and capricious and unsupported by substantial evidence” DEQ’s refusal to consider as Best Available Control Technology an electric turbine, which would not emit on-site air pollution.

I argued last January that Gov. Northam should pressure Dominion Energy, the lead partner in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline consortium, to find another site for the station, or that the governor should work with the General Assembly to that end. Several weeks earlier, in November 2018, the governor had abruptly ended the tenure of two air board members who were opposed to the compressor station. In sending this unmistakable message to the board, Governor Northam sided with Dominion Energy, even before all the facts were in.

Here are some of the facts that, as far as I know, the air board never saw. Researchers have not identified a safe threshold for exposure to fine particulate matter, which increases the risk of death at levels below the EPA’s standards. Each additional microgram per cubic meter of airborne fine particulate matter, measured as an annual average, causes an estimated 0.6 to 1 percent increase in mortality. Dominion Energy’s modeling showed that the compressor station’s pollution could add 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter to local annual average levels of fine particulate matter. Buckingham County already shows a lower life expectancy than the statewide average.

Scientists have connected cardiovascular and respiratory disease with exposure to fine particulate matter concentrations similar to those estimated in Dominion’s air-quality modeling. African Americans are among the most vulnerable to the effects of fine particulate matter exposures.

The air board is made up of citizens appointed by the governor who work without pay to promote transparency via public debates and votes and to broaden the base of regulatory decision making. Those board members rely on DEQ’s staff and leaders to provide them with both a wide range of regulatory alternatives and also with insightful, complete analyses.

Clearly, DEQ failed the board on both counts. I wish I could say I was surprised. In 2008, when I was on the air board, two fellow board members suggested that the 1987 board statement on site suitability should be revised, to clarify the board’s powers with respect to site suitability. The board members’ ideas were rebuffed by senior officials in the administration of then-Gov. Tim Kaine, including DEQ managers.

As I set forth in my 2017 book, Climate of Capitulation: An Insider’s Account of State Power in a Coal Nation, Virginia suffers from a persistent tendency by elected politicians and DEQ’s management to yield to the regulated community’s preferences, whether those preferences are explicitly stated or merely anticipated. On two high profile power plant permits that the board considered during my tenure, DEQ staff and managers repeatedly failed to press companies to achieve the lowest emissions possible, within the constraints of the law and available technologies.

In the wake of the outrage about a racist photo discovered on his medical school year book page, Gov. Northam has professed his support for the state’s minorities. So, it’s time for our governor to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. The governor must ensure, either through pressure or legislation, that this compressor station is moved to a remote location well away from people and non-human organisms that might be adversely affected.

The air board must assert its right to have the full picture on best technologies. Since the 4th Circuit has now decided that the board’s legal obligation includes formally assessing the environmental justice implications of its decisions, the board must revise and take public comment on its 33-year-old site suitability policy, before making any other permit decisions.

And finally: It is long past time for new management at DEQ.

The dedicated staff at DEQ deserve to be led by someone who will take them to high ground and help them hold it.

Friends of Nelson County & others are “standing” with Union Hill

Coal-fired power plants generate fine particulate pollution

From an Article by Lisa Friedman, New York Times, May 20, 2019

Photo: The Hunter power plant in Castle Dale, Utah, which burns an estimated 4.5 million tons of coal a year.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.

The E.P.A. had originally forecast that eliminating the Obama-era rule, the Clean Power Plan, and replacing it with a new measure would have resulted in an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year. The new analytical model would significantly reduce that number and would most likely be used by the Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules if it is formally adopted.

The proposed shift is the latest example of the Trump administration downgrading the estimates of environmental harm from pollution in regulations. In this case, the proposed methodology would assume there is little or no health benefit to making the air any cleaner than what the law requires. Many experts said that approach was not scientifically sound and that, in the real world, there are no safe levels of the fine particulate pollution associated with the burning of fossil fuels.

Fine particulate matter — the tiny, deadly particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream — is linked to heart attacks, strokes and respiratory disease.

The five people familiar with the plan, all current or former E.P.A. officials, said the new modeling method would appear in the agency’s analysis of the final version of the replacement regulation, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which is expected to be made public in June.

Asked on Monday whether the new method would be included in the agency’s final analysis of the rule, William L. Wehrum, the E.P.A. air quality chief, said only that the final version would include multiple analytical approaches in an effort to be transparent. He said the agency had made no formal change to its methodology.

“It’s a very important issue, and it’s an issue where there has been a lot of debate over what the right approach is,” Mr. Wehrum said.

The E.P.A., when making major regulatory changes, is normally expected to demonstrate that society will see more benefits than costs from the change. Experts said that, while benefits would appear on paper in this case, the change actually disregards potential dangers to public health.

“Particulate matter is extremely harmful and it leads to a large number of premature deaths,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. He called the expected change a “monumental departure” from the approach both Republican and Democratic E.P.A. leaders have used over the past several decades and predicted that it would lay the groundwork for weakening more environmental regulations.

“It could be an enormously significant impact,” Mr. Revesz said.

The Obama administration had sought to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Power Plan by pushing utilities to switch away from coal and instead use natural gas or renewable energy to generate electricity. The Obama plan would also have what is known as a co-benefit: levels of fine particulate matter would fall.

The Trump administration has moved to repeal the Obama-era planand replace it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would slightly improve the efficiency of coal plants. It would also allow older coal plants to remain in operation longer and result in an increase of particulate matter.

Particulate matter comes in various sizes. The greatest health risk comes from what is known as PM 2.5, the range of fine particles that are less than 2.5 microns in diameter. That is about one-thirtieth the width of a human hair.

The E.P.A. has set the safety threshold for PM 2.5 at a yearly average of 12 micrograms per cubic meter. While individual days vary, with some higher, an annual average at or below that level, known as the particulate matter standard, is considered safe. However, the agency still weighs health hazards that occur in the safe range when it analyzes new regulations.

Industry has long questioned that system. After all, fossil fuel advocates ask, why should the E.P.A. search for health dangers, and, ultimately, impose costs on industry, in situations where air is officially considered safe?

Mr. Wehrum, who worked as a lawyer and lobbyist for chemical manufacturers and fossil fuel businesses before moving to the E.P.A., echoed that position in two interviews. He noted that, in some regulations, the benefits of reduced particulate matter have been estimated to total in the range of $40 billion.

“How in the world can you get $30 or $40 billion of benefit to public health when most of that is attributable to reductions in areas that already meet a health-based standard,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Mr. Wehrum acknowledged that the administration was considering a handful of analyses that would reduce the prediction of 1,400 premature deaths as a result of the measure.

He called the attention given to that initial forecast “unfortunate” and said the agency had included the figure in its analysis to show the varied results that can be achieved based on different assumptions.

Mr. Wehrum said the analyses the agency is conducting “illuminate the issue” of particulate matter and the question of what level is acceptable for the purposes of policymaking. He said new approaches would allow for public debate to move ahead and that any new methods would be subject to peer review if they became the agency’s primary tool for measuring health risks.

“This isn’t just something I’m cooking up here in my fifth-floor office in Washington,” Mr. Wehrum said.

Roger O. McClellan, who has served on E.P.A. advisory boards and as president of the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology, an industry-financed research center, said that the data for health risks below the particulate matter standard was weak and that he did not accept the argument that agencies must calculate risk “down to the first molecule of exposure.”

“These kinds of approaches — that every molecule, every ionization, carries with it an associated calculable health risk — are just misleading,” Mr. McClellan said.
To put the matter in perspective, most scientists say particulate matter standards are like speed limits. On many highways, a limit of 65 miles per hour is considered reasonable to protect public safety. But that doesn’t mean the risk of an accident disappears at 55 m.p.h., or even 25.

Jonathan M. Samet, a pulmonary disease specialist who is dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, said the most recent studies showed negative health effects well below the 12-microgram standard. “It’s not a hard stop where we can say ‘below that, air is safe.’ That would not be supported by the scientific evidence,” Dr. Samet said. “It would be very nice for public health if things worked that way, but they don’t seem to.”

Daniel S. Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit research organization that is funded by the E.P.A. and industry groups, acknowledged there was uncertainty around the effects of fine particulate matter exposure below the standard.
He said it was reasonable of the Trump administration to study the issue, but he questioned moving ahead with a new system before those studies are in. “To move away from the way this has been done without the benefit of this full scientific peer review is unfortunate,” he said.

Remains of IEI Warehouse as PLASTICS burn in Ohio River valley

From an Article by Chris D’Angelo, Huffington Post News, October 26, 2017

WASHINGTON, WV — A fire continued to smolder at a plastics warehouse in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on Thursday evening, nearly six days after it erupted. Local officials have yet to pinpoint what types of chemicals and materials went up in the flames.

The 420,000-square-foot facility, formerly the Ames Tool Plant, is owned by Intercontinental Export Import Inc. and was being used to store various plastics and other items, according to state officials. The building caught fire early Saturday morning, and firefighters have been working to put it out ever since.

The state’s Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday ordered the owner of the facility to “immediately” provide a detailed inventory of all materials that had been stored there, as well as at its other facilities.

The 27-page order details numerous violations at the warehouse in recent years. In 2008, two volunteer firefighters warned in a report about the potential for a fire at the facility, saying they had “extreme concerns,” the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported Thursday.

State officials say air samples have detected pollutants “at levels comparable to or lower than what is typically seen in urban areas.” “We have done multiple, multiple, multiple testings of the air and all. So far, the multiple testings are OK,” Republican Gov. Jim Justice said at a news conference Tuesday.

Local residents, however, are concerned about potential threats to their health.

David Wright told HuffPost that “the smell of burnt plastic comes and goes with the wind.” And like his neighbors, he’s worried about what may have made it into the air. “Now that it’s died down a little bit,” he said of the blaze, “I wonder who is going to pay for all the firefighting efforts.”

Jessica Scritchfield Wooten, a medical field employee who had a baby in Parkersburg while the warehouse was burning, said the stench was “awful.” “The air was so bad we had to open our door to ventilate the smell out of our [hospital] room,” she wrote via Facebook.

On Monday, Justice declared a state of emergency in response to the inferno. And at a news conference the following day, he said he was concerned about potential long-term pollution. “We need all the king’s horses and all the king’s men — the experts from the federal government,” in case they might know something that state officials have missed, he said.

It is unclear what role, if any, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has had in the response. As of Thursday evening, the agency had not put out a public statement on the situation. According to state officials, however, the EPA is involved in ongoing air quality monitoring.

The EPA and Intercontinental Export Import did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment Thursday. See a survey video of this fire here.

Eric Engle, who lives just north of town and is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, said area schools have been closed all week. State workers have been told to stay home. And residents of Parkersburg and the surrounding counties are anxiously awaiting answers, he said.

“The majority of the people I know have left town,” many to stay with family and friends away from the smoke, he said.

On Thursday, the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department warned people to “avoid contact with the smoke and remain indoors if possible with windows and doors closed until the smell is no longer detectable.”

Parkersburg, whose population is about 31,000, is no stranger to industrial pollution. The town was the focus of a lengthy 2015 piece in HuffPost Highline.

Air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, public health .....

From an Article by Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News, October 25, 2017

Multiple pollutants found in the air and water near fracked oil and gas sites are linked to brain problems in children, according to a science review published today.

Researchers focused on five types of pollution commonly found near the sites—heavy metals, particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrobcarbons, BTEX and endocrine disrupting compounds—and scrutinized existing health studies of the compounds’ impacts to kids’ brains.

“Early life exposure to these air and water pollutants has been shown to be associated with learning and neuropsychological deficits, neurodevelopmental disorders, and neurological birth defects, with potentially permanent consequences to brain health,” the authors wrote.

What they didn’t find is as important as what they did find: while more than 1,000 studies have looked at health hazards from unconventional oil and gas drilling, none have focused specifically on the brain health of children near the sites.

“Many of us are looking at what’s happening now and then we’re going to revisit this to see what these exposures are doing to people,” said Madelon Finkel, a professor of clinical healthcare policy and research at Weill Cornell Medical College who was not involved in the study.

“Unfortunately, we are just waiting to see what happens, it’s really sad,” she added.

Lead author of the new study, Ellen Webb of the Center for Environmental Health, said the research on children’s health near oil and gas sites is “slowly emerging” but that “it’s only reasonable to conclude that young children with frequent exposure to these pollutants would be at high risk for neurological diseases.”

Since the mid-2000s, as extraction techniques such as fracking became more widespread and refined, oil and gas drilling has taken off. The FracTracker Alliance—a renewable energy advocate organization that studies and maps oil and gas development — estimates there are about 1.7 million active oil and gas wells in the U.S.

Webb and colleagues said regulators should increase setback distances between oil and gas development and places where children live or play. They recommend at least a mile “between drilling facility lines and the property line of occupied dwellings such as schools, hospitals and other spaces where infants and children might spend a substantial amount of time.”

They also recommend more research on low level, chronic exposure, mandatory testing of industrial chemicals used on site, and increased transparency of the chemicals used in drilling. “We don’t even know all of the chemicals used in the [fracking] mixtures,” Finkel said.

To really protect the health of families “state and federal authorities need to adopt precautionary principles,” Webb said.

Seth Whitehead, a spokesman for Energy in Depth, a research, education and public outreach campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said Webb’s study is just the latest “deliberate media strategy to draw ties between fracking and health issues even when no hard evidence exists.”

“The report merely identifies chemicals associated with oil and gas development, notes that some of these chemicals can be harmful to human health, and states that ‘more research is needed to understand the extent of these concerns,’” Whitehead said in an emailed response.

“This is not unlike saying bleach — which can be found in most folks’ laundry rooms — can make you sick if you drink it and that more research is needed to understand the extent to which people get sick from drinking bleach from their laundry rooms,” he added.

Finkel disagreed: “Of course the study premise is logical. Exposure to some of these toxic chemicals is bound to have an effect.”

Finkel sees little hope in the Trump Administration’s willingness to take health concerns into account when it comes to energy development. Their energy regulation rollbacks have been “shortsighted and go against all the health evidence that we know,” she said.

See the full study published today in the Reviews on Environmental Health journal.

"Heat Dome" Scorching United States

Major Heat Wave Scorching the Entire United States

From an Article of Climate Nexus, EcoWatch.com, July 22, 2016

A combination of high temperatures and humidity is scorching much of the U.S.—and even President Obama is warning everyone to stay safe.

A “heat dome”—a high pressure system in the mid atmosphere that pushes warmer air to the ground—has enveloped the central U.S. and is expected to reach other parts of the country over the weekend. The maximum heat index—a measure of how it actually feels when factoring in relative humidity—in areas such as St. Louis could reach 113 F while air temperatures in Washington, DC could reach 100 F.

While heat waves are a natural phenomenon, climate change plays a role amplifying the effect and making them more serious, Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said on a press call.

>  >  >  >  >  >  >  >  >  >

OMG: 2016 on Track to be World’s Hottest Year on Record

From an Article of Climate Nexus, EcoWatch.com, July 22, 2016

The Earth is warming at a faster rate than expected and this year is on track to be the hottest year on record, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Arctic sea ice has also melted earlier and faster than usual, another indicator of climate change, says the organization. “Another month, another record. And another. And another. Decades-long trends of climate change are reaching new climaxes, fueled by the strong … El Niño,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also confirmed that June was the 14th consecutive month to break temperature records.

The report details these four areas of concern:

Temperatures

The average temperature in the first six months of 2016 was 1.3°C (2.4°F) warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late 19th century, according to NASA.

NOAA said the global land and ocean average temperature for January–June was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th century average, beating the previous record set in 2015 by 0.20°C (0.36°F).

Each month was record warm. Most of the world’s land and ocean surfaces had warmer to much-warmer-than-average conditions.

The El Niño event which developed in 2015 and was one of the most powerful on record contributed to the record temperatures in the first half of 2016. It dissipated in May.

WMO uses datasets from NOAA, NASA GISS, the UK’s Met Office and reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) to calculate global temperature statistics for its annual state of the climate report.

Arctic Sea Ice

The heat has been especially pronounced in the Arctic, resulting in a very early onset of the annual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere was exceptionally low. The ice extent as of 20 July was very close to the lowest ever for this date.

The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40 percent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Arctic sea ice extent in September, the seasonal low point in the annual cycle, has been declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade.

Precipitation

Rainfall in June 2016 varied significantly around the world. It was notably drier than normal across the western and central contiguous USA, Spain, northern Colombia, northeastern Brazil, Chile, southern Argentina, and across parts of central Russia.

Wetter-than-normal precipitation was observed across northern Argentina, northern and central Europe, much of Australia, and across central and southern Asia.

From January to 4 July, China saw 21.2% above average precipitation. South China entered the flood season on 21 March, 16 days earlier than normal and more than 150 counties were record wet, according to the China Meteorological Administration. More than 300 rivers crossed the water level warning mark.

Coral Bleaching

Temperatures in the Coral Sea (including the Great Barrier Reef), and the Tasman Sea were highest on record for extended periods since late summer 2016, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

These warm waters have also contributed to surface temperature warmth over Australia and unprecedented bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, according to Australia’s independent Climate Council.

There has already been widespread bleaching of reefs in many other parts of the world.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Colorado demonstration part of global protest movement

From an Article by Bob Berwyn & Staff, Summit County Voice (Colorado), May 13, 2016

As part of a global series of protests against the continued burning of fossil fuels, hundreds of Colorado activists gathered this week in Denver to protest a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease auction at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood.

Organizers counted about 300 people at the May 12 rally, who demonstrated with signs and banners and tried to interrupt the auction of new oil and gas leases as part of the larger #keepitintheground movement. The goal is to prevent the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming, including deadly heatwaves, droughts, forest fires, water shortages and invasive diseases.

“Enough is enough,” said Valerie Love of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the many conservation groups involved in the growing international campaign. “President Obama has the power to stop new fossil fuel leases on our public lands, and he must do so to avoid climate catastrophe. We have protested at every fossil fuel lease sale over the past six months, and we will not stop until this destructive giveaway of public lands and waters is ended,” Love said.

Counterpoint

The auction went ahead anyway and all six parcel up for grabs were sold with net revenue of $5.2 million, tweeted Kathleen Sgamma, VP of government and public affairs for the Western Energy Alliance.

Sgamma took to Twitter to present a somewhat snarky alternate viewpoint to the social media buzz surrounding the protests, pointing out what she called the hypocrisy of out-of-state demonstrators driving thousands of miles to protest, the fact that at least some of the protestors were wearing gear made of petroleum-based products and that renewable energy technology like solar panels require mined petroleum products, not to mention fossil fuel energy, for their production.

Sgamma has a point, but what she didn’t mention were the potentially devastating human, environmental and economic costs of global warming, or whether the oil and gas industry has any meaningful ideas to add to the discussion about climate policy and how to shift to a less carbon-intensive economy. In past statements, the energy industry has pointed to natural gas as a transitional fuel that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but what’s still missing is a long-term vision for a climate-safe energy future.

Globally, the #breakfree movement has organized protests in dozens of countries. One of the biggest actions was Friday in eastern Germany, where about 2,000 protesters tried to peacefully occupy a huge coal mine. Get live updates from the Vattenfall action here.

The German protestors demanded and end to the use of fossil fuels, and tried to block mine and transport operations to make their point.

“Every additional ton of coal removed from the ground is a ton too much,” said Hannah Eichberger, speaking on behalf of the Ende Gelände coalition. “We’re not going to leave climate protection in the hands of governments and corporations,” Eichberger said, explaining that it’s crucial to keep at least 80 percent of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves in the ground to prevent global warming from surging above 2 degrees Celsius.

In Colorado, Boulder-based artist Remy, a Native American, said the protest in keeping with the tradition of his culture and people. “Colorado and the public lands of the West are being treated as a sacrifice zone, with corporations profiting from the destruction of our communities, the landscape and the people’s health,” said Remy. “It’s about respecting the land and the Earth, and it’s about justice for people who are being denied it.”

Colorado’s public and private lands have been pockmarked by oil and gas wells in recent years. The state has also seen firsthand many of the devastating impacts of climate change, including massive flooding and extended, more intense fire seasons. The action comes just days after the Colorado Supreme Court denied community authority to regulate fracking.

“When our political systems fail us, direct action is one of the few tools we have left,” said Colorado activist and Greenpeace campaigner Diana Best. “People here are finished with industry and government making us sick, polluting our communities and destroying the land we love. Today you can see that the resistance in Colorado is powerful and a key part of the escalating national fight.”

The coalition behind the Denver protest includes local groups like CREED, FrackFree Colorado, Colorado 350, Colorado Rising Tide, First Seven Design Labs and many others, and is supported by national groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Radical Arts Healing Collective, WildEarth Guardians and 350.org.

Another protests is planned for May 14 in Thornton, where activist Bill McKibben will join the action to deliver his by now well-known sermon on the dangers of fracking.

Currently about 67 million acres of public lands are leased for the exploitation of fossil fuels, an area 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park and containing up to 43 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution.

About 25 percent of all U.S. climate pollution already comes from burning fossil fuels from public lands. Remaining federal oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion additional tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution.

The movement gained political support in advance of last December’s Paris climate talks when Senators Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sanders (I-Vt.) in November introduced legislation to end new federal fossil fuel leases and cancel non-producing federal fossil fuel leases.

Last month the Obama administration placed a moratorium on federal coal leasing while the Department of the Interior studies its impacts on taxpayers and the planet. Since November 2015, in response to protests, the BLM has postponed oil and gas leasing auctions in Utah, Montana, Wyoming and Washington, D.C.

See also the text of Senate Bill S.2238, “Keep It in the Ground Act of 2015“

Children & Elderly at Extra Risk of Air Pollution

Fracking’s Air Pollution Puts Infants and Children at Risk of Developing Heart, Lung Problems: New Study

From an Article by Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog, May 12, 2016

A newly published peer-reviewed study concludes that air pollution from fracking puts people’s lungs, hearts, and immune systems at risk – and that the health risks are particularly pointed for young children and infants.

The study — the first to specifically focus on how shale oil and gas drilling affects children ability to breathe — concludes that starting in the womb, children’s developing respiratory systems are particularly at risk from five airborne pollutants associated with fracking and drilling.

“We conclude that exposure to ozone, [particulate matter], silica dust, benzene, and formaldehyde is linked to adverse respiratory health effects, particularly in infants and children,” the researchers wrote in the study, titled “Potential Hazards of Air Pollutant Emissions from Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas Operations on the Respiratory Health of Children and Infants” and published in Reviews on Environmental Health.

“While the rapid growth of this industry was undertaken without substantial public health research, there are now numerous publications clarifying health risks and, increasingly, health outcomes,” they wrote, adding that since 2013, over 560 peer-reviewed studies on unconventional oil and gas extraction’s impacts have been published, representing over 80 percent of the scientific literature on the topic. In other words, in the last few years, the risks from fracking have become much more heavily studied – and the results show good reason to be concerned about how people’s health is being affected.

Based on the risks associated with breathing air laced with the five most-studied pollutants, the researchers expressed concern about fracking near homes, day cares, and schools. “We recommend that at a minimum, one-mile setbacks should be established between drilling facilities and occupied dwellings such as schools, hospitals, and other dwellings where infants and children might spend a substantial amount of time,” they wrote.

But state rules generally fall far short of that buffer zone. There is no national data available on how many schools or childcare facilities are now within a mile of a fracked well, in part because there are no federal regulations requiring the industry to track that data. Each individual state sets different rules controlling how far well pads must be from schools – and those rules vary widely across the U.S.

All told, over 17 million Americans live within a mile of an active oil or gas well – but the precise number of children within the one-mile zone nationwide has never been formally tallied, and not all of those wells are the unconventional oil and gas wells that the new study specifically focused on.

In Pennsylvania, the researchers noted, over 53,000 children under 10 live or attend school within a mile of a permitted fracked well. A separate mapping project, conducted by a group called Healthy Schools Pennsylvania, discovered more than 40 pipeline compressor stations – notorious for spewing pollution into the air – within a mile of the state’s schools, and found that one school district that had over 40 oil or gas wells within a mile of its schools. In Pennsylvania alone, over 400 documented violations of state environmental laws occurred at wells located within one mile of a school or a day care, and 13 violations occurred at wells less than a mile away from a hospital.

And it’s not just an East Coast issue. In four northern Colorado counties, researchers from the Western Resource Advocates found 32 schools within just 1,000 feet of a fracked well in 2012.

“Our research shows that the current setback distances between fracked gas wells and homes, schools, and health care centers are not enough to protect public health, especially children,” Dr. Marsha Haley, an oncologist at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after she authored a different peer-reviewed study. That study, published on Feb. 19 in the National Institute of Environmental Health Services journal, concluded that current set-back standards not only put children’s long-term health at risk from air emissions, but are also not strict enough to protect against risks from accidents and explosions.

Black and Latino parents may have particular reason to be concerned about the risks associated with oil and gas drilling and fracking, an investigative report by ThinkProgress in 2014 found.

“In California itself, 79 percent of the more than 350,000 kids who live within a mile of an oil and gas well are non-white, while 60 percent are Hispanic,” reporter Emily Atkin wrote. “Coincidentally or not, some parents of Sequoia kids [in a town where 82 percent of residents are Hispanic] have complained of their kids suffering headaches, dizziness, and nausea. More alarming complaints have popped up as well, according to Juan Flores and Madeline Pano of the Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment, who both work closely with families in Shafter: A 12-year old student experiencing epileptic attacks; a nine-year-old student diagnosed with prostate cancer; an 11-year-old student who died from a mysterious illness that four hospitals could not diagnose.”

“Community members are questioning, why are these things happening in this community?” Flores told ThinkProgress. “Why are kids getting sick?”

The new study, the most comprehensive review of the literature to date, comes on the heels of several in-depth looks at issues related to fracking and child health, including a December 2014 study linked fracking-related chemicals to infertility, low birth weights and impaired growth in the womb, as well as a litany of potential health problems after children are born.

“People really near unconventional oil and gas and fracking sites and those who work in the fracking industry have the right to know the chemicals that are being used that may pose health threats, especially to vulnerable populations like women and children,” Ellen Webb, energy program associate at the Center for Environmental Health, told U.S. News and World Report when her 2014 study was published. “Given the lack of study and understanding of all the chemicals that are being used, we can’t know the extent of the risks.”

As troubling as the new study’s results might be, they represent only the tip of the iceberg, since most of the chemicals used by the oil and gas industry for fracking remain gravely under-studied.

In part, that’s because little health testing is generally required under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the main federal law that covers chemical safety – including many chemicals used for fracking, a recent report by The Partnership for Policy Integrity found.

Out of 99 chemicals that researchers selected for review, only two had health studies available in the public docket (and in ten cases, companies claimed to have provided that information, but the health data was in fact missing or labeled confidential). Although the Environmental Protection Agency expressed concerns about potential health impacts in 88 cases, they only requested health studies for five of the chemicals – and went on to approve virtually all of the chemicals for manufacture.

“Chemical companies and the EPA are basically conducting a chemical experiment on the general public,” said Partnership for Policy Integrity Senior Counsel Dusty Horwitt.

And while there are efforts underway in Congress to revise the laws, those efforts fall far short of the mark, Mr. Horwitt said. “Chemical reform bills that have passed the House and Senate do not fix the problem.” Horwitt added. “Congress and President Obama need to fix the law to ensure that chemicals are regulated with rigorous testing and openness so that citizens can be protected and informed.”

Meanwhile, the risks specifically associated with fracking have begun to draw the attention of politicians at the national level.

“The toxic chemicals used in fracking are known to cause lung cancer and birth defects,” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wrote in an April 18 op-ed. “If we are serious about safe and clean drinking water and clean air, if we are serious about protecting the health of our children and families, and if we are serious about combating climate change, we need to phase out fracking nationwide.”

Photo Credit: A children’s swingset with fracked gas well in the background on Carter Road, Dimock, PA.     See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Scientific Literature Sources on Public Health

New Study: Majority of Peer-Reviewed Science Shows Public Health, Water & Air Quality Concerns from Shale & Tight Gas Development

From Physicians, Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy, April 20, 2016

PSE Healthy Energy released a new analysis, published in the PLOS ONE journal, that shows the direction of scientific understanding of the public health and environmental impacts of modern unconventional natural gas development.

The study analyses all peer-reviewed scientific literature on shale and tight gas development, and reveals that the great majority of science contains findings that indicate concerns for public health, air quality and water quality. This includes:

• Public health: Of 31 studies, 84% contained findings that indicate public health hazards, elevated risks, or adverse public health outcomes.
• Water quality: Of 58 studies, 69% had findings that indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination associated with UNGD.
• Air quality: Of 46 studies, 87% had findings indicating that UNGD increased air pollutant emissions (such as volatile organic compounds (VOC)) and/or atmospheric concentrations (such as ground level ozone).

More can be found by clicking this link to access the study.

- See more at: http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/#.dpuf

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

CMU Speck PM2.5 monitor on table

CMU creates device, app to monitor home air pollution

From an Article by David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 10, 2016

When her son was diagnosed with leukemia six years ago, Patrice Tomcik said she wanted to protect the 3-year-old from environmental exposures she believed may have contributed to the cancer.

But few options were available to monitor air pollution levels, let alone control them. The Butler County woman was particularly concerned about the proximity of natural gas fracking operations and a compressor station to her home in Adams.

“Early on, what could we do to protect ourselves?” said Ms. Tomcik, 45, married and the mother of two sons. The only real option was AirNow.org, which provides regional pollution levels online every half hour.

In response to the concern, Carnegie Mellon University developed Speck, a fine particulate pollution monitor that provides fairly accurate readings of fine particle levels (known as PM2.5 levels) and shows rising or falling pollution levels.

Illah Nourbakhsh, a university professor of robotics, led the CMU Robotic Institute’s CREATE Lab in developing the affordable air quality monitor in 2014. He faced a similar situation in his own home with his children having coughing spells at night that could be halted only by using an air purifier.

Speck is available for $200 through the Pittsburgh spinoff company, Airviz Inc., at www.specksensor.com/. Various local organizations are distributing monitors regionwide and beyond as a new tool to keep close track of air quality so people can react more quickly to reduce health risks from polluted air inside their homes.

More recently, the team developed the newly available smartphone app, SpeckSensor, which provides up-to-date Air Quality Index readouts from the closest air-pollution monitor, based on ZIP code. The app can be programmed to provide air-quality readings from multiple ZIP codes nationwide for those wishing to track pollution levels for friends or family.

An Android version of the SpeckSensor app can be downloaded at Google Play, and an iOS version is available through the iTunes Store.

“There are so many people with asthma or a heart condition who need to track air quality,” said Mr. Nourbakhsh, who holds a doctorate in computer science.

Pittsburgh pollution levels are among the worst in the nation. Fine particulate matter, which comes from combustion of fossil fuels, travels deep into the lungs, raising health risks including heart and bronchial disease, asthma attacks and lung cancer.

Southwestern Pennsylvania continues to have some of the nation’s worst PM2.5 levels, but few residents realize that by peering into the sky. But blurred horizons provide a hint of the problem, even with blue, sunny skies.

Heinz Endowments through its Breathe Project and the Pittsburgh Foundation purchased 1,000 Speck devices they made available through public libraries, schools and citizen groups throughout the Pittsburgh area.

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project based in Peters now has 240 Speck monitors it provides people in gas fields in four states. It’s systematically gathering home-based particulate levels indoors and outdoors with its nurse practitioner Lenore Resick collecting health information from residents with monitors.

“So far we have seen respiratory issues closer to the well sites,” said Ryan Grode, an environmental health educator with the project. “The more gas, the more respiratory problems.” The group, he said, also has documented increases in headaches, dizziness and even nausea with a link to higher particulate levels.

Spikes in particulate levels can’t be traced to well pads, he said. But when residents are sleeping or away from home, higher particulate levels more likely are linked to gas-well operations, he said.

“What we do know is that higher readings in homes should be looked at and people should be concerned about it,” he said, adding that Speck monitors have proven accurate when compared with government air monitors. “I think Speck is blossoming and more organizations are using it. In time, it will be a really useful tool for a lot of households.”

Ms. Tomcik said her Speck is extremely sensitive to household activities that stir up dust.

“Personally I want to see how things are going in terms of my own air, and I’ve noticed when the kids are playing, they are kicking up dust,” she said. “But it gives people an incredible amount of information. For people who live near unconventional gas well pads, we can monitor the air and see whether the air is safe inside our homes.”

If particulate levels rise for whatever reason, she can open a window or turn on the air purifier. If the air outside is bad, she can close windows.

Jody Handley, 40, who’s concerned about air quality due to allergies, has been testing Speck monitors inside and outside her Squirrel Hill home. High readings often correlate with allergy problems, which she resolves by wearing a mask or clearing the air with an air purifier. She sees levels rise from activities inside the home — while vacuuming floors, making beds or folding clothes, which she said produce lots of dust.

“I’ve been very vocal about improving outdoor air quality,” said Ms. Handley, the mother of two daughters, ages 6 and 4. “We can’t do that, but we can marginally make it better inside our house. That’s important to improve air inside the house for the kids.”

Sand Truck Rollover: "NIMBY!"

Duke study: Fracking lowers home values by $30K

From an Article by Jason deBruyn, Business Journal, December 15, 2015

Fracking can significantly decrease home values, especially in areas that use well water, according to a new study from Duke University.

The study, which was done in Pennsylvania, found that home values decreased by an average of more than $30,000 for homes on well water within about a mile of shale drilling.

Photo: An EQT Corp super triple fracking rig drills for natural gas on a site in Washington… more

Homes on piped water decreased by a smaller margin – about $4,800 on average, according to the study.

“Our results show clearly that housing markets are responding to homeowners’ concerns about groundwater contamination from shale gas development,” said Christopher Timmins, a Duke economics professor who specializes in environmental economics, and lead author in the study. “We may not know for many years whether these concerns are valid or not. However, they are creating a real cost to property owners today.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a relatively new technology to extract gas from the earth by drilling into a shale formation and then applying a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to create cracks that release gas. The N.C. General Assembly made moves to allow for fracking in North Carolina, though it has not happened yet in the state. The use of fracking is expanding across the nation.

According to Duke, the research is among the first to correlate fracking with property values. It appears online in the December issue of the American Economic Review. The researchers looked at home sales in 36 counties between 1995 and 2012 and controlled for potentially variables like effects of the Great Recession and the benefits homeowners could receive in the form of lease payments.

The authors found that a home’s distance from a shale well made all the difference. Among homes that rely on well water, a shale well located within one kilometer was associated with a 13.9 percent average decrease in home values. But if the nearest shale gas drilling site was at least two kilometers away, property values remained constant.

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New York State Assessors De-Value Homes near Compressor Stations by 25% to 50%

<< Proximity of Compressor Stations Devalues Homes by as Much as 50% >>

Fremont Center, NY — Homeowners living near the Millennium Pipeline Company’s 15,000 horsepower compressor station on Hungry Hill Road in Hancock, New York have seen the value of their homes decline by as much as 50 percent since the industrial facility was constructed in the midst of what used to be a quiet, rural community.

In May 2014 several Hungry Hill residents sought real estate tax relief citing the adverse impact of the compressor station on their property values. The Town of Hancock, denied the tax grievances, but Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy subsequently offered to fund homeowner appeals. On August 25, 2014, small claims hearings were held in the Hancock Town Hall. Two homeowners, a certified Real Estate Appraiser, and a representative of Catskill Citizens testified that the compressor station was responsible for heavy truck traffic, noxious odors, persistent low-level vibrations, and air contamination.

The witnesses also asserted that the facility presented a safety threat and recounted how a Millennium employee suddenly knocked on the door of a house late one evening and urged the family to quickly evacuate their home. Finally, it was alleged that blasting during the construction of the compressor station had cracked the foundation of one house, which in turn led to an unsafe spike of radon levels.

(Pre and post-construction radon tests conducted by Professional Home Inspection Service of Binghamton, New York showed that radon levels in the home jumped from 3 pCi/L to 6.1 pCi/L, which is above the EPA recommended action guideline of 4.0 pCiL.)

In light of the evidence proffered, the Town of Hancock tax assessors agreed to decrease the assessed valuation and real estate taxes on two homes by 25 percent. The assessed valuation and taxes on a third home, the one that had been physically damaged, were cut by 50 percent. Hearing Officer John Creech, who presided over the settlement, was familiar with the compressor station and remarked, “I wouldn’t want to live next to it.” After the tax assessors agreed to the 50 percent tax cut he told the owners, “You have a good lawsuit here.”

Source: http://stopnypipeline.org/nys-assessors-de-value-homes-near-compressor-station-by-25-and-50/

For further information contact: info@catskillcitizens.org or call (845) 468 7063.

– See more at: http://catskillcitizens.org/#sthash.CmOgSwIA.dpuf

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