The public health is also under threat by these and many others

>>> Article by Randi Pokladnik, PhD Environmental Scientist, Tappan Lake, OH, May 7, 2022

Twenty years ago, I lost my mother to cancer. She died two months before her 70th birthday. Her cancer had already progressed to stage 3 by the time of her diagnosis so the outlook for a long-term survival was not good.

At first it was hard to believe that she was sick. She looked perfectly healthy but her oncologist informed us that cancer cells had been slowly growing inside her body for many years. Unlike other cells in our body which have specific functions, cancer cells are undifferentiated, meaning they have no function other than to grow.

Our family wanted to know what caused my mom’s cancer. Her lifestyle wasn’t one that might have led to the development of cancer. Her oncologist told us that “unfortunately these tumors do not come with labels,” however, he pointed out that my mom, like many of his other patients, was born and raised in the heavily industrialized Ohio River Valley.There were few regulations in place in the 1930s and 1940s to protect human health and the environment.

The National Institute of Health Sciences reports that more than two-thirds of cancer is from environmental exposures to substances including pesticides, solvents, heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, and vinyl chlorides.

My folks moved from Steubenville, Ohio (a city once noted as having the dirtiest air in the nation) to Toronto, Ohio in 1962. In 1970, Weirton Steel began construction of their coke ovens on Brown’s Island just outside Toronto’s city limits. Coke ovens heat coal to high temperatures to remove sticky coal tars. These tarry substances are collected and used to make various aromatic solvents like benzene, which are carcinogenic. The remaining light weight coke is used during the steel-making process.

The coke plant drew national attention in late 1972 when 21 workers were killed in an explosion at the construction site. Our home, which was located less than a mile away, was rocked by the explosion. For nearly a decade we lived in the shadow of the dangerous aromatic hydrocarbon emissions spewed from the ovens. By 1982, locally produced coke became too expensive and the plant was shut down. However, the pollution in the form of coal tars and benzene containing compounds remained in the local soils and ground water.

Like many people who are diagnosed with terminal cancer, my mom was willing to try anything to gain a few more months of life. But once the cancer spread to her major organs, she had to admit she wasn’t going to beat the cancer. She would not see her grandkids grow up or see another birthday, she wouldn’t grow old, she wouldn’t celebrate another Mother’s Day with us. Cancer had essentially canceled my mom’s life. She lost her hair, her life savings, her dignity and eventually her life.

We will never know for sure if living in the Ohio Valley had contributed to my mom’s cancer but our next-door neighbor died at the age of 14 from leukemia and another friend died at the age of 11 from stomach cancer.

For years the petrochemical industry has discounted the connection of environmental toxins to cancer and they continue to deny the major role they play in the climate crisis. Many consumers are unaware of the risks associated with these toxic products, which include many personal care products, cleaning products, and lawn and garden chemicals. Industry and government agencies do minimal testing for health effects and provide little information to the public.

Countess studies now show that forever chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl substances, “PFAS”, are now basically found everywhere on the planet: in food packaging and fast-food wrappers, in water, in fish, and in municipal waste biosolids. These compounds have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and numerous other diseases.

Environmental Lawyer, Rob Bilott (of “Dark Waters” fame), said in a recent interview, “one of the things we found in the internal files of the main manufacturer of the chemical PFOS was that this company was well aware by the 1970s that PFOS was being found in the general US population’s blood and was being found at fairly significant levels.” Yet the manufacturers failed to share this information with citizens.

“In July 2021, a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility presented evidence that oil and gas companies have been using PFAS, or substances that can degrade into PFAS, in hydraulic fracturing, a technique used to extract natural gas or oil.” Ignoring the toxicityassociated with fracking fluids and claiming a need for “energy independence”, local, state and federal politicians are calling for more fracking.

Corporate CEOs and cancer cells have this characteristic in common; their main goal is growth. The collateral damage of that growth is of no concern to them so long as their stock values climb. Scientists frantically warn us we are devastating fragile ecosystems and warming the planet to dangerous temperatures. Still CEOs, media, and politicians ignore the warnings.

Many people, including scientists, have become as desperate as cancer patients; searching for an answer, a cure, some way to stop the death of our planet. It was devastating to watch my mother slip away bit by bit until she was barely recognizable. It’s also devastating to watch the only habitable planet in our solar system, the one that harbors so many marvelous creatures and ecosystems, being killed by corporate greed and a dysfunctional economic system that requires the consumption of Mother Earth to make a buck.

Environmental impacts of chemical industry development given limited consideration

From an Article by Bill Holland, S&P Global (Platts), June 20, 2019

HIGHLIGHTS —
>> Marcellus, Utica could support four more crackers: US DOE
>> Sequential cracker projects could more easily draw workers

Houston, TX — Appalachian gas producers, under pressure from prices below $3/Mcf, got a boost Thursday with engineering giant Bechtel’s announcement that Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical had awarded it a contract to build an ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio, in the heart of the Utica Shale.

The project still needs a final investment decision. But selecting Bechtel as the contractor of the project is a major step toward that decision. Bechtel Oil, Gas & Chemicals Senior Project Manager of Pennsylvania Chemicals Paul Marsden, already working as the manager of Bechtel’s work on Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Shell Chemical Appalachia’s multibillion-dollar ethane cracker in Monaca, Pennsylvania, made the announcement at the Northeast Petrochemical Conference in Pittsburgh.

Another new cracker would give producers a new outlet for ethane, a natural gas liquid that they blend in the gas stream when it cannot be sold. The project is expected to be capable of producing 1.5 million metric tons per year of ethylene and its derivatives. Shell’s plant will produce up to 1.6 million mt/year of polyethylene. Analysts speculated full capital investment for the project could reach $6 billion.

Charlie Schliebs, managing director of private equity funds at Stones Pier Capital, said the lack of a final investment decision announcement at this stage is to be expected. “These things [FIDs] take a long time, but that project is happening,” Schliebs said.

The US Department of Energy has estimated that the Marcellus and Utica shales can support up to four more crackers, besides PTT’s and Shell’s. Observers expected a final investment on PTT Global’s project more than a year ago. PTT Global could have been watching to see if costs on Shell’s project spiraled out of control.

Asked whether Bechtel would face challenges getting enough labor to work on both the Shell project and the PTT, Marsden said it would be “a challenge. We will have to manage that.” But he noted that the timing of the projects could actually work in the builder’s favor, as having sequential projects lined up could encourage welders and other key workers to relocate to the region instead of simply coming in for one project at a time.

Natural Gas Liquids (NFL)

NGLs, which sell at prices linked to crude oil, are becoming a larger share of the revenues of Appalachian shale gas drillers. Producers see NGL production as the only escape from stable, low natural gas prices. Two Appalachian producers, Range Resources and Antero Resources, are already shipping ethane, propane and butane to Europe via Sunoco Pipeline’s Mariner East family of pipelines.

PTT Global’s US subsidiary, PTTGC America, is using the site of a shuttered FirstEnergy coal-fired power plant in Mead Township of Belmont County as the future cracker’s site. The company has already allocated $100 million on surveys and permits.

Belmont County is the leading natural gas-producing county in Ohio with 2.6 Bcf/d of production in the first quarter, according to Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources.

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See Also: Plastics: The New Coal in Appalachia? | James Bruggers, InsideClimate News, February 25, 2019

U. N. Global Environmental Outlook is the most comprehensive study

From an Article by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, March 13, 2019

“What’s at stake is life, and society, as the majority of us know it and enjoy it today. We have no time to lose.”

A comprehensive United Nations report released on Wednesday found that while global human health is under dire threat from the climate crisis and industrial pollution, there is still a window for bold and urgent action if world leaders would but seize it.

>>> “We are at a crossroads. Do we continue on our current path, which will lead to a bleak future for humankind, or do we pivot to a more sustainable development pathway? That is the choice our political leaders must make, now.” —Joyce Msuya, U.N. Environment

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Sixth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6), described as the most rigorous climate assessment released by the international body in the last five years, warned that continued inaction from policy-makers could result in millions of premature deaths from air pollution and other factors throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa by mid-century.

The report also highlighted rapidly increasing rates of species extinction. “At present,” the authors note, “42 percent of terrestrial invertebrates, 34 percent of freshwater invertebrates, and 25 percent of marine invertebrates are considered at risk of extinction.”

Without “urgent action at an unprecedented scale,” the report said, the “ecological foundations of society” are at risk of collapse.

Joyeeta Gupta and Paul Ekins, co-chairs of the GEO-6 process, said in a statement that all the technology, policy ideas, and money needed to bring about ambitious global changes already exist.

“What is currently lacking is the political will to implement policies and technologies at a sufficient speed and scale,” they said.

To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis and ensure a livable future for all, the report calls on policy-makers to focus on transforming the world’s food, energy, and waste systems by:

>> Aggressively moving to slash carbon emissions and investing in green energy;
>> Transitioning to more sustainable forms of food production and less meat-intensive diets; and
>> Creating a “circular economy” that “uses waste as a resource.”

“These transformations will not be easy, but they will offer enormous opportunities for those who are ready to seize them,” the report states. “What’s at stake is life, and society, as the majority of us know it and enjoy it today. We have no time to lose.”

“The science is clear. The health and prosperity of humanity is directly tied with the state of our environment,” Joyce Msuya, acting executive director of U.N. Environment, said in a statement.

“We are at a crossroads,” Msuya continued. “Do we continue on our current path, which will lead to a bleak future for humankind, or do we pivot to a more sustainable development pathway? That is the choice our political leaders must make, now.”

The U.N.’s Global Environmental Outlook comes as bold policy solutions like the Green New Deal are gaining traction in the United States, with one recent survey showing that over 80 percent of Americans support the idea.

The report was released just two days before hundreds of thousands of students in over 90 countries are set to strike to demand that political leaders immediately take action to secure a habitable planet for future generations.

“I think that change is on the horizon and the people will stand up for their future,” 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg told the Guardian.

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EurekAlert! Science News: Air pollution causes 800,000 extra deaths a year in Europe and 8.8 million worldwide