Frack Check WV » lung diseases

Denver Air Pollution Now Much Worse Due to Cars and Oil & Gas Industry

admin — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 08:15:38 +0000

Denver smog is very unhealthy; Mountains are barely visible!

Breaking: Fossil Fuels Choke Denver With Air Quality 3 Times Worse Than Beijing

From an Article by Andy Bosselman, Denver Streetsblog, March 6, 2019

Today from downtown Denver, the peaks of the Rocky Mountain foothills were barely visible through the brown cloud of pollution that covered the region with an unhealthy level of fine particulate matter.

At six p.m., Denver’s air quality index measured 162, an unhealthy level more than three times worse than the moderate rating of 51 now in Beijing. The pollution triggered health warnings across the northern Front Range.

Colorado’s “brown cloud” is an increasingly frequent reminder of the Denver-Boulder metro’s car dependency and the impact of the state’s oil and gas production, which the industry projects will generate $12.5 billion in revenue this year.

Kyle Clark, a News 9 anchor, reported that 30 to 40 percent of ozone levels — a related form of pollution that is not responsible for the brown cloud — result from the state’s oil and gas industry. Traffic generates similar levels, he tweeted. He also pointed out the irony of today’s extreme air quality problems with the intense oil and gas industry lobbying that happened at the state capitol today as legislators considered sweeping environmental reforms.

Reducing car dependency could help the region achieve clearer air, and Denver has plans to do exactly that. But the city is better at setting goals than achieving them. In Denver’s Mobility Action Plan, officials set a strategic goal of reducing single occupancy vehicle commutes from 73 percent of trips to 50 percent.

The city plans to supplement current bus service with a high-frequency transit network. The proposal is part of the long-term planning process known as Denveright, which will be finalized later this year.

But there are no concrete plans for the city to come up with the funding needed to provide the improved transit service promised in the plans.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Department of public health warned all people in the area to “reduce prolonged or heavy exertion” today and tomorrow, especially “people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children.”

Looking northeast from a downtown high-rise, it was almost impossible to see a nearby refinery. A crown of smog usually hovers over its buildings. But today its dirty halo blended into the thick haze of visible pollution that extended as far as the eye could see.

Mid-Atlantic Air Quality Improvements Needed

Duane Nichols — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 10:52:59 +0000

Virginia groups urge better air quality

From an Article by Prue Salasky, Virginia Daily Press, June 30, 2015

There are almost 700,000 asthmatics in Virginia and their health is directly tied to air quality, according to representatives of several state and national organizations committed to spreading the word about the link between climate change and public health.

In a follow-up to last week’s White House Summit on Climate Change and Health, representatives of the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic, the Allergy and Asthma Network, the College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, and the Virginia Asthma Coalition joined forces in a webinar Tuesday to urge the public to “protect the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate air pollutants” and support the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

Support for the regulations would prevent hundreds of premature deaths and thousands of asthma attacks in Virginia alone, they said. (Information on West Virginia is included at the end of this Article.)

According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, speaking at the White House summit, the health effects of climate change disproportionately affect children, the poor and the elderly, and exacerbate disparities in health outcomes. Murthy himself lost an uncle to a severe asthma attack, he said.

“In Virginia, minorities and children are dying,” echoed Stuart Tousman, president of the Virginia Asthma Coalition, which was formed 10 years ago when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recognized asthma as a public health issue and provided significant funding. Since then, he said, the money has dried up. Tousman urged its renewal for increasing education and awareness. “It made an impact on the numbers,” he added.

Kevin Stewart of the American Lung Association emphasized that air quality affects a large swath of the population, putting about half at increased risk for poor health. “The sensitive groups are not a small minority,” he said.

While Virginia had one of the best grades in the ALA’s annual “State of the Air” report, ozone levels in some counties still were in the F category, with air pollution dangerous for people’s health on many days, Stewart added.

The highest concentration of asthma cases are in Richmond, the Washington, D.C. suburbs, and in Hampton Roads, according to Tousman. Typically, asthma develops in childhood.

“The vast majority come from early environmental exposures that have a lifelong effect,” said James Sublett, president of the American College of Allergy. “Most have an underlying allergy that sets off the reaction,” he added.

Tonya Winders, of the Allergy and Asthma Network, said she has four children who suffer from respiratory illnesses. “We need to teach children at the youngest age about effects of climate change, engage school nurses and develop an early education curriculum about its impact on respiratory health,” she said.

Participants urged individuals to learn about the air quality index and what levels affect them adversely in order to adjust their activities accordingly. Also, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issues a daily alert with details on particulates and ozone levels to those who sign up at deq.virginia.gov, said Jennifer Kaufer, coordinator of the Healthy Air Coalition of the lung association.

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West Virginia Air Quality Can Be Improved

The Annual Report of the American Lung Association indicates that most of the counties in WV have no air quality monitors. However, regarding Ozone Exposure, Monongalia County received a grade of B while a C grade applies to Cabell, Hancock, Ohio, and Wood counties, with a D for Kanawha County where there are significant amounts of traffic and chemical industry.

Of the 1,854,000 residents of WV, many are at risk of ozone and particulate exposure including 382,000 (20.6%) being under 18 years of age and 320,000 (17.3%) at 65 or older. There are an estimated 33,000 (1.8%) cases of pediatric asthma, 133,000 (7.2%) cases of adult asthma, 156,000 (8.4%) cases of COPD and 209,000 (11.3%) cases of cardio-vascular disease.

The rural residents of WV are at great risk of exposure to toxic chemicals from drilling and fracking and from the diesel exhausts of heavy truck usage due to the deep/narrow valleys throughout the State. Ultra-fine particle exposure has generally been ignored in the past but is now understood to be extremely dangerous to persons of all ages. Even wildlife will be affected by diesel exhausts and silica particulates.

Why Worry about Frac Sand in PA, WV, OH, WI, MN, etc.

Duane Nichols — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 14:07:07 +0000

Informative Work of Art

The DCS Frac Sand Poster is Here, Incredibly Informative, Work of Art

Letter from Barb Arrindell, Director, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, June 1, 2015

Frac sand mining companies come at local communities like a runaway bulldozer going 100 mph. – Ric Zarwell, Allamakee County Protectors

“Frac Sand, Why Worry…” is an educational folding poster that summarizes in easy-to grasp-form the nature and impacts of frac sand mining and ways in which the public can act to put the brakes on it.

This project was designed with a graphic arts team of advanced students and their teacher at Messiah College, and was all done over one semester. With a lot of time and effort invested and the students really responding to the material, what their teacher thinks is a possible award winner has been hammered out in a very short time. I worked intensively with them – having filed a grant proposal with their college’s DesignAsService program to get this graphics help, but also working with Pat Popple (Chipewa Concerned Citizens), Robert Nehman and Ric Zarwell (Allamakee County Protectors) and Ted Auch (FracTracker.org in Ohio) and others as well as my own research, to have the content be both ample and accurate. For DCS, this frac sand poster is another effort to help our fellow citizens, and foster a precautionary approach to the Commons.

Barb Arrindell, Director, DCS, P.O. Box 147, Milanville, PA 18443

From the poster: Frac Sand — Why Worry?
(See the full poster for more information, including what you can do.)

As a vital part of the full cycle of fossil fuel mining, frac sand is the proppant that holds the induced fractures open for the gas or oil to flow when the pressure is released. According to research from The FracTracker Alliance, the average horizonal shale gas well is currently using 4,300-5,300 tons with demand increasing by 344 tons per year as the wells are drilled longer.

WHY WORRY… The essential frac sand is obtained by strip mining, which leaves behind it a range of devastation from lunar landscapes similar to mountaintop removal in the case of surface operations, to destruction of vital aquifers in the case of subsurface mines, and water contamination (ex. Rockwood Quarry, Newport, MI). As is evident in the experience of Wisconsin and other states in which frac sand mining has already progressed, the list of health, safety, economic, and environmental problems caused is devastating. To start mining operations before essential controls could be put in place for this entirely new industry, mining companies have financed propaganda campaigns that have overwhelmed township and county officials lacking the knowledge of the industry required to make foresightful decisions on behalf of those they represent.

As the frac sand mining industry proceeds without extremely tight controls, the degradation it is causing could well exceed all other damages since white settlement; and the social fabric, tax burden, and quality of life, and health in rural communities is being negatively impacted, perhaps for decades, if not forever.

Contact DCS to get your hard copy of the poster. Donations to support this work are greatly appreciated.

Frack Sand Dust Poses Lung Disease Risks

Duane Nichols — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 17:31:17 +0000

: Silica Dust Risk

Frack Site Workers at Risk of Lung Diseases

From the Article by Nell Greenfield Boyce, NPR, March 29, 2013

PHOTO: A worker stands on top of a storage bin at a drilling operation. The dust is from silica powder (to be) mixed with water for hydraulic fracturing.

When workplace safety expert Eric Esswein got a chance to see fracking in action not too long ago, what he noticed was all the dust.

It was coming off big machines used to haul around huge loads of sand. The sand is a critical part of the hydraulic fracturing method of oil and gas extraction. After workers drill down into rock, they create fractures in that rock by pumping in a mixture of water, chemicals and sand. The sand keeps the cracks propped open so that oil and gas are released.

But sand is basically silica — and breathing in silica is one of the oldest known workplace dangers. Inside the lungs, exposure to the tiny particles has been shown to sometimes lead to serious diseases like silicosis and cancer.

Traditionally, silica exposure has been associated with jobs like mining, manufacturing and construction. But, as Esswein, a researcher with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and other safety experts have started to realize, some workers in the newly burgeoning fracking industry may be at risk, too, because of their exposure to silica dust.

“When sand was handled — that is, when it was transported by machines on site, or whenever these machines that move sand were refilled — dust, visible dust was created,” Esswein says.

He was visiting fracking sites because he wanted to study the potential chemical hazards for oil and gas workers, and he initially figured he and his colleagues would probably assess workers’ exposures to chemicals like drilling fluids. But when he saw the plumes of dust coming off the sand-handling machines and surrounding workers, he realized it could be a real hazard. The government has long set limits on how much workers can inhale.

He and his colleagues visited 11 fracking sites in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas. At every site, the researchers found high levels of silica in the air. It turned out that 79 percent of the collected samples exceeded the recommended exposure limit set by Esswein’s agency.

There were some controls in place, says Esswein, who notes that “at every site that we went to, workers wore respirators.” But about one-third of the air samples they collected had such high levels of silica, the type of respirators typically worn wouldn’t offer enough protection.

These unexpected findings have come just as federal safety officials are trying to set stricter controls on silica for all industries. Some proposed new rules have been under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget for more than two years.

Peg Seminario, director of safety and health with the AFL-CIO, a group of unions that has been pushing for stronger silica regulation, says the situation with fracking is a wake-up call. “Hopefully it will give some impetus for the need for the silica regulation — that there is a whole other population at risk and those numbers are potentially growing,” says Seminario.

Workplace inspectors with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration wouldn’t have been aware of this potential risk for fracking workers before this recent study because, unless they receive a complaint or there’s an accident, they generally don’t see the process of hydraulic fracturing. That part of setting up a well happens quickly — and once a well is up and running, contractors move on to the next one.

Government officials and the fracking industry say they’re now working together to reduce workers’ exposures. They started with quick fixes, like putting up warning signs and simply closing hatches on sand-moving machines. Some oil and gas companies are also testing new technologies. Tim Hicks, a safety expert with Encana Corp., says they’ve been trying vacuum systems that attach to sand-moving machines and suck up the dust.

The results so far are encouraging, Hicks says, but his company is still testing to see how much of a reduction in airborne silica is reasonably achievable. “We’d like to envision a site that, you know, we could handle sand and sequester it all, and perhaps someday not need to use respirators,” says Hicks.

He says he’s not sure whether that goal is possible, or how long it would take to get to that point. “But I can say that at the rate we’re going,” Hicks says, “we’re much more likely to hit that [target] than we were prior to this issue being recognized.” Hicks says he has only been working in this part of the oil and gas business for a few years and couldn’t speculate as to why the industry didn’t recognize this potential health risk earlier. People, he says, seemed to think the dust was basically just dirt.