Shell cracker on Ohio River will produce substantial air pollution

From the Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team, Beaver County, PA, June 8, 2022

It was great to have many of you on the June 1st “Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team” Zoom meeting! Thanks for participating because watching Shell closely is especially important now.

As discussed at the meeting, we expect Shell’s cracker to be starting up in phases over the next few months and as early as July. During startup, before the plant comes fully online (by late 2022 or early 2023, according to Clean Air Council), we can expect significant emissions.

We can’t predict exactly the amount or timing of startup emissions. Emissions during Startup, Shutdown and Maintenance may be slightly greater than when they are running in a Steady State, but they still cannot exceed their Total Permitted Amount without incurring an infraction. We have examined the list of chemicals permitted as emissions and how much of each Shell can release during the year.

For the June 1st meeting, many thanks go to Rachel Meyer for her “Health Impacts of Oil and Gas Infrastructure” presentation. Rachel posted the following related links:

>>> The Fractracker Threat Map allows you to see how close you live to oil and gas facilities, and at Fractracker.org you can find out more about the organization that creates so many good maps.

>>> The National Energy and Petrochemical Map shows just how many pipelines there are across the whole country.

Rachel Meyer closed with this comment: Thank you for listening to my presentation! I would love to hear from you. Rachel Meyer ~ rmeyer@momscleanairforce.org

Terrie Baumgardner, who works with Clean Air Council (CAC) as Outreach Coordinator for Beaver County, closed the meeting with a preview of CAC’s Good Neighbor Wishlist. As we approach the point when the cracker will start turning fracked gas into 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets per year, Clean Air Council is asking residents to urge Shell to justify its claim of being a “good neighbor” by doing more to protect the community than what is legally required. The specific steps that residents, starting with EOS participants, can ask Shell to take are summed up in the Wishlist–a scaffolding for actions to discuss in future meetings.

Terrie also asks this of EOS participants: Please contact me if you live within a few miles of the plant and would like to find out more about hosting a PID (Photoionization Detector) for air sampling during a malodor event like the September 2021 maple-syrup smell one in Beaver. Her email is ~ tbaumgardner@cleanair.org.

A really good, wide-ranging discussion facilitated by Dr. Cliff Lau included information about Beaver County’s Local Emergency Preparedness Committee (LEPC) and an appeal to participants to attend the quarterly LEPC meetings.

We are also looking for someone to host a Breathe Cam, which will help us watch for emissions from different parts of the Shell petrochemical facility so we can better understand what is in our air.

Aerial photographer and blogger Bob Donnan was a great contributor to the June 1st meeting. For Bob’s remarkable weekly selection of petrochemical alerts and images, please see here.

Before our next EOS meeting on Wednesday, July 6, we need to begin to pull together your journaling observations. We’re also getting ready to train participants for and to place both monitors and bucket air samplers. If you’re a Watchdog Team member who has completed our surveys and indicated your interest in hosting, you will be contacted about next steps.

Our next Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team meeting will be in early July.

>>> Nora Johnson, Secretary, Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC)

Coal-fired power plant in Pleasants County, WV

Editorial from the Beckley Register-Herald, June 3, 2022

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, made a preposterous late game pitch this past week, calling for partial government ownership of the economically endangered Pleasants Power Station. He wants the West Virginia Public Energy Authority – a body whose members are appointed by the governor and whose mission is to foster, encourage, and promote the mineral development industry in West Virginia – to throw whatever weight it might have behind the survival of an ailing power plant, which like most all other coal-fired facilities across the country has been on life support in recent years. By way of example, company executives are planning for the sale or deactivation of the Pleasants County facility by 2023 – next year.

But not to be dissuaded, Hamilton would like the state to help the plant remain operational and burn more coal well into the future, not because that would be in the best interests of the taxpayers who would be putting up the jack to foot the purchase, but rather of the people who sign his paycheck.

We the people are not paid to represent the special interests of an ailing industry and, as such, are more interested in having our tax dollars invested prudently in a more promising future of energy solutions, not the tired and fading answers of the past.

As you may remember, the state already has some skin in the game with the facility at Willow Island. The Legislature, at Gov. Jim Justice’s calling, met in special session in 2019 and provided First Energy Solutions, owner of Pleasants Power Station and going through bankruptcy at the time, an annual $12.5 million tax exemption. And even after that, the place is still odds on favorite to close up shop.

Of a similar narrative, state officials have recently taken steps to save the remaining coal-burning power plants around West Virginia with the Public Service Commission giving two thumbs up to wastewater projects at three plants owned by American Electric Power. The commission is expected to approve similar projects at two more owned by First Energy, which once owned Pleasants before selling it to Energy Harbor.

When completed, the projects will allow all five plants to remain operational beyond 2028. The companies’ customers? They will get stuck with the bill – on a monthly basis.

And this is the game and the people that get played time and again in this state – and at the end of the day it is the taxpayers and the rate payers who get stuck with the bill of sale. They are the ones who are funding these projects through tax breaks and the like. They are the ones taking all of the risk and receiving, in return, a bigger monthly utility bill.

This is a state that for too long has played by the rules of the Good Ol’ Boys in gas and oil, rules and laws that favor coal barons like our governor and others who promise jobs, jobs, jobs and then leave an environmental mess in the wake of another coal mine closing for we the people to clean up and drink the contaminated water.

Make no mistake, what Hamilton is calling for is government owning a significant share of a private enterprise – one, in this case, that is in decline. Thanks, but we will take a pass, Mr. Hamilton.

Now, let’s talk about passing legislation that would pave the way of the renewable energy industry in this state. Like it or not, that is the future, and that is the investment that will pay dividends.

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Gazette-Mail editorial: Why coal industry is distraught over ‘socialism’ | Editorial | wvgazettemail.com, June 8, 2022

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/editorial/gazette-mail-editorial-why-coal-industry-is-distraught-over-socialism/article_feaac719-81c6-5e77-9cdb-32129f5f333f.html

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See Also: Willow Island disaster 40 years ago — Ceremony will mark the anniversary of the cooling tower tragedy that killed 51, Jess Mancini, Marietta Times, April 27, 2018

Will a push for plastics turn Appalachia into next ‘Cancer Alley’?

From an Article by Emily Holden, The Guardian, October 11, 2019

Critics say ethane expansion will not only prolong fracking but could also trigger a public health disaster.

Construction cranes climb into the sky and sprawl across the massive petrochemical facility that will turn a byproduct of fracked gas into plastic on the banks of the Ohio River, just outside Pittsburgh. Even at a distance, from the car park of a cancer treatment centre on a nearby hilltop, Royal Dutch Shell’s 386-acre site is a behemoth. It will anchor yet more gas, plastics and chemicals infrastructure in the tristate region of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

The plant would solidify demand for fracked natural gas and the ethane that comes with it out of the ground. It would make 1.6m tons of plastic and 2.2m tons of globe-heating carbon dioxide annually – roughly the same amount the city of Pittsburgh is trying to eliminate. The facility would also release hundreds of tons of toxic compounds into the air.

As global demand for plastics grows, the buildout of this industry threatens US progress on the climate crisis and clean air.

Opponents say the vast plastics industry will prolong fracking, even after power companies shift further towards renewable power, such as solar and wind. “To me, it’s so obvious that they are trying to lock us into fossil fuels,” said Terrie Baumgardner, a member of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community.

At a time when scientists warn humans must stop pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and spewing plastics into the environment, natural gas drilling is booming in Appalachia and the ethane-to-plastics industry there is just getting started.

In a tall office building on a hazy Pittsburgh day, Matt Mehalik, the executive director of a public health collaboration called the Breathe Project, slammed his hand on a table. “This region has been down this path before and we should know better,” he said. “I grew up in Pittsburgh at the time the steel industry unravelled. It has taken 30 years to recover.”

Dangerous air is already present and more coming

Opposed residents have myriad concerns. The Shell ethane facility, or “cracker” plant, would use extreme heat to turn ethane into ethylene, which becomes the polyethylene in plastic bottles, bags and food packaging. It will be fed by thousands of fracking wells that dot local communities, including next to day-care facilities and school bus stops.

Pipelines run under neighbourhoods that have previously been affected by explosions and fires. Trucks overwhelm the roads.

Residents opposing the ever-growing expansion say they worry about illnesses and dozens of cases of rare cancers they never saw in generations past.

Pittsburgh already has some of the most dangerous air in America. The city received a double-F rating from the American Lung Association for smog and particle pollution from fossil fuels. And Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, has ranked in the top 2% for cancer risks from air pollution.

And a report by the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania last year found that since 2007, companies profiting from fracking had spent nearly $70m lobbying the state government, in part to insist the method was safe.

“Fracking money has undermined the voice of the people in comparison to the voice of the desire for fracking in the region,” said Mark Dixon, a film-maker and activist.

The pro-business group the Allegheny Conference on Community Development has boasted the plastics boom could turn Appalachia into a petrochemical hub similar to the Gulf Coast. But there, Louisiana residents have long tried to draw attention to the stretch of communities between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as “Cancer Alley”.

The conference argues its goal is to attract business and that government regulators are responsible for keeping residents healthy. A spokesman, Philip Cynar, said: “We have to think about the holistic approach … we can do a lot more for the overall benefit of the region if we have a good economy.”

The fear of health risks is misplaced, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. In consultation with US regulators, it approved Shell’s air pollution plan in 2015. Allegheny County’s health department considered the effects of the plant’s releases of benzene, toluene, hexane, formaldehyde and ammonia – which cause cancer and other serious health problems. The department found the levels would be “well below the health-based risk value” for an individual.

Shell has said it designed the facility to “obtain the lowest achievable emissions.”

Aside from air pollution, the Shell plant will be as bad for global heating as putting a further 424,000 cars on the road each year. “It’s a huge paradox,” said Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s chief resilience officer. Oil and gas jobs pay well, even for people straight out of high school, he said. But the climate crisis puts humans “at the precipice of a public health disaster.”

Job creation has been a priority

Republicans and Democrats have supported the Shell plant, saying it will bring work to an area that has been hit hard by a downturn in US-made steel and coal.

Shell says it will create 6,000 construction jobs in the short term and 600 over the longer term. It is unclear exactly how many will go to locals. State lawmakers offered the company a $1.65bn, 25-year tax cut, the biggest break in Pennsylvania history.

Republican legislators have proposed a package of bills to encourage the natural gas industry, including by speeding the process for permitting projects and providing huge financial incentives.

Pennsylvania’s governor, the Democrat Tom Wolf, inherited the project from a Republican predecessor and now supports it.

But the facility and others like it are antithetical to Wolf’s plans to shrink the climate footprint of Pennsylvania, the country’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. He wants to cut carbon pollution in Pennsylvania 26% by 2025, and 80% by 2050. His Department of Environmental Protection said the state is requiring the plant to reduce its climate footprint as possible “to help ensure that economic development and environmental protection can go hand in hand.”

Pittsburgh’s mayor, the Democrat Bill Peduto, famously challenged Trump on climate change, saying Pittsburgh would abide by an international pledge to limit heat-trapping pollution, even if Trump would not. But Peduto has stayed silent about the plant.

Construction continues (temporary stop work underway)

Hailed by Barack Obama as a “bridge fuel”, natural gas has become a nightmare for climate advocates. It has spurred a transition from coal, which emits twice as much carbon dioxide. But the bridge does not seem to be ending, and the natural gas production process leaks methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The industry has continued to build wells, plants and pipelines – about 27% of natural gas in the US comes from the Marcellus and Utica shales under Appalachia. By 2040, the area will produce 37% of the country’s natural gas, according to the data firm IHS Markit.

Appalachia has wet gas, meaning it produces both the methane mixture that is used for power and stovetops and natural gas liquids, including ethane and propane. Drillers want a local market at which to sell them all.

Of the Democratic frontrunners for president, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pledged to ban fracking. Joe Biden, the former vice-president, has not. But the Trump administration is supporting the build-out.

Ken Humphreys, a senior adviser for regional economic development at the US Department of Energy, said: “Broadly this is about creating the conditions for private capital to flow into the region.

Between 2018 and 2040, the US’s capacity for making ethylene and intermediate petrochemical products is expected to nearly double. The energy department argues that global demand for plastic is rising, and it will either be produced in the US or in countries with more lax environmental standards.

Humphreys said there were 7,500 businesses within 300 miles of Pittsburgh, employing 900,000 people to make products that incorporated petrochemicals – most of which came from the Gulf Coast. Producing plastic locally would be more efficient, the department said.

Rare cancers in southwestern Pennsylvania

In Washington County, Pennsylvania, south-west of Pittsburgh, fracking well pads sit alongside neighbourhoods. One, called a super-frack pad because of its dozens of wellheads, sits in a valley next to the former coal community of Marianna.

A school bus stop overlooks the site and the children who wait there each morning live in brick homes that were built for coalminers and then abandoned.

Four counties in south-western Pennsylvania have been afflicted by a rash of rare cancers, including 27 cases of Ewing sarcoma over 10 years in a population of about 750,000. The bone cancer usually occurs in children and young adults.

A retired paediatrician, Ned Ketyer, said: “Ewing sarcoma is a nightmare for the families that are given that diagnosis, and certainly for the patients and also for the physicians that diagnose it. It starts very quietly but by the time the diagnosis is made it has deepened and spread.”

There are dozens of other rare cancer cases in the area too. The Pennsylvania Department of Health studied rates of the disease in two school districts and said there was no evidence of a cluster.

But people are still worried. Last week, 50 environmental advocacy and public health groups as well as hundreds of individuals signed a letter to the Pennsylvania governor asking him to attend a public meeting to hear their health concerns. The state’s epidemiologist attended instead.

The region has a toxic legacy that predates natural gas – including hundreds of years of coal-mining and agriculture pesticide use. But Ketyer said the cancers did not begin until fracking arrived.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection found the Shell plant’s hazardous air pollutants–which cause cancer and other serious sicknesses–“will not threaten public health and safety,” spokesman Neil Shader said.

Residents also worry about gas industry accidents. One September morning in 2018, Karen Gdula awoke to an explosion and flames shooting into the air from a 24-inch pipeline buried a few houses away. Her neighbours narrowly escaped with several of their dogs, but they lost their home, another dog and four cats in the fire.

Another neighbour, who was celebrating her birthday, had trouble convincing an emergency services operator that the pipeline had exploded until the operator heard the fire roar. The flames were so hot they melted a nearby transmission tower.

A second pipeline is under construction that will cross over the one that exploded. Gdula has been working with the construction company to make it safer for the neighbourhood. “My goal is safety,” she said. “We don’t believe we can stop them but we can do what we can to be safe.”

Global climate change

Natural gas from shale – the type that is extracted with fracking – is expected to double in the US in the coming decades, mostly in the east, according to the US Energy Information Administration. And the energy department expects an enormous 20-fold surge in ethane production in the eastern US by 2025.

Scientists say to avoid catastrophe from rising temperatures, people must rapidly reduce their emissions from fossil fuels to net zero by 2050.

The world is already 1C hotter than before industrialisation, and it is on track to warm an additional 2C – worsening extreme weather and poverty and leading to rapidly rising seas.

The Center for International Environmental Law, a pro-environment group, estimates that by 2050 climate-harming emissions from the production and incineration of plastics could reach 56 gigatons per year, or 10-13% of the budget allowed for keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5C.

There is no way of knowing how much a plastics hub in Appalachia will exacerbate global warming and offset the work of states and cities trying to cut heat-trapping emissions. The ethane boom will, however, stretch beyond western Pennsylvania into Ohio and West Virginia.

In nearby Barnesville, Jill Hunkler said she was driven from her home by fracking. As gas wells were constructed around her, Hunkler said she started to experience headaches, breathing problems, burning eyes and a metallic taste in her mouth.

Hunkler counts 78 producing wells within five miles of her house, according to data from FracTracker. “There’s just no respect for the local community’s health,” she claimed.

Bev Reed, a nursing graduate and intern at the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organisation, said the community had no say over whether the facility was built.

“We already know it’s not sustainable and that Appalachia has been pillaged and plundered and raped for pretty much as long as its existed,” Reed said. “We’ve seen enough and we deserve better.”

…… Support the Guardian newspaper for its detailed investigative reporting, as it only takes a minute. Thank you.

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See also: The Ohio River Defines the Borders of Five States—But Its Pollution Doesn’t Stop at State Lines, Susan Cosier, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), August 21, 2019

In a move that could open the door to industrial waste and interstate squabbles, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission is making its water quality standards voluntary.

[The Ohio River consistently is ranked as the most polluted in the country, with an estimated 30 million pounds of toxic chemicals illegally dumped into its waters each year.] dgn

Royal Dutch Shell yields to government actions

From an Article by Tom Fontaine, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, March 18, 2020

Shell Chemicals said Wednesday it will temporarily halt its multibillion-dollar project to build an ethane cracker plant in Beaver County because of coronavirus concerns. The company then plans to gradually ramp work back up at the sprawling site where about 8,000 people have been working.

“The decision to pause was not made lightly,” Shell Pennsylvania Chemicals Vice President Hilary Mercer said in a statement. “But we feel strongly the temporary suspension of construction activities is in the best long-term interest of our workforce, nearby townships and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Mercer added.

The decision came hours after Beaver County government leaders called on Shell to suspend work on the project.

“It’s time to shut down. Do what you have to do, but get to that point where we won’t have anyone on that site,” Beaver County Commissioner Dan Camp said at a news conference late Wednesday morning in front of the county courthouse in Beaver.

Camp, who was joined by fellow Commissioners Tony Amadio and Jack Manning and state Reps. Jim Marshall, Rob Matzie and Josh Kail, said his office had received more than 500 calls in recent days from concerned residents and Shell employees and contractors.

Callers reported crowded conditions on buses that take the project’s thousands of workers to and from the work site, limited hand sanitizer and other problems.

“With 8,000 workers, if something happens there, our health care facilities will not be able to undertake what they will have to do,” Camp said, noting that the Heritage Valley Beaver hospital is equipped with only 40 ventilators.

“There’s potential for a very catastrophic outbreak,” Manning added.

The government leaders said they had been in communication with Shell and Gov. Tom Wolf’s office about their concerns. “I believe Shell understands the problem and our concerns. I have confidence they will do the right thing,” Camp said.

The company did not say how long it would suspend work or how long it might take to ramp work back up to full capacity. “As of now, there is no definitive timeline to return to construction activities,” spokesman Curtis Smith said. “It’s too early to know that. For now, our focus is on the 8,000 workers who have dedicated their time and talent to this project.”

The company said it would spend the coming days installing what it called “additional mitigation measures” at the site. Smith said those measures haven’t been finalized, but could include using additional buses to transport workers to and from the site and installing more sanitizing stations and work tents on the site.

No workers at the site have shown symptoms of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, according to Smith.

Work on the project is expected to be completed sometime in the early 2020s, Smith said. When the plant begins operating, it will process ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale reservoirs into ethylene and polyethylene, the building blocks of plastic. Officials have said it will employ about 600 full-time workers, and hundreds of others jobs could be created by spinoff companies related to the plastics industry.

“Our goal is to build a positive, decades long legacy in the region,” Mercer said in her statement. “That means earning our right to live and work here every day. It also means caring for people. While (suspending work is) understandably disappointing to many, we believe this decision honors that approach.”

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Shell ‘s construction crew at risk of COVID-19 sickness

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — Gov. Tom Wolf is tightening his directives to businesses to shut down, issuing a dire warning and saying Thursday that all “non-life-sustaining” businesses in Pennsylvania must close their physical locations by 8 p.m. to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Enforcement actions against businesses that do not close their physical locations will begin Saturday, March 21st, Wolf said in a statement.

You can also find the list at this link.

Ethane Cracker chemical plants generate thousands of tons of toxic chemicals

THIS SATURDAY in Bellaire, OH and Moundsville, WV

>> Rally Saturday, January, 18th, 11 am — 12 pm (noon)

>> Meet in lot across from Bellaire Kroger at 26th Street intersection

Meet at about 10:45. We will assemble on the sidewalks at the intersection. Bring your No PTTG signs! This will be a peaceful protest to raise awareness about the PTTG cracker plant.

We took to the streets last week in Moundsville and got great media coverage. Let’s keep the momentum going!

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Just one word should be enough in this era: “plastics”

After the rally, join Concerned Ohio River Residents for a special pre-release screening of “The Story of Plastic,” a seething expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the current global plastic pollution crisis. Interviews with experts and activists and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the flood of plastic smothering ecosystems and poisoning communities around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.

January 18th 1:30 – 4:30pm

>> Grave Creek Mound Historical Site Theater
>> 801 Jefferson Ave, Moundsville, WV 26041

Don’t miss the panel discussion after the film! On the panel:

1) Dr. Randi Pokladnik, a local retired research chemist will talk about the impacts of plastic and petrochemicals on health and the cracker plant’s impact on the Ohio River.

2) Terrie Baumgardner, a resident from the Beaver County, PA area will discuss what it is like living near the Shell cracker plant currently being constructed.

3) Yvette Arellano, policy research and grassroots advocate for Texas Environmental Justice and Advocacy Services, Houston, Texas. They live near petrochemical facilities in Houston, Texas.

>>> Read more about the film here.

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See also: High School Curriculum: Fracking, Cracker Plants, Plastics, and You, OVEC, December 5, 2019

‘Cancer Alley’ on Mississippi River in Louisiana

From an Article by Elaine Schattner, National Public Radio, July 12, 2019

PHOTO: A stretch of the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, La., that is crowded with chemical plants has been called “Cancer Alley” because of the health problems there.

We already know how to stop many cancers before they start, scientists say. But there’s a lot more work to be done.

“Around half of cancers could be prevented,” said Christopher Wild in the opening session of an international scientific meeting on cancer’s environmental causes held in June. Wild is the former director of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

“Cancer biology and treatment is where most of the money goes,” he said, but prevention warrants greater attention. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work to improve treatment, but we haven’t balanced it properly.”

Perhaps no question about cancer is more contentious than its causes. People wonder, and scientists debate, if most malignancies stem from random DNA mutations and other chance events or from exposure to carcinogens, or from behaviors that might be avoided.

At the conference in Charlotte, N.C., scientists pressed for a reassessment of the role of environmental exposures by applying modern molecular techniques to toxicology. They called for more aggressive collection of examples of human pathology and environmental samples, including water and air, so that cellular responses to chemicals can be elucidated.

The hope is that by identifying specific traces of exposures in human cancer specimens, scientists can identify environmental causes of disease that might be prevented.

“Over 80,000 chemicals are used in the United States, but only a few have been tested for carcinogenic activity,” said Margaret Kripke, an immunologist and professor emeritus at MD Anderson Cancer Center, in an interview at the meeting.

“This has been a very neglected area of cancer research for the last several decades,” said Kripke, the driving force behind the conference, which was put on by the American Association for Cancer Research. “Environmental toxicology was very popular in the 1950s and 1960s,” she said, but genetics then began to overshadow studies of cancer’s environmental causes. “Toxicology fell by the wayside.”

While the incidence of tobacco-linked cancers has been falling, malignancies not associated with smoking are rising, Kripke said. Recent evidence suggests an escalating rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers. That trend implicates other environmental factors.

Around the globe, cancer’s overall incidence is climbing. This year, 18 million people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer and over 9 million will die from it.

Infections — many preventable, such as by human papillomavirus —account for 15% of new cases.

Another rising cause is obesity, along with urbanization. People generally get less physical activity and eat differently in cities, and pollution is heavier there, too. “As people move into cities, that will drive up cancer rates,” Wild said.

One of the biggest obstacles to preventing cancer is that many people just don’t think it’s feasible. Progress “requires long-term vision and commitment,” Wild said. “Funding is limited, and there’s little private sector investment.”

A change in the way benefits of cancer prevention are framed could help. “When I was at the IARC, one thing that struck me was the power of economic arguments over health arguments for preventing cancer,” Wild said.

Cancer treatment costs can be prohibitive. But productivity lost from premature deaths in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa alone runs $46.3 Abillion annually, he said. “Developing countries are not prepared to deal with the rising cancer burden.”

The precise proportion of cancers arising from environmental and occupational exposure to carcinogens is uncertain. In 2009, a report by the President’s Cancer Panel called prior approximations of around 6% “woefully out of date” and low. A 2015 paper by over a hundred concerned scientists cited “credible” estimates of 7% to 19%.

Scientist at the Charlotte meeting emphasized the complexity of cancer’s causes and the need for toxicologists to update methods to reflect that complexity, such as by studying interactions of environmental and genetic risks, and by examining cells after a mix of exposures. “Most toxic exposures do not occur singly,” said Rick Woychik, deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Until recently, many toxicology tests were performed in rodents, because it would be unethical to deliberately evaluate possible carcinogens in people. But these animal experiments are labor-intensive and slow, he said.

New alternatives are now being tried. “We learned from pharma that with robotics and high-throughput technology you can interrogate a lot of biology quickly and at lower costs,” he said.

Epidemiological research of human exposures has been stymied by the difficulty of proving cause-and-effect — that a particular substance actually causes cancer — and by shortcomings of survey data from questionnaires.

At the conference, scientists offered glimpses of new technology that is helping fill informational gaps.

Bogdan Fedeles of MIT explained how DNA serves as a lifelong “recording device.” He and others use duplex sequencing to examine human samples for genetic “fingerprints of exposure.”

Allan Balmain, a geneticist at University of California, San Francisco, spoke about mutational signatures in malignancies. In liver cancer, for instance, these signatures can offer causal clues—such as smoking, alcohol or aflatoxin, a product of mold that grows on some foods.

Many chemicals that cause or stimulate cancer growth are produced inside our bodies. “It’s not all about the environment,” Balmain said.

Others highlighted a conceptual shift in how scientists define carcinogens. Key characteristics may include a substance’s capacity to stimulate growth of malignant cells, or to induce inflammation—without necessarily causing DNA damage, long seen as the necessary.

“The answer to ‘What is a carcinogen?’ is changing” said Ruthann Rudel, a toxicologist at the Silent Spring Institute who has published extensively on breast carcinogens. She detailed new techniques to screen breast cancer cells for changes in response to specific chemical exposures.

The public health stakes for the field are high.

Professor Polly Hoppin, of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, discussed cancer-causing industrial contamination of drinking water at Camp Lejune, N.C., air pollution in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., and potential exposures to carcinogens from fracking and planned plastics production in Pennsylvania.

Hoppin reflected on the U.S. experience with tobacco cessation. Scientists knew that smoking causes cancer by the 1950s, she said. Implementing that knowledge required policy and incentives — like high cigarette taxes and public smoking bans — and took decades.

“The science wasn’t enough,” Hoppin said. “How many lives could have been saved if we’d acted sooner?”

>>> Elaine Schattner is a physician in New York writing a book on cancer attitudes that will be published by Columbia University Press.

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See Also: Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Residents Take the Fight for Environmental Justice on the Road | DeSmogBlog, July 8, 2019

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

Natural gas liquids (NGL) projects and plans in the Marcellus - Utica region

From an Update of Kallanish Energy News, March 22, 2019

NORTH CANTON, Ohio — Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum is exploring the possibility of an underground liquids storage facility in eastern Ohio’s Utica Shale, Kallanish Energy reports.

The company is looking at utilizing underground salt caverns for ethane, butane and propane storage, said Jason Stechschulte, commercial development manager for Marathon Pipe Line LLC. The site would be near the company’s Hopedale fractionation facility in Harrison County.

Core samplings in 2018 looks promising

The company last year conducted core sampling and the site has potential, he said Thursday at the day-long Utica Midstream conference sponsored by the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and Shale Directories. The event drew roughly 130 people to Walsh University in North Canton.

Marathon is talking with potential customers, but there are no firm plans, price estimates or timetables, Stechschulte said. Any timetable would be driven by customer interest and permitting, he said. He described the plan as a “multi-year project.” No applications have been filed for the project, except for the coring work done in 2018.

What the company is envisioning is a storage facility that would provide a solution for the entre industry in the Appalachian Basin, he said. Natural gas liquids would be stored under pressure with the ethane, butane and propane all being segregated in different salt caverns, he said.

The facility would be close to numerous pipelines in the area where Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania come together. Storage is needed as Shell Appalachia continues to build its ethane cracker plant at Monaca, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh.

Waiting on PTT Cracker in the Ohio River valley —-

PTT Global Chemical is still looking at building a similar cracker at Dilles Bottom in Ohio’s Belmont County. A final investment decision has been expected for some time.

A private company, Colorado-based Mountaineer NGL Storage, hopes to develop a storage facility in salt caverns at Clarington in Ohio’s Monroe County. It would be designed to handle up to 3.5 million barrels of natural gas liquids. Natural gas liquids are also flowing via pipelines to eastern Pennsylvania for export.

Rio Pipeline work wrapping up —-

In other news, Marathon Pipeline is completing the finishing touches to expanding its Rio Pipeline to move Utica Shale liquids from Lima, Ohio, to Robinson, Illinois. That required adding three pumping stations on the 250-mile, eight-inch line.

Stechschulte told the audience the pipeline will move roughly 55,000 barrels per day, starting within the next 10 days. The company is also working to move Utica normal butane and isobutane to refineries and storage in the Midwest, a project that will be completed by mid-2020. The two projects together will cost Marathon about $150 million, he said.

The company is also looking at a possible arrangement to move Utica liquids from Cadiz and Scio in eastern Ohio, to Bells Run on the Ohio River for river transport, he said. That might be an arranged in cooperation with EnLink Midstream.

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See also: New Warnings on Plastic’s Health Risks as Fracking Industry Promotes New ‘Plastics Belt’ Build-Out, Resilience & DeSmog Blog, March 5, 2019

Dilles Bottom is in a deep valley with many residential areas nearby

From an Article of WTOV News 9, Steubenville, OH, November 10, 2018

The Ohio EPA is asking for input regarding the draft air permit for the potential construction of a billion-dollar ethane cracker plant in Belmont County.

The cracker plant would be built in Dilles Bottom. (This is in the Ohio River valley directly across the river from Moundsville in Marshall County, West Virginia.)

If approved, the permit would allow construction of the PTTGCA Petrochemical Complex that would use six ethane cracking furnaces and manufacture ethylene and polyethylene.

The EPA says different gases and pollutants could be emitted, however, its goal is to ensure air quality, and the maximum air emissions would be limited.

There will be a public hearing hosted by the Ohio EPA at 6 p.m. on November 27 at Shadyside High School to discuss the air permit.

The permit application may be viewed online here by entering permit number P0124972 or at the Ohio EPA Southeast District Office, 2195 Front St., Logan. See the PDF version of the draft air permit here. Call for an appointment: (740) 380-5245.

Ohio EPA values public input. Comments will be accepted both verbally and in writing at the hearing and may be submitted through December 11, 2018.

Written comments may be sent by mail to Kimbra Reinbold, Ohio EPA, DAPC Southeast District Office, 2195 East Front Street, Logan, Ohio, 43138 or emailed to kimbra.reinbold@epa.ohio.gov.

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PTTGCA Petrochemical Plant Complex — Permit Description

Initial installation permit for a world-scale petrochemical complex composed of ethylene and ethylene-based derivative plants to manufacture high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low-density polyethylene/HDPE (LLDPE/HDPE) with the following design capacities: Ethylene Plant: 1,500 KT/year; HDPE Units: two (2) trains of 350 KT/year for each train; and LLDPE/HDPE Units: two (2) trains of 450 KT/year for each train. The petrochemical complex will also involve onsite railcar and truck loading, supporting utilities, infrastructure, storage tanks, logistics facilities, and facilities to produce and/or provide required natural gas, water, air, nitrogen, steam, and electricity to support the operation of process units.

Climate Change necessitates reducing fossil fuels EVERY day!

Join us Saturday September 8, at 10 a.m. at Heritage Station in Huntington.

Details here. Bring your friends and family. Bring a water bottle. Bring your commitment to a renewable future!

News: Coalition of environmental groups to host River Rising event

Co-sponsors are: OVEC, MU Native American Student Organization, Fourpole Creek Watershed Association, Tri-State Indivisible, Citizens Climate Lobby of Huntington, Solar Holler.

Real climate leadership rises from the grassroots up! Join us in Huntington for one of thousands of rallies in cities and towns around the world to demand that our local leaders commit to building a fossil free world that works for all of us, that puts people and justice before profits. No more stalling, no more delays: it’s time for 100% renewable energy for all. These rallies take place during the time of the Global Climate Action Summit in California.

The Ohio River is endangered by the proposed, benignly named Appalachian Storage Hub (ASH). This proposed petrochemical mega-project would spur second and third waves of fracking, all for manufacturing toxic plastics manufacturing, despite the burgeoning worldwide movement to ban single-use plastics, and the growing research into less toxic alternatives to other forms of plastics.

Come learn more about why you should get involved in opposing ASH and promoting a better vision for our region. Come learn more about climate change impacts in our region and ways we can band together to create a better future for our region.

Join us as we let out local leaders know we don’t want a petrochemical future and hold them to account and demand that they walk the talk on climate action.

>>> The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
PO Box 6753
Huntington, WV 25773-6753
info@ohvec.org 304-522-0246