Past Event ~ Zoom Meeting held on Jan. 7. 2021

Over 30 landfills in the state accept fracking waste like drill cuttings. The authors of the study followed what happens to the liquid waste from rainwater that trickles through these landfills. That liquid waste, called leachate, often goes to municipal wastewater facilities.

Sediment in waterways downstream of those facilities was higher in radium, a radioactive material found in the Marcellus shale, than sediment upstream of the plants.

“There were increases of two to four times the background level of radium in the sediment,” said Dan Bain, associate professor of geology and environmental science at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the study’s co-authors. The study appeared in the journal “Ecological Indicators.”

While landfills must test leachate for radium and other markers of oil and gas waste, wastewater treatment plants don’t. He said the state should make the treatment plants test for markers of oil and gas waste, including radioactivity, but also salts and heavy metals associated with drilling wastes, to ensure they aren’t just passing pollutants into the environment.

“We need to have a safeguard so we can say, okay, you need to do something else with that leachate,” he said. “It’s not acceptable to discharge it to waterways.”

Fracking a well in the Marcellus or Utica shale creates thousands of tons of drill cuttings — basically, dirt and rocks excavated to build the well. Those cuttings are high in naturally occurring radioactive materials. A 2011 analysis by federal scientists found liquid waste from Marcellus wells had concentrations of radium roughly 40 times what the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission classifies as “hazardous” or “radioactive” waste.

But a loophole in federal law means oil and gas waste is not considered hazardous and can be disposed of at a variety of landfills, though some states have tighter requirements.

New York state, for instance, recently tightened its requirements for fracking waste by classifying it as hazardous waste, thereby limiting the types of facilities that can accept it.

Study co-author John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University, said this waste could accrue over time in landfills, causing problems down the road.

“They are turning these sanitary landfills into toxic waste dumps that are going to need remediation in the future because of the build-up of this material,” Stolz said.

One landfill in Westmoreland County, which has been fined by the state for sending polluted leachate to a nearby sewage treatment plant, had high levels of pollutants commonly found in oil and gas waste.

“When we analyzed the leachate from that landfill, it looks like oil and gas waste,” Stolz said. “It has all the chemistry and characteristics, including that it is radioactive, and [it] was being shipped down to the local wastewater treatment plant.”

The paper also found large data gaps in oil and gas waste reports in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. The researchers could not find reports for more than 800,000 tons of fracking waste sent to landfills in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.

“Reporting of [oil and gas] waste receipt in landfill reports was inconsistent and incomplete,” the study found. This could make it difficult to assess environmental impacts, Stolz said. “It’s a problem because you really need to know how much of this stuff is being taken,” Stolz said. “If there’s more and more of this waste…it’s going to be around for a long time.”

Study is ‘consistant with other literature’ ~ Nicole Deziel, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study, said its findings were “consistent with other literature” on the impacts of fracking, such as a recent Harvard study funded by the EPA that found radioactivity of ambient particles was higher downwind of unconventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and her own study, funded by the EPA and National Institutes of Health, which found Pennsylvania children living near fracking sites at birth were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed at ages 2-7 with leukemia than those who did not live near oil and gas activity.

“The release of liquid and solid wastes that contain radioactive material may pose risks to public health from oil and gas, but the fate [in the environment] of these radioactive contaminants and their impact on human exposure and health is not well-understood,” Deziel said.

The industry responds ~ The oil and gas industry says it maintains strong radiation protocols with its waste and references a 2016 Pennsylvania DEP study that found “little or limited potential for radiation exposure to workers or the public” from fracking operations. But in 2021, the agency determined “additional evaluation of the potential for oil and gas-derived waste to radiologically impact landfill leachate was necessary.”

Tracy Pawelski, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association, which represents the state’s landfills, said in an email that the facilities “carefully track every load of waste that is disposed of at their facility, including every load of oil and gas waste received, all of which are subject to a rigorous pre-acceptance review and approval process.”

Pawelski said the landfills also have safeguards to prevent the release of radioactive materials into the environment. After a landfill is full, it is covered with a soil cap to prevent the leaching of the materials, and there are limits to what the landfills are permitted to accept.

“Pennsylvania landfills have long been equipped with sophisticated radiation detection equipment that monitors every load of waste entering the facility,” Pawelski said. “Any load with unacceptable radiation levels, regardless of its source, are managed pursuant to radiation waste management plans approved by the DEP.”

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NOTE PAST EVENT ~ Time & Location: Jan 07, 2021, 9:30 AM on Zoom

In October 2020 Protect PT sent over 7,000 Every Door Direct Mailed surveys to residents surrounding the Westmoreland County Landfill. The response to our survey has been overwhelming. The impacts residents reported go far beyond citations the landfill has so far received from the PA DEP. Residents reported sludge on the roadways discharging into streams and rivers and other nuisances. Additionally, several residents said they have changed daily routines to avoid further contamination. It is clear that residents have been deprived of their property rights and the enjoyments and use of their property. Due to the widespread nature of these concerns and complaints with PA DEP going unanswered, we have been invited by Gerald Jackson to hold a Virtual Press Conference on January 7th, 9:30 am on ZOOM.

The Halliburton Exclusions have exempted Drilling & Fracking for far too long

​——→ Check out the schedule and events here​

Speakers from the following Groups: Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign, Beyond Plastics, Beyond Extreme Energy, Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, Communitopia, Concerned Citizens of Navarro County, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability(DCS), Earth Dog Films, Fracking the System, Earthworks, Environmental Health News, FracTracker Alliance, Keep It Wild, Lisa Johnson and Associates, OJI:SDA’ Sustainable Indigenous Futures, Ohio River Valley Institute, Park Foundation, Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, Property Rights and Pipeline Center, ReImagine Appalachia, Sierra Club, The Natural History Museum, Yale School of Public Health and Yale Cancer Center

Topics / Presentations: Precautionary approach to fighting oil & gas; Playing the long game: Overcoming defeat and setting new goals in the oil & gas fight; Telling the truth about plastic pollution;Pushing back against the Bitcoin Empire in Texas; “We Refuse to Die” – On our exhibition, movement building, and media campaign to stop the petrochemical expansion; Stopping gas exports to protect public health and avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis!; Shared Prosperity in the Ohio River Valley; Using maps to inspire action; Journalism on plastic, toxic chemicals, and oil & gas pollution; Victory against the Epiphany Allegheny corporation and the ongoing battle against the Northern Access Pipeline in NY; Building power across labor, environmental advocates, faith leaders, and racial justice leaders in Appalachia; The Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign; Colorado’s oil and gas wars – Upcoming documentary film; FLIR Cameras – Making the invisible visible; Skill building for grassroots organizers; Legal advocacy for fracking victims and learning industry tactics; Getting a statewide fracking ban on the ballot in Michigan; Protecting landowners’ rights against pipeline development; and Addressing the Health Impacts of Fracking

Full details and guest speaker profiles are underway and will be added soon!

At the conclusion of the summit you’re invited to participate in a National Strategy call to discuss what is next and needed for the anti-fracking movement to be successful. Please participate and share what you’re working on with others.

Please register and invite your colleagues at https://lu.ma/2022-network-summit

Sincerely, Ryan Clover, Halt the Harm Network

Frack gas is unnatural natural gas, containing different minor and trace components

Letter to the editor by Vickie Oles, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 5, 2022

Residents of New Freeport, Greene County, might not agree with letter-writer Dave Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (“Natural gas development benefits Pa. residents,” July 25, TribLIVE). Residents report shower water is oily, water smells bad and pets won’t drink the water. There are reports of “errant fracking fluid from a well site.” A microbiology professor’s testing determined the water isn’t potable. The solution? The driller and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection “are investigating.” The families received some bottled water.

Other communities are affected by gas development. Check out “Fractured: The body burden of living near fracking” from Environmental Health News.

In addition to threats to health and disruption to daily life to residents near frack sites, we all might face threats. The frack waste from wells can be toxic and radioactive. Is that what is in the residual waste trucks driving through our communities? Where is it going?

Aren’t jobs a benefit? Workers in the drilling industry have seven times the death rate of other U.S. workers on average with injury and death from road and rail accidents, machinery mishaps, toxic chemical exposure, respirable silica sand, explosions and fires.

These risks seem to outweigh any benefits. {an obvious understatement}

>>> Vickie Oles, Ligonier Township, Laurel Highlands, Westmoreland County, PA

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See Also: PA-DEP Fines CNX for Well Failure Near Westmoreland County Reservoir, Reid Frazier, State Impact Penna, August 21, 2020

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has fined CNX $175,000 for allowing a gas well failure near a drinking water reservoir in Westmoreland County. A casing pipe inside the well ruptured about 5,000 feet below the surface of the Shaw 1G well on Jan. 26, 2019. The rupture sent gas and fracking fluids into nearby rock layers. The gas reached surrounding gas wells.

Westmoreland County Landfill taking Drilling/Fracking wastes

From an Article by Reid Frazier, StateImpact Pennsylvania, October 14, 2020

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined a Western Pennsylvania landfill that accepts solid fracking waste $59,000 for multiple violations over the past year. It’s the latest in a series of legal actions against the landfill.

According to a consent order signed Oct. 7, the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill in Rostraver failed to maintain up-to-date records, operated beyond permitted hours, and failed to maintain roads on multiple occasions between July 31, 2019, and Sept. 24, 2020.

The agency said the landfill also allowed spills and leaks of leachate — wastewater that seeps through the landfill and must be treated before it’s disposed of.

The landfill accepts oil and gas drilling waste, which is high in salts, metals, and radioactive materials, and many of these pollutants have ended up in the leachate.

Last year, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General’s office said it was investigating the landfill’s handling of its waste, and a judge ordered the landfill to stop sending its leachate to a nearby treatment plant.

That plant, which failed several state water quality tests, found high levels of contaminants common in fracking waste in the leachate it was receiving from the landfill.

In February, the DEP fined the landfill $24,000 for improper disposal of the leachate.

The latest fine is for new violations, which include the landfill’s trucks tracking mud on nearby roads, failing to put adequate soil cover on top of waste, including drilling waste, and failing to maintain equipment.

The department has ordered the landfill to come up with a plan to fix the violations.

West Virginia news of May 30, 2014

StateImpact Pennsylvania is a collaboration among WITF, WHYY, WPSU, and The Allegheny Front. Reporters Anne Danahy, Reid Frazier, Rachel McDevitt and Susan Phillips cover the commonwealth’s energy economy.

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See also: Pennsylvania Regulators Won’t Say Where 66% of Landfill Leachate w/ Radioactive Material From Fracking is Going…”It’s Private” — From Joshua Pribanic and Talia Wiener for the Public Herald, August 5, 2020

In Pennsylvania, the final destination of 66 percent of liquid waste from 30 municipal landfills accepting fracking’s oil and gas waste remains unknown. Oil and gas waste from fracking contains high concentrations of Technically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (TENORM), and wherever this radioactive TENORM waste is stored, rain carries water-soluble radionuclides such as Radium-226 through the landfill to create what’s known as leachate – the landfill’s liquid waste. This TENORM-laden leachate is commonly sent to Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTPs) that are not equipped to remove it before it’s dumped into rivers.

JUST THE FRACKS, MA’AM: FRACKING AND PUBLIC HEALTH, Zoom 10/20/20, Noon

SELECT THIS DATE & TIME: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 @ Noon

Join us on Tuesday, October 20, at noon for a lunchtime colloquium that will focus on facts about the fracking process and related public health and climate research to allow for more informed consideration of the issues.

Panelists will include:

>> Tom Murphy, co-director of the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University
>> Brook Lenker, executive director of FracTracker Alliance
>> Dr. Ned Ketyer, a pediatrician with the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project

Zoom link: https://psu.zoom.us/j/92218217398

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METHANE POLLUTION: WHAT HEALTH EXPERTS SAY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE & PUBLIC HEALTH, Zoom 10/20/20, 7 PM

SELECT THIS DATE & TIME: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 @ 7 PM

Join the HealthFirst Pennsylvania coalition on Tuesday, October 20 at 7PM EDT for a discussion between medical professionals about how pollution from the oil and gas industry impacts the health of families and contributes to climate change.

Learn more about our need for strong protections due to methane pollution from the oil and gas industry. Learn how a strong methane rule can help clean up our air as well as ways to make your voice heard by your elected leaders.

Speakers include:

>> Dr. Ned Ketyer, M.D., F.A.A.P., AHN Pediatrics, Consultant, SWPA Environmental Health Project
>> Dr. Pouné Saberi, MD, MPH, President, Physicians for Social Responsibility PA
>> Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc Director of Global Public Health Program & Global Observatory on Pollution & Health at Boston College

Registration page: https://bit.ly/ClimatePublicHealth

Final Webinar in the Shale Gas Development and Cancer Series, Part 3

From the Environmental Health Project, October 14, 2020

JOIN IN — THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 AT 7:00 PM EDT

David O. Carpenter is a public health physician whose current position is Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, as well as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University at Albany.

After receiving his MD degree from Harvard Medical School he chose a career of research and public health. After research positions at the National Institute of Mental Health and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, he came to Albany in 1980 as the Director of the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research of the New York State Department of Health, the third largest public health laboratory in the US after NIH and CDC.

In an effort to build ties to an academic program, he initiated efforts to create a partnership between the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany, resulting in the creation of the School of Public Health in 1985. He was then appointed as the founding Dean of the School of Public Health.

This is a position he held until 1998 when he became the Director of the Institute of Health and the Environment. The Institute has been named as a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization.

Dr. Carpenter has contributed to the study of health effects of both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, and also has a number of international projects looking at health effects of air and water pollution. He has more than 450 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many on health effects of PCBs, and has edited six books.

JOIN IN — THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 AT 7:00 PM EDT

REGISTER AT FOLLOWING WEBSITE:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6yQY8AWzRaWmNqvRsOhEQA

Blue Ridge Landfill In Estill County KENTUCKY

From an Article by Bill Estep, Lexington Herald – Leader, July 18, 2020

A Kentucky man has been charged with illegally shipping tons of radioactive waste to a landfill in Estill County KY that was not equipped to handle it.

A federal grand jury indicted Cory David Hoskins Thursday on five charges of mail fraud, based on checks he received through the mail as part of the alleged crime, and 22 charges of “willfully and recklessly” violating safety regulations on shipping hazardous materials in 2015.

Hoskins operated companies called Advanced TENORM and BES LLC, both based in West Liberty, in Morgan County. TENORM stands for “technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material.” The material is a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to recover oil and natural gas, and is classified as hazardous because of low-level radioactivity.

Hoskins allegedly told a West Virginia company called Fairmont Brine Processing, LLC, that Advanced TENORM could safely transport, treat and dispose of sludge from its operations.

Hoskins told the West Virginia company that his company included engineers, nuclear physicists with doctorates and other experts. That was a lie, the indictment said.

Hoskins also lied and said he would haul the sludge in trucks that complied with U.S. Department of Transportation rules on transporting hazardous materials, according to the indictment.

Hoskins “did not keep the promises” he made to the West Virginia company because it would have been more expensive and time-consuming to haul the waste in compliance with federal safety rules, the indictment said.

Hoskins allegedly hired trucking companies and drivers from the Ashland area and elsewhere that didn’t have the proper certification to haul hazardous waste, and didn’t tell the drivers and carriers what they were hauling was radioactive.

He also didn’t put required notices on the trucks and shipping containers to describe the hazardous sludge. One purpose of those labels is to let police, firefighters and emergency workers know what’s in a truck in case of an accident.

Hoskins drew up shipping manifests that said the material he was having hauled was not hazardous, and misled the landfill about the waste, the indictment charged.

The Herald-Leader reported in 2017 that Hoskins arranged for the shipment of more than 1,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from West Virginia and Ohio to be dumped in landfills in Estill and Greenup counties. However, the indictment against Hoskins only mentions 22 shipments to the Estill County landfill between July 22, 2015 and Aug. 27, 2015.

The illegal diposal of the waste caused concern in Estill County — the landfill is near schools — but state officials said in 2016 that there was not an imminent health threat from the material.

The state proposed a settlement in 2018 under which the radioactive material would be left in the Blue Ridge Landfill in Estill County with a cap over it. A challenge to the plan by a citizens group is pending.

The indictment includes a request for a judgment of $127,110 against Hoskins if he is convicted, representing the amount he grossed from alleged illegal activity.

The maximum sentence on the mail-fraud charges against Hoskins would be 20 years. The charges on violating hazardous-materials safety rules are punishable by up to five years.

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See also: “Disequilibrium of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in Drill Cuttings from a Horizontal Drilling Operation,” Environmental Science & Technology Letters, American Chemical Society, December 21, 2016

Report finds additional radioactive materials in gas-well drill cuttings

Deep drilling and horizontal drilling & hydrofracking have many i$$ue$

From an Article by Renee Cho, Earth Institute, Columbia University, January 28, 2020

Over the last 10 years, the U.S. has become the largest oil and gas producer in the world, largely due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. From 2005 to 2018, U.S. natural gas production rose by 70 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions rose accordingly; between 2016 and 2018 alone, greenhouse gas emissions from US petroleum and natural gas production increased 13 percent.

But this increase in greenhouse gas emissions is headed in the wrong direction, since this year countries around the world will revisit the Paris Climate Accord to ramp up their pledges to reduce carbon emissions. This year 2020 might also install a new President in the White House — perhaps one who seeks to limit or ban fracking. Could this year determine fracking’s fate?

Fracking has always been controversial. Those supporting it cite the benefits of lower energy prices, job creation and energy security; those against it raise issues about negative environmental and health effects, and methane leaks, which contribute to global warming. An online poll found 48 percent of Americans in favor of fracking and 52 percent against.

The “benefits” of fracking: oil, natural gas & NGL

The “fracking revolution” has enabled the US to become the world’s supplier of most of the new oil produced since 2008 and end OPEC’s control over oil prices. As a result, fracking has increased energy security and lowered energy prices in the US. The fracking boom also strengthened the economy. A 2015 study found that a fracking-driven expansion in US oil and gas production added 725,000 jobs between 2005 and 2012; it also spurred manufacturing of equipment and demand for raw materials such as steel.

Some contend that natural gas is key to fighting climate change because it produces about half the greenhouse gas emissions that coal does per unit of energy. Natural gas has now replaced coal as the main source for generating electricity. The International Energy Agency estimated that since 2010, the substitution of gas for coal has saved 550 million tons of CO2 emissions globally. This switch has also resulted in less air pollution.

Natural gas has helped renewable energy use double since 2008. Romany Webb, who studies climate and energy at the Earth Institute’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said, “The key benefit of the surge in natural gas-fired generation is it is a lot more flexible, so it’s a lot easier to use with intermittent renewables that come in and out—it’s a backup resource to ramp up and down to meet demand when the wind’s not blowing or the sun’s not shining.”

Under the Trump administration, permits to drill on public land have increased 300 percent. In 2019, Department of Interior revenues from leasing public lands to oil and gas companies and collecting royalties reached $12 billion, double the amount in 2016. These revenues get disbursed back to the federal treasury, the states and American Indian tribes and mineral owners to fund schools, public services and other projects.

The many downsides of fracking

1. Public Health & Occupational Health Issues

There is increasing evidence that fracking can potentially harm health. A 2019 report by the Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility reviewed numerous studies on fracking’s impacts: 69 percent of water quality studies found the potential for water contamination, 87 percent of air quality studies found significant air pollution, and 84 percent of studies on human health risks found signs of harm or potential harm.

The water used for fracking is mixed with a variety of chemicals, some of which are carcinogenic or toxic; companies usually refuse to identify the chemicals, claiming they are trade secrets. If well casings crack, these chemicals can seep out and potentially contaminate aquifers and drinking water supplies, exposing local residents to toxins.

A 2016 study by Beizhan Yan and Steven Chillrud, geochemists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, found chemical changes in drinking water near fracking sites. The substances they detected were not at hazardous levels, but the discovery suggested that fracking could potentially cause groundwater contamination.

Once natural gas flows to the surface, the water that was used to frack—containing chemicals, salt and radioactive materials that occur naturally in shale—returns to the surface too. This wastewater, also called brine, often contains high levels of radium, which is exposing oil and gas workers and truck drivers who handle the brine and waste materials, and potentially the public, to carcinogens.

An investigation (soon to be published as a book) by science journalist Justin Nobel into oil and gas radioactivity found numerous cases of cancer linked to radioactivity in Louisiana’s conventional oil and gas industry.

A 2017 University of Chicago study determined that babies born within a half-mile of fracking sites were 25 percent more likely to be born at a low birth weight, making them more vulnerable to infant mortality, ADHD, asthma and learning problems. Researchers do not know if the cause is air or water pollution, chemical exposure or pollution from increased traffic.

A 2019 study of the effects of the shale gas boom in the Appalachians in the early 2000s found that air pollution resulted in 1,200 to 4,600 premature deaths. And in December 2019, a spike of rare Ewing sarcoma cases in teens and young adults in two heavily fracked counties in southwest Pennsylvania has prompted an investigation by the CDC and the state of Pennsylvania.

Colorado has extensive well pads tightly spaced

See Part 2, scheduled for tomorrow, for a continuation of this Article.

A rolling stone gathers no moss or frack sand ...

Presentation by Justin Nobel, Science Journalist (Rolling Stone Magazine), West Union, WV, January 22, 2020

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020, Justin Nobel, Science Journalist writing for the Rolling Stone will hold an informational meeting regarding the radioactive risks associated with the oil and gas industry at the Doddridge County Senior Center in West Union, WV.

Justin has spent the past 20 months reporting on the issue of the radioactivity brought to the surface in oil and gas production, and the many different pathways of contamination posed to the industry’s workers, the public, communities, and the environment. Justin’s story is due out in the February issue of Rolling Stone magazine, and he is also writing a book on the topic to be published with Simon & Schuster and tentatively titled: Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It.

“I have uncovered never-before-released early reports from the oil and gas industry that highlight the radioactivity problem and its risks to workers and the public, and also been led to a set of recent court cases linking oil and gas worker deaths from cancer to radioactivity on the job. What is scary is that although these workers often worked their jobs for many years, these aren’t necessarily specialized jobs, these documents reveal that everyday oil and gas work such as that of a derrickman, roughneck, or truck driver involve considerable exposure to radioactive materials and can lead to cancer.”

Justin has also spent months gaining access to present-day workers in the Marcellus and Utica, some of them have been stealthily capturing samples of the waste they haul, and have taken great risks to share their information with him. Justin’s reporting, involving hundreds of interviews with scientists, environmentalists, state regulators and industry workers, has also revealed shocking public health risks that our federal and state regulators appear to have ignored.

Radioactivity is present in a number of different types of oil and gas waste, from brine, to sludges and scales generated at the wellhead and in downstream industry equipment such as pipelines, compressor stations, natural gas processing plants, and ethane cracker plants. The disposal of this waste presents dangers at every step from being trucked along Americas highways in unmarked vehicles; handled by workers who are misinformed and left unprotected by its dangers; leaked into waterways; stored in municipal dumps that are not equipped to contain the toxicity; and even used in household commercial products that have been sold at hardware stores and still are spread on local roads.

This is important information, and it is information all should hear — We ask that concerned residents, industry workers and their families, policy makers and anyone else in the community please feel free to attend.

Please join us for this important presentation on Wednesday, January 22, 2020 from 6:00 to 7:30 PM, at the Doddridge County Senior Center, 403 West Main Street, West Union, West Virginia.

Event Organizer: Mirijana Beram, miri_beram@yahoo.com
See also: Doddridge County Watershed Association

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See also: The Hidden Risk in the Fracking Boom – Rolling Stone, 2/2/19 — Are pipeline safety regulations keeping pace with the flood of natural gas?

See also: Fracking Increases Risk of Asthma, Birth Defects and Cancer – Rolling Stone, 3/13/18 — The most authoritative study of its kind reveals how fracking is contaminating the air and water – and imperiling the health of millions of Americans

Marcellus & Utica shales are being drilled in Ohio

From an Article by Sara Welch, Shale Gas Reporter, July 3, 2019

Since its publication and redistribution, a University of Toledo study that links the presence of radon in homes to proximity to fracking wells has been disputed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for using incorrect numbers in its evaluation.

The University of Toledo initially published its study midway through April. However, it wasn’t picked up by science and research websites, and even the Shale Gas Reporter, until the end of June. As its distribution spread, the data behind the study was questioned even less. It wasn’t until The Athens News took a closer look at the numbers to compose a local snapshot of the study that discrepancies were pointed out and the ODNR began working with the university to correct the errors.

After taking a closer look at the numbers referenced in the study, it’s clear they were predominantly derived from a singular source. The ODNR Division of Oil & Gas map the researchers pulled their data from contains accurate information; however, it doesn’t appear to have been read correctly.

From the map’s default view, only fracking wells appear to be marked. When you zoom in three times to take a closer look every well that has been permitted — even ones that have not been drilled — appears. One theory is that the University of Toledo researchers who worked on the study may have incorrectly counted the dots on the map, accidentally including more than just fracking wells in the data from which their study draws its conclusion.

If you’re interested in finding out more about fracking activity in your area, you can find up-to-date data on well drilling and permitting on the ODNR Division of Oil & Gas Resources Shale Well Drilling & Permitting page.

Resources for this Article:

The Athens News > ODNR: Study linking radon to fracking in Ohio uses incorrect numbers
Frontiers in Public Health > Impact of the Hydraulic Fracturing on Indoor Radon Concentrations in Ohio: A Multilevel Modeling Approach (University of Toledo study)
Ohio Department of Natural Resources > Shale Well Drilling & Permitting (ONDR data on fracking wells only)
Ohio Department of Natural Resources > Ohio Oil & Gas Wells (map used in study)