Frack Check WV » silica dust

Fracking Workers Need Protection from Small Dust Particles

Duane Nichols — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 22:00:39 +0000

OSHA’s Final Rule to Protect Workers from Exposure to Respirable Crystalline Silica

From the Summary of the U. S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration, March 25, 2016

“Rule requires engineering controls to keep workers from breathing silica dust”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued a final rule to curb lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney disease in America’s workers by limiting their exposure to respirable crystalline silica. The rule is comprised of two standards, one for Construction and one for General Industry and Maritime.

OSHA estimates that the rule will save over 600 lives and prevent more than 900 new cases of silicosis each year, once its effects are fully realized. The Final Rule is projected to provide net benefits of about $7.7 billion, annually.

About 2.3 million workers are exposed to respirable crystalline silica in their workplaces, including 2 million construction workers who drill, cut, crush, or grind silica-containing materials such as concrete and stone, and 300,000 workers in general industry operations such as brick manufacturing, foundries, and hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Responsible employers have been protecting workers from harmful exposure to respirable crystalline silica for years, using widely-available equipment that controls dust with water or a vacuum system.

Key Provisions

>> Reduces the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for respirable crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, averaged over an 8-hour shift.

>> Requires employers to: use engineering controls (such as water or ventilation) to limit worker exposure to the PEL; provide respirators when engineering controls cannot adequately limit exposure; limit worker access to high exposure areas; develop a written exposure control plan, offer medical exams to highly exposed workers, and train workers on silica risks and how to limit exposures.

>> Provides medical exams to monitor highly exposed workers and gives them information about their lung health.

>> Provides flexibility to help employers — especially small businesses — protect workers from silica exposure.

Compliance Schedule

Both standards contained in the final rule take effect on June 23, 2016., after which industries have one to five years to comply with most requirements, based on the following schedule:

Construction – June 23, 2017, one year after the effective date.

General Industry and Maritime – June 23, 2018, two years after the effective date.

Hydraulic Fracturing – June 23, 2018, two years after the effective date for all provisions except Engineering Controls, which have a compliance date of June 23, 2021.

Background

The U.S. Department of Labor first highlighted the hazards of respirable crystalline silica in the 1930s, after a wave of worker deaths. The department set standards to limit worker exposure in 1971, when OSHA was created. However, the standards are outdated and do not adequately protect workers from silica-related diseases. Furthermore, workers are being exposed to silica in new industries such as stone or artificial stone countertop fabrication and hydraulic fracturing.

A full review of scientific evidence, industry consensus standards, and extensive stakeholder input provide the basis for the final rule, which was proposed in September 2013. The rule-making process allowed OSHA to solicit input in various forms for nearly a full year. The agency held 14 days of public hearings, during which more than 200 stakeholders presented testimony, and accepted over 2,000 comments, amounting to about 34,000 pages of material. In response to this extensive public engagement, OSHA made substantial changes, including enhanced employer flexibility in choosing how to reduce levels of respirable crystalline silica, while maintaining or improving worker protection.

More Information and Assistance

OSHA looks forward to working with employers to ensure that all workers exposed to respirable crystalline silica realize the benefits of this final rule. Please check back for frequent updates on compliance assistance materials and events, and learn about OSHA’s on-site consulting services for small business.

OSHA approved State Plans have six months to adopt standards that are at least as effective as federal OSHA standards. Establishments in states that operate their own safety and health plans should check with their State Plan for the implementation date of the new standards.

See the HAZARD ALERT here.

Forum 6/15/15: “NOT your Grandparents’ O & G Industry”

Duane Nichols — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 18:20:55 +0000

Support OVEC on 6-15-15

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition Continues Their Outstanding Work

OSHA Responds to Worker Hazards on O & G Well Pads

Duane Nichols — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 02:48:29 +0000

Frack Worker Risk Warnings

OSHA Cites Antero Contractor After West Virginia Worker’s Death

From an Article by Jamison Cocklin, Natural Gas Intelligence, June 2, 2015

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited a contractor that worked at an Antero Resources Corp. well site in Tyler County, WV, where a worker was killed last year when he was struck by a front-end loader.

Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Precision Drilling LP was cited for failure to provide a workplace “free from recognized hazards,” according to OSHA. The agency discovered the violations during an investigation after Ryan Dunn, 29, of Jackson County, WV was killed on site in November. The agency said Dunn was “struck by or caught between hazard from a front-end loader” as it was moving pipe, equipment and other supplies.

It was discovered that the equipment was being operated with “restricted rear visibility” in reverse and lacked a left-side rear-view mirror. In addition to that citation, OSHA also found that Precision failed to provide fall protection on site with an unguarded hole near a mud tank. The company was also cited for failing to provide or require its workers to wear respirators near the mud tank.

OSHA issued the citations in mid-May and proposed a penalty of $13,550. Precision was given an opportunity to contest the violations by the end of the month, but it is unclear whether they did. The company has not commented about the incident or OSHA’s findings.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is soon expected to issue an executive order detailing requirements for a study to ensure better safety at oil and gas drilling sites after an increase in fatal accidents over the last decade with the rise in unconventional drilling in the state.

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OSHA Issues Alert on Non-Silica Fracking Hazards

Submitted by Jackson Lewis P.C., National Law Review, January 29, 2015

OSHA has issued an advisory on non-silica health and safety hazards in the hydraulic fracking industry.

OSHA said the purpose of its 41-page document, Hydraulic Fracturing and Flowback Hazards Other than Respirable Silica, is to inform employers and workers about the known hazards that result from hydraulic fracturing and flowback and to offer ways to reduce exposure to these hazards. It leaves discussion of silica-related hazards to publications previously released, including a joint OSHA-NIOSH hazard alert and an OSHA “infosheet.”

The agency makes clear the document does not impose additional legal or compliance obligations on employers beyond existing OSHA standards, regulations, and OSH Act’s general duty clause.

“Fracking” is a process that blasts through underground formations to release oil and natural gas. Flowback, the flow of fluids and hydrocarbons back out of the formations fractured by chemical- and sand-containing fluids, is part of the process. According to OSHA, some 35,000 wells are hydraulically fractured in the United States every year. Fracking is classified as a subsector of the oil and gas extraction industry. The industry experiences a higher fatality rate than most of U.S. general industry; however, no information is publicly available on worker injuries, illnesses, or fatalities connected specifically with fracking or flowback operations.

The OSHA publication, considered a guidance document by the agency, breaks down the fracking operation into three other hazard areas in addition to flowback: (1) transport, rig-up, and rig-down; (2) mixing and injection; and (3) pressure pumping. Each section of the publication on hazard areas includes a comprehensive set of hazard- reduction recommendations.

For instance, the flowback section explains that fluids and materials flowing back at very high pressures from the well may contain debris such as rocks and mud, plugs and other parts, toxic chemicals, oil, water, and sand. A variety of prevention strategies to deal with these pressures and with potentially flammable atmospheres are listed. A separate section suggests ways to prevent exposure to hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic chemicals. A lengthy matrix in an appendix breaks down the job of hydraulic fracking into its multiple steps with their associated hazards.

In an introductory section, OSHA offers pre-job planning advice that includes giving workers stop-work authority if unsafe conditions or practices exist. The agency also advises that “before beginning work, personnel should receive instruction in hazard recognition and safe work practices to reduce the chance of injury on the job site.” OSHA urges employers to develop injury and illness prevention programs.

Finally, a section is dedicated to worker rights, including the right to report injuries or raise safety and health concerns, along with a statement that employees have recourse to OSHA in the event of retaliation.

The full report is entitled “Hydraulic Fracturing and Flowback Hazards Other than Respirable Silica,” U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA 3763-12 2014.

See also the following OSHA reports on “silica sand” exposures to workers:

Silica: Silica Exposure during Hydraulic Fracturing InfoSheet, (OSHA 3622 – 2012) (English: PDF)

Silica: OSHA/NIOSH Hazard Alert – Worker Exposure to Silica during Hydraulic Fracturing, OSHA 3566 – 2012) (English: HTML PDF )

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.

Silica Dust from Frack Sand is a Real Health Hazard for Well Pad Workers

Duane Nichols — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:15:06 +0000

According to reporter Alex Wayne of Business Week, fracking sand dust from the hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas is one of the most dangerous threats to workers on wellpads reports a government safety researcher. Eric Esswein, an industrial hygienist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says that over 75% of air samples show high dust levels. The particles in sand dust created during the fracking process can lodge in the lungs and cause potentially fatal silicosis, he said at a conference sponsored by the Institute of Medicine on April 30^th.

Esswein, whose agency is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his team spent about 225 hours visiting 11 well sites in Colorado, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Texas and North Dakota in 2010 and 2011, with the consent of drilling companies, to examine safety practices. He took air samples from workers and near wellheads, to test for contaminants, and found elevated levels of silica most places. In about one-third of the samples, he said, silica levels were more than 10 times recommendations.

Workers were careful while handling dangerous chemicals and generally knew what to do in the event of emergencies, he said. “There’s a big focus on safety” at well sites, Esswein said. “There isn’t as much emphasis on health. We call it big ‘S’ and little ‘H.’” Esswein said he didn’t know whether the sand dust may be harmful to local residents because his team didn’t take measurements at the edges of well sites. He plans to publish data from his survey in trade and scientific journals this year.

However, according to Steve Everley of Energy In Depth, “When it comes to claims that hydraulic fracturing is causing people to get sick more frequently or more severely, the data simply do not support that conclusion.” His group advocates for drilling-friendly policies on behalf of gas companies including Chesapeake Energy. Workers at gas wells are generally safer than in other businesses, Everley said, pointing to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that show the incidence of non-fatal injuries in the oil and gas extraction industry is less than half the national average.