Study suggests pollution plays an outsized role in western Pennsylvania cancer rates
The analysis, published as a letter to the editor in the journal Environmental Health, used existing data on smoking and cancer rates in 612 counties across the U.S. to estimate what would have happened if everyone in those counties had quit smoking 20 years ago.
The researchers used census data and county-specific data on cancer rates and smoking to estimate how many cancer cases were caused by smoking, then used statistical modeling to estimate how cancer rates would have changed over time if smoking was eliminated.
Related: Cancer in Pittsburgh: Prevention lags as pollution persists
They found that in some counties lung cancer rates would have declined by more than 80 percent, while other counties would have seen a decline of less than 15 percent, with an average reduction of 62 percent. Allegheny County, which encompasses Pittsburgh, would have seen a decline of just 11 percent, putting it in the bottom 2 percent of counties when it comes to the potential for quitting smoking to lower lung cancer rates.
"Very few rural counties had a high residual cancer risk after removing smoking risk, which indicates that air pollution is likely an important piece of this puzzle," David Kriebel, a professor and director of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts and one of the study's authors, told EHN.
Allegheny County in the top 2 percent of counties nationwide
Previous research has already put Allegheny County in the top 2 percent of counties nationwide for cancer risk specifically caused by air pollution. Radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer nationally and is a known factor in western Pennsylvania, as are traffic emissions and unusually high levels of industrial pollution—particularly from coke ovens used by the steel industry, which generate highly carcinogenic emissions. Cancer-causing chemicals in the region's drinking water could be another contributing factor.
The new analysis follows a 2020 paper published in the journal Environmental Health that looked at the impacts of smoking cessation on the rates of lung cancer and 11 other smoking-associated cancers (including esophageal cancer, cancer of the larynx, and stomach and bladder cancer) nationwide. That study, which was conducted by the same group of researchers at Boise State University and the University of Massachusetts, found that about 60 percent of smoking-associated cancers would not have gone away even if no one in the U.S. had smoked cigarettes for the last 20 years, suggesting that environmental factors play a larger role than previously thought.
When the researchers presented their early findings for that study at a symposium on cancer and the environment in Pittsburgh in 2019, local health advocates asked them to look at the same data specifically for lung cancer in Allegheny County. The researchers did, and also created a tool that any U.S. county can use to do the same type of analysis.
They said they hope the tool will help public health departments in places like Allegheny County assess how much of their efforts aimed at reducing local lung cancer rates should be directed toward smoking-related initiatives versus cleaning up the air and reducing other environmental exposures to carcinogens.
"Smoking is obviously a hugely important risk factor when it comes to lung cancer," said Polly Hoppin, one of the study's authors, former Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Environmental Protection Agency, and program director at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts.
"Lowering smoking rates goes a long way toward reducing cancer rates, and we don't want to detract from the importance of those efforts in any way," Hoppin told EHN. "But our analysis does suggest that it's not the only important factor, and that in some places putting resources toward reducing air pollution and other environmental exposures could go even further toward reducing the region's lung cancer rates."
Thinking beyond smoking to tackle cancer
Edgar Thomson Mill in western Pennsylvania. (Credit: Mark Dixon/flickr)
The researchers' previous analysis found that even if Allegheny county eliminated smoking entirely, it would still be in the highest 10 percent of all U.S. counties for these cancers. But most current cancer prevention strategies in the county (and in the U.S. as a whole) are focused on individual behaviors: diet, exercise, and smoking.
"There's no question that these are important causes of cancer," Kriebel said, "but we're concerned over the degree to which we focus on smoking, obesity and exercise may lead people to conclude that the solution to the cancer epidemic lies solely in individual actions and lose sight of how socioeconomic and political decisions could be made that would also help prevent cancer."
Doug Myers, a professor at Boise State University and another of the study's authors, pointed out that other types of cancer that aren't associated with smoking could also be reduced by lowering environmental exposures to cancer-causing chemicals.
"There are lots of other cancer types that aren't related to smoking, and our analysis doesn't address those at all," he said. "So the impacts of lowering environmental exposures on reducing overall cancer rates would likely be even greater."
EHN asked the Allegheny County Health Department whether they had reviewed the study, what portion of their cancer prevention resources are allocated toward smoking cessation vs. environmental factors, and how they're working to protect the residents of Allegheny County from carcinogens in the local environment. A spokesperson wrote they "have no comment to offer."
"If you remove the progress we've seen as a result of people quitting smoking, we've made no headway whatsoever in the so-called war on cancer [at the national level]", Kriebel said. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on tobacco control. But it does mean it's a big mistake to stop there."
Banner photo credit: Revival Vape/flickr
Living near fracking wells is linked to higher rate of heart attacks: Study
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Research, compared heart attack rates in Pennsylvania counties with fracking to demographically similar counties in New York where fracking is banned.
"There's a large body of literature linking air pollution with poor cardiovascular health and heart attacks, but this is really the first study to look at this from a population level related to fracking," Elaine Hill, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center and one of the study's co-authors, told EHN.
Hill and her colleagues looked at hospitalization and mortality records in 47 counties in New York and Pennsylvania from 2005-2014 (the most recent data available at the time the study was initiated) and found that heart attack hospitalization rates were higher on the Pennsylvania side of the border by 1.4–2.8 percent, depending on the average age and density of fracking wells in a given county. Living near a higher density of wells translated to a greater risk of heart attacks.
They also found that middle-aged men living on the Pennsylvania side of the border were 5.4 percent more likely to die of a heart attack than their counterparts in New York. The authors speculate that this link may be stronger in middle-aged men because they're more likely to work in the industry and have higher levels of exposure as a result.
The researchers were not able to control for lifestyle factors like smoking and drinking due to a lack of data, but they did assess demographics at the county-level to ensure they were looking at communities with similar economic and racial makeups on both sides of the border. They analyzed different age groups separately across the counties, and also adjusted for coal production in each county (another factor that can increase heart attack risk) and for rates of access to health insurance, which may influence whether people go to the hospital when having a heart attack.
Drilling rig in PotterCounty, PA. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
While numerous studies have compared economic differences between the two states, this is the first to use this "natural experiment" to compare human health outcomes on both sides of the border. A 2020 study conducted by veterinarians similarly found that horses raised near fracking wells on the Pennsylvania side of the border had higher rates of a rare birth defect than horses raised by the same farmer on the New York side.
Fracking and the increased truck traffic created by the industry raise levels of air pollution significantly, and exposure to air pollution raises heart attack risk. Living near fracking wells is also linked to heightened stress levels, which is another contributor to cardiovascular disease.
Alina Denham, the study's lead author, said their findings are in line with previous research. She pointed to a 2019 paper that found higher levels of physical markers associated with heart attack risk in people who live near fracking. Still she said, "Additional research is needed to figure out exactly how exposure to fracking wells leads to increased heart attack risk."
Fracking is more concentrated in rural communities, many of which lack health care access. The study's authors speculated that this could also contribute to worse cardiovascular health outcomes. Hill said she hopes policymakers will use their findings to create oil and gas policies that protect public health.
"I'm aware that my previous work influenced the ban in New York," Hill said. "I think there are also other policy decisions that can let the industry continue to thrive and let people continue to have these jobs while also ensuring that everybody is more protected. Things like mitigating emissions, recycling waste water—even using electric vehicles instead of diesel to transport materials. There's much room for improvement."
Banner photo: Scott Blauvelt, Director of JKLM Energy Regulatory Affairs and hydrogeologist, explains the release of a plume of pollution to local drinking water supplies from a fracking well pad operated by JKLM in Coudersport, PA. (Credit: © Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald)
U.S. Steel abandons clean tech plans in Pittsburgh region following damning health study
About a week after that study came out, U.S. Steel announced it would renege on its promise to invest $1.5 billion in equipment upgrades that would have substantially lowered harmful emissions at its Pittsburgh-area plants while providing the region with up to 1,000 additional union jobs.
The project was announced to much fanfare in 2019, but in the fall of 2020 during a quarterly earnings call, U.S. Steel's CEO David Burritt said of the funds promised for the project, "The key word in all of this is really the optionality. We can decide to put it in Mon Valley. We can decide to put it somewhere else."
U.S. Steel exercised that "optionality" to purchase a non-union steel making facility in Arkansas that already has better pollution controls in place. It has also promised to eventually shut down some of the most polluting portions of its Pittsburgh operations, which would result in lower emissions. A U.S. Steel spokesperson said reduced operations will take place over the next couple years to avoid job loss.*
"We have invested approximately $400 million since 2018 to secure our future in the Steel City. As we set new horizons for our future, we remain honored that Pittsburgh is our home," a U.S Steel spokesperson wrote in a statement to EHN. "U. S. Steel began its journey making steel in Pittsburgh, and today we optimistically continue this journey with a bright vision for the next generation of sustainable steelmaking."
Health advocates, however, say the new study and this shift in plans epitomize the company's history in the region, revealing an ongoing pattern of sickened residents, ongoing pollution, and broken promises.
"U.S. Steel had the capital to do these projects and they chose to invest the money elsewhere despite making a promise to people in this region," Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of more than 40 environmental advocacy groups in the region, told EHN. "They have a long history of making similar big promises to our communities and then not following through with them."
Residents at risk and in the dark
Christine Panaiia and her family. "It's mind blowing to me that a company of that size would choose not to care for the people in the immediate community living around its facilities." (Credit: Christine Panaiia)
U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works plant, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, converts coal into coke (a key ingredient in steelmaking) by heating it to extremely high temperatures in large ovens called batteries. It's the largest such facility in the U.S. The company is frequently fined—and sued—for illegally high emissions from the site, which contain chemicals including formaldehyde, cadmium, arsenic, and sulfur dioxide, which often makes the region stink of rotten eggs. Exposure to coke oven emissions is linked to cancer, COPD, heart disease, and asthma.
In lieu of the promised equipment upgrades, U.S. Steel announced that in 2023 it will shut down the three oldest, most polluting coke batteries at the Clairton Coke Works, stating in its "open letter to our Pittsburgh family" that the decision is aimed at reducing the company's carbon footprint. The shift will reduce coke production at the facility by about 17 percent, which will also lead to a reduction in emissions (though the extent of that reduction has not yet been quantified).
"I'd look forward to the reduction in air pollution, but 2023 is another couple years down the road where they're continuing to allow toxics to enter into the environment and harm the people who live here," Christine Panaiia, who lives in Jefferson Hills, about four miles from the Clairton Coke Works, told EHN.
Panaiia, a mother of two teenage girls who worked as a project manager for BNY Mellon for 22 years until COVID-19 hit, developed asthma as an adult—soon after moving to Jefferson Hills about 10 years ago. She signed up for an asthma registry through the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's asthma clinic.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health used data from that registry for their recent study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, which determined that asthma patients living within 10 miles of Clairton Coke Works had an 80 percent increased risk of worsened symptoms following a fire on Christmas Eve in 2018 that damaged pollution controls and lead to illegally high levels of emissions for weeks afterwards.
On Christmas Day, 2018, Panaiia was preparing to host 10 members of her extended family for Christmas dinner when she started feeling sick.
"I was trying to get myself ready, get the house organized, and get the food ready, but as the day wore on I was having more and more difficulty breathing," she said. "I felt sluggish and winded and I had to turn to my rescue inhaler. I couldn't understand it—usually with my asthma it's more of a gradual buildup."
She pushed through her discomfort to host her family for the holiday and waited until the next day to call her doctor, who prescribed her a round of steroids to get her asthma under control. It wasn't until several weeks later, when someone from the asthma registry contacted her about it, that she found out about the fire and the increased pollution.
"I was extremely disappointed that I hadn't known about it sooner," Panaiia said. "I have friends in the area who are also asthma sufferers…I heard lots of similar stories from people who have asthma or have kids with asthma who were having trouble breathing right after the fire and had no idea why."
Panaiia and her friends weren't alone. Of the people surveyed by University of Pittsburgh researchers, only 44 percent had heard about the fire.
Smokestacks of US Steel's Clairton Coke Works are visible behind a row of homes in Clairton, PA, in 2018. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"Keep in mind that these were all people who were already part of the registry, so they likely have a heightened awareness about their disease and its triggers," Dr. Sally Wenzel, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute and co-author of the study, told EHN. "I'd guess if you just talked to people on the street, even fewer people in those communities would have been aware that there was a fire and that there was heightened air pollution that could be harmful to their health."
Panaiia said she was frustrated by the news that U.S. Steel had canceled its plans to invest in better equipment at its Pittsburgh facilities.
"It's mind blowing to me that a company of that size would choose not to care for the people in the immediate community living around its facilities," she said. "Assuming they've been following the study the Asthma Institute released, you'd think they'd want to do right by folks who lived and worked at that facility."
The study conducted by Wenzel and her colleagues also found that prior to the fire, asthma patients who live closer to Clairton Coke Works generally had lower lung function than those who live further away.
"If we looked at that group that lived within the 10 mile circle of the plant and those outside, we saw there was a significant decrease in their baseline lung function," James Fabisiak, another co-author of the study and director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, told EHN. He noted that their sample size for this part of the research was small so further research is needed but added, "This implies that asthma severity may be worse for people who live in that particular area."
This is not the first study linking Clairton Coke Works to increased or worsened asthma. In a 2018 study of 1,200 school children, researchers found the asthma rate for kids in Clairton was 18 percent. The national average is 8 percent. Emissions from U.S. Steel's facilities also contribute to the region's higher than average cancer rates.
Several of the communities surrounding the Clairton Coke Works plant are considered environmental justice areas, which the state of Pennsylvania defines as census tracts where at least 20 percent of people live in poverty and/or at least 30 percent are people of color. Environmental and racial equity advocates in the region have cited the high levels of pollution experienced by these communities as an example of environmental injustice. Wenzel noted that their study doesn't include many of the residents in the region who are most at-risk.
"We noticed that in general people who came into the clinic to be seen were more advantaged from a socioeconomic standpoint than people who just filled out the survey," she said. "I think we need to remember that the most vulnerable people out there probably don't have time to come into the ivory tower to get their lung function tested or enroll in health registries, and we know that the most vulnerable people in these communities have worse health outcomes and higher mortality rates."
A history of broken promises
U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works. (Credit: Mark Dixon/flickr)
About a week before announcing that it would nix plans to upgrade its Pittsburgh facilities, U.S. Steel announced plans to pursue a goal of carbon neutrality by the year 2050 and a 25 percent reduction of its carbon footprint by the year 2030.
The Breathe Project said the plan is lacking, citing the fact that the announced plans don't follow Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting standards, the lack of involvement from community stakeholders in the decision-making process, the company's ongoing air quality violations, and U.S. Steel's recent opposition to proposed tightening of coke oven emission regulations during a public comment period.
They also pointed out that the industry has a long history of breaking its environmental promises.
Since as early as 1965, the company has violated clean air laws while continuously promising that it was on the verge of cleaning up its act. In 1975, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified the steel industry as the top industry that was failing to comply with the recently-passed Federal Clean Air Act, specifically citing U.S. Steel as a "problem polluter." A New York Times story from 1975 details the company's battles with federal, state, and county governments over pollution from the Clairton Coke Works—and many of the same pollution issues identified in that article persist today.
"They always identify an excuse. It might be a market downturn. This latest time it's blaming the health department for delays in permitting related to COVID-19 and blaming environmentalists for wanting to improve air quality," Mehalik said. "The reality is it's always been under their control because they decide where to invest their capital."
Throughout the 1980s and 90s during the collapse of the steel industry, U.S. Steel often hinted at the possibility of re-investing in other former plants in the region, including Homestead Steel Works, Duquesne Works and McKeesport Tube Works before ultimately closing those facilities, leaving polluted brownfields in their wake.
In 2008 U.S. Steel promised to invest a billion dollars to replace several coke batteries built in the 1950s, including batteries 1, 2, and 3—the same ones it's now promising to shut down in 2023—but in 2014 they backed away from those plans.
In 2014, the company announced plans to build a new corporate headquarters in the Lower Hill District as part of an initiative to redevelop that region. Two years later they cancelled those plans, too.
In response to questions about this history, U.S. Steel said, "the Mon Valley Works' low-cost operation makes it a vital part of our Best of Both strategy. The facility will continue supply to key customers in the appliance, construction, and service center markets."
Mehalik said this is "not the behavior of an entity that values the community or its workers."
"After 50 years of this, it's time for local leadership to look for a new direction," he said. "Our communities cannot succeed with this approach of misleading and broken promises for the future."
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include U.S. Steel clarification on the timeline of the investments and announcement, and the plan to avoid job loss in the batteries' shutdown.
Banner photo: Erica Butler of the Pediatric Alliance administers an asthma screening to Montaziyah Evans at Clairton Elementary School in Clairton, PA. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Lead detected in 80% of Allegheny County, Pa., water systems: Report
While the federal limit for lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion (ppb), experts—including those at the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—have long warned that there is no safe level of lead in drinking water.
Lead exposure in children damages the brain and nervous system, slows growth and development, and can lower IQ and cause learning, behavior, hearing, and speech problems.
The Pittsburgh-based health advocacy nonprofit Women for a Healthy Environment, sent Right to Know Requests (Pennsylvania's equivalent of Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA requests) to the 36 water systems in the county, asking questions about monitoring, contaminants, lead pipe replacements, staffing and funding, and transparency. Twenty-eight facilities responded in full.
The report states that while 80 percent of those water facilities had detected lead in their drinking water, only 36 percent had lead hazard information on their websites.
Related: There are concerning carcinogens in Western Pennsylvania water
In addition to lead, the report looked at a number of other contaminants including barium, chlorine, PFOS, PFOA, radium, arsenic, nitrates, trihalomethanes, and haloacetic acids, each of which is linked to industrial activities in the region (like oil and gas extraction, steel manufacturing, and other heavy industries).
It found that more than half of the water systems in Allegheny County had some type of water quality-related violation in 2019.
The report "shines a light on the impact of one person's address on the quality of their drinking water, along with how readily able they are to track down information on it," Talor Musil, Health Policy Coordinator for Women for a Healthy Environment, said in a statement.
Environmental injustice
The report pointed to previous research showing that communities of color and low-income communities in Allegheny County are most heavily impacted by lead exposure: According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health's 2018 Childhood Lead Surveillance Annual Report, among children tested for elevated blood lead levels before the age of 6, nearly four times as many Black and Hispanic children tested positive for lead poisoning compared to White children (4.5 percent vs. 1.2 percent).
Previous research has found that these same communities also see higher rates of death from air pollution, pointing to a pattern of environmental injustice.
Lori Rue, manager of the Braddock Water Authority, which serves an "environmental justice area," defined by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection as census tracts where 20 percent or more individuals live in poverty, and/or 30 percent or more of the population is minority, said in a statement "they are grateful to Women for a Healthy Environment for pulling this analysis together."
"We are one of the smaller community water systems, yet still face many of the challenges of larger systems," she added. "The report identifies ways that we can improve our system and across the region."
A call for federal action on lead
Lead levels in Allegheny County water systems. Credit: Women for a Healthy Environment
On December 22, 2020, the EPA released its long-awaited, revised Lead and Copper Rule, but in January the Biden administration paused implementation after environmental groups sued the EPA over the new rule, claiming it would actually loosen existing regulations and reverse progress aimed at protecting children's health.
The Biden EPA is considering strengthening the rule, and Women for a Healthy Environment is among the groups petitioning the agency to lower the federal limit on lead in drinking water from 15 to 10 ppb. The EPA has set a maximum contaminant level goal for lead in drinking water at 0 ppb, but existing regulations must take into account water authorities' limited ability to achieve that goal.
Women for a Healthy Environment's analysis found that about 14 percent of Allegheny County's water systems have lead levels between 10 and 15 ppb. If the proposed revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule move forward, these water systems would be required to replace lead service lines and reduce exposures for consumers.
"There is no safe level of lead in drinking water and this report amplifies the need for health protective action levels," Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, executive director of Women for a Healthy Environment, told EHN.
"The 14 percent of water systems with levels between 10 and 15 ppb will be required under last year's revised federal Lead and Copper Rule to merely develop inventories and replacement plans for lead service lines," she added. "With implementation of the revised Lead and Copper Rule on pause, we are urging the EPA to strengthen the rule by requiring the replacement of all lead service lines when lead levels exceed 10 ppb."
New funding for solutions
Credit: Women for a Healthy Environment
The researchers at Women for a Healthy Environment also gathered data on which water systems have replaced lead lines, and whether they've done partial or full lead line replacements.
Partial line replacements typically only address the portion of water lines beneath a public street or sidewalk but do not address the portion of the lines that go into people's homes. Such replacements can shake loose lead in the sections of pipe that remain, which can temporarily result in significantly higher levels of lead in consumer's drinking water, and does little to protect consumers from lead exposure in the long run.
Before 2017, the Municipal Authorities Act of 1945 made it difficult for water systems in Pennsylvania to perform full lead service line replacements because municipalities could only use public funds to replace public sections of service lines. In October 2017 the state legislature passed and signed HB-674, which undoes that requirement and empowers municipal systems across the state to complete full line replacement if the work "will benefit the public health."
Of the 36 systems Women for a Healthy Environment contacted, eight public systems and three private systems reported doing partial line replacements since 2015, while only five reported doing complete line replacements.
Musil noted that many of the water systems in the region—especially smaller systems in lower-income communities—reported being understaffed or not having enough resources to properly manage testing and ensure optimal water quality for consumers on their own.
"As best practices have emerged across the country, and across our region, this points to the need for greater collaboration among water systems," she said.
The report includes a list of grants and loans available to water authorities for complete line replacements.
Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority, or PennVest, is a state office
that provides grants and loans for infrastructure projects. It's the primary source of support for lead service line replacement in the state of Pennsylvania.
Today, PennVest is expected to announce a new Lead Line Replacement project, which will allocate an additional $90 million for this work in 2021.
Credit: Women for a Healthy Environment
Banner photo credit: Nenad Stojkovic/flickr
Fractura Hidráulica: Sustancias químicas nocivas e incógnitas persiguen a los habitantes de Pensilvania rodeados de fracturación
CONDADO DE WASHINGTON, Pensilvania - En el verano del 2019, Gunnar Bjornson, de 13 años, pasaba la mayoría de los días tocando su batería, jugando a los videojuegos, fastidiando con sus hermanos, deambulando al aire libre y rebuscando comida chatarra en la cocina de su casa, de por sí saludable.
Gunnar es moreno y rubio con ojos azules brillantes y tiene todo el carisma necesario para sobrevivir siendo el menor de los dos hijos del medio en una familia numerosa. Es el animador de la casa, siempre está contando chistes y cayendo en ataques de risa contagiosos.
Gunnar vive con su madre, su padre, sus hermanos mayores y su hermana menor, a unas 35 millas al sur de Pittsburgh, en la comunidad llamada Scenery Hill, donde los estrechos caminos rurales serpentean a través de sombríos bosques que se abren a vistas de campos ondulados en lo alto de las colinas. Las colinas están salpicadas de granjas, huertos frutales y campos de maíz y calabaza. Los bordes de las carreteras están salpicados por pequeñas iglesias blancas, puestos de venta de productos agrícolas y caminos de tierra marcados con letreros pintados a mano como "The Jones's" y "Hidden Family Farm".
Scenery Hill se encuentra en el condado de Washington, el condado con más fracturas en Pensilvania, con aproximadamente 1,584 pozos en sus 861 millas cuadradas, por lo que los idílicos caminos rurales también están flanqueados por señales que indican el tráfico de pozos de petróleo y gas: "Prohibido el tráfico de pozos más allá de este punto, " Área de preparación ----> "," Tráfico de camiones: No roturas de motor "y anuncios que dicen:" ¡Compramos derechos mineros! "
El 19 de agosto del 2019 fue un día típico para Gunnar: tocaba la batería, sacaba al perro fuera y discutía y bromeaba con sus hermanos. Pero sin que él y su familia lo supieran, Gunnar tenía una serie de sustancias químicas nocivas recorriendo su cuerpo.
Una muestra de orina tomada a Gunnar ese día contenía 11 sustancias químicas industriales nocivas, incluyendo benceno, tolueno, naftaleno y sustancias químicas menos conocidas relacionadas con una serie de efectos sobre la salud, como problemas respiratorios y gastrointestinales, irritación de la piel y los ojos, daño en los órganos, daños reproductivos, y mayor riesgo de cáncer.
Estos químicos se encuentran en elementos como la gasolina, los pesticidas, los disolventes y pegamentos industriales, los barnices, las pinturas, los gases de escape de los automóviles, las emisiones industriales y el humo del tabaco. También se detectan comúnmente en las emisiones al aire de los pozos de fracturación.
Gunnar Bjornson en la casa de su familia en Scenery Hill, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
El fracking, otro nombre para la fracturación hidráulica, es el proceso de extraer petróleo y gas de la Tierra, mediante la perforación de pozos profundos y la inyección de líquido a alta presión. Durante la última década, el fracking ha transformado la industria energética estadounidense: -la producción total de petróleo crudo se duplicó con creces entre 2010 a 2020, y el gas natural, que antes escaseaba, es ahora tan abundante que se exporta al extranjero. Pero en ese mismo período de tiempo, las preocupaciones sobre los efectos de la fracturación en la salud han aumentado.
En Texas, los investigadores encontraron que los bebés que nacen cerca de las quemas frecuentes (la quema del exceso de gas natural de los pozos de fracturación) tienen un 50 por ciento más de probabilidades de ser prematuros. En Colorado, el Departamento de Salud del estado encontró que las personas que viven cerca de los sitios de fracturación corren un mayor riesgo de sufrir hemorragias nasales, dolores de cabeza, problemas respiratorios y mareos. En Pensilvania, los investigadores encontraron que las personas que viven cerca del fracking enfrentan mayores tasas de mortalidad infantil, depresión y hospitalizaciones por problemas cutáneos y urinarios. Los estudios de las comunidades que practican la fracturación en todo el país han encontrado que vivir cerca de pozos de fracking aumenta el riesgo de nacimientos prematuros, embarazos de alto riesgo, asma, migrañas, fatiga, síntomas nasales y sinusales, trastornos de la piel e insuficiencia cardíaca; y los estudios de laboratorio han vinculado las sustancias químicas utilizadas en el fluido del fracking con la alteración endocrina, lo que puede causar desequilibrios hormonales, daños reproductivos, pubertad temprana, problemas cerebrales y de comportamiento, función inmunológica inadecuada y cáncer.
"En este momento tenemos pruebas suficientes que estos impactos en la salud deberían de preocupar seriamente a los legisladores interesados en proteger la salud pública", declaró a Environmental Health News (EHN) Irena Gorski Steiner, candidata al doctorado en epidemiología ambiental de la Escuela de Salud Pública Bloomberg de la Universidad de Johns Hopkins.
EHN lleva años informando sobre las crecientes evidencias de los impactos de la fracturación hidráulica en la salud humana. Pero vimos una brecha en la ciencia: casi nadie estaba verificando si los químicos dañinos de la fracturación estaban realmente en los cuerpos de las personas que viven cerca de los pozos. En el 2019, EHN recolectó muestras de orina, junto con muestras de aire y agua, de cinco familias en el suroeste de Pensilvania, incluidos los Bower-Bjornsons, y los hizo analizar en busca de sustancias químicas asociadas con el fracking. Encontramos:
● Sustancias químicas en muestras de agua, aire y orina vinculadas a una amplia gama de impactos nocivos para la salud.
● Sustancias químicas cancerígenas en muestras de aire en niveles que superaban los umbrales de seguridad recomendados.
● Biomarcadores (también denominados productos de degradación o metabolitos) de sustancias químicas nocivas como etilbenceno, estireno y tolueno en los cuerpos de los habitantes del suroeste de Pensilvania en niveles significativamente más altos que los del estadounidense promedio. Por ejemplo, encontramos un biomarcador de tolueno en un niño de 9 años que vivía cerca de los pozos de fracturación a un nivel 91 veces más alto que el nivel observado en el estadounidense promedio.
● Las familias que viven más cerca de los pozos de fracking tenían niveles más altos de sustancias químicas como el 1,2,3-trimetilbenceno, 2-heptanona y naftaleno en su orina que las familias que viven más lejos. La exposición a estos compuestos está relacionada con problemas cutáneos, oculares y respiratorios, enfermedades gastrointestinales, problemas hepáticos, problemas neurológicos, daño renal y del sistema inmunológico, problemas de desarrollo, alteraciones hormonales y un mayor riesgo de cáncer.
LEA AQUÍ SOBRE CÓMO REALIZAMOS NUESTRO ESTUDIO
Recolectamos un total de 17 muestras de orina de Gunnar y su familia durante el verano del 2019. Algunas exposiciones químicas no son detectables en la orina si el cuerpo ya las ha descompuesto, por lo que también buscamos productos de degradación o biomarcadores de sustancias químicas dañinas. La presencia de estas sustancias químicas y de sus biomarcadores en la orina generalmente refleja las exposiciones que se produjeron a los pocos días del muestreo
Algunos de estos biomarcadores tienen otras fuentes además de estas sustancias químicas. Por ejemplo, el ácido trans, trans-mucónico es un biomarcador del benceno, pero el consumo de ácido sórbico (un conservante común de los alimentos) también produce ácido trans, trans-mucónico. El ácido hipúrico es un biomarcador del tolueno, que puede dañar el sistema nervioso o los riñones, pero también se forma cuando el cuerpo procesa el té, el vino y ciertos zumos de frutas. Como resultado, es de esperar que todo el mundo tenga un cierto nivel de estos compuestos en su cuerpo. Para determinar si los niveles que observamos en las familias de Pensilvania eran normales, comparamos los niveles de estos biomarcadores en las familias que analizamos con los niveles observados en el estadounidense promedio utilizando la Encuesta Nacional de Examen de Salud y Nutrición (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) de los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC) de EE.UU.
Muchas de las muestras de orina de la familia Bower-Bjornson contenían biomarcadores de sustancias químicas de fracturación hidráulica en niveles más altos que el percentil 95 de Estados Unidos, valor por debajo del cual se encuentra el 95 por ciento de los estadounidenses, según los datos de los CDC.
Más de la mitad de las muestras de la familia superaron el percentil 95 de E.E.U.U. para el ácido fenilglioxílico, un biomarcador del etilbenceno y estireno, y el 41 por ciento de las muestras de la familia excedieron el percentil 95 de EE. UU. para ácido hipúrico y ácido trans, trans-mucónico, biomarcadores del tolueno y el benceno, respectivamente. La exposición a estos compuestos está relacionada con la irritación de la piel, los pulmones y los ojos, así como con daños al sistema nervioso central, el hígado y el riñón; y con el cáncer.
La muestra de orina de Gunnar contenía un nivel de ácido mandélico, un biomarcador de etilbenceno y estireno, 55 veces más alto que el estadounidense promedio (según los datos de los CDC) y más alto que los niveles que se observan típicamente en el fumador de cigarrillos adulto promedio.
El ácido mandélico no es perjudicial en sí mismo, se utiliza en pequeñas cantidades en algunos medicamentos y productos para el cuidado de la piel, pero la exposición al etilbenceno y al estireno está relacionada con irritaciones en la piel, los ojos y el tracto respiratorio, los daños reproductivos, las alteraciones endocrinas y un mayor riesgo de cáncer.
Hace unos años, cuando la perforación comenzó simultáneamente en tres de las plataformas de pozos de fracturación a unas pocas millas de la casa de los Bower-Bjornson, Gunnar sufría con frecuencia, hemorragias nasales que duraban hasta 20 minutos y le quitaban todo el color de su cara. A veces, tosía con coágulos de sangre. Una vez, recuerda, le sucedió en la escuela y le pidió a su profesor que no se lo contara a su mamá, porque sabía que le preocupaba.
Gunnar sigue teniendo hemorragias nasales, pero son menos frecuentes ahora que los tres pozos están en producción, es decir, que ya no se perforan y fracturan activamente, sino que están produciendo petróleo y gas. No son los únicos tres pozos cercanos. La casa de la familia se encuentra a menos de cinco millas de al menos 25 plataformas de pozos activos, muchos de los cuales contienen múltiples pozos. La plataforma más cercana, propiedad de EQT Corporation, con sede en Pittsburgh, el mayor productor de gas natural del país, alberga 10 pozos operativos.
No hay forma de saber con certeza si las exposiciones de Gunnar y su familia provienen de las emisiones de la fracturación. Buscamos otras fuentes potenciales de exposición visitando su hogar, pidiéndoles que completaran una encuesta extensa y grabando sus actividades en el momento de nuestro muestreo.
En los días en que recolectamos las muestras, la familia se dedicó generalmente a las actividades normales de verano: hacer recados, trabajar en el jardín y holgazanear por la casa. Cuando observamos otras fuentes potenciales de exposición, las anotamos en nuestro informe. Hasta donde sabemos, los Bower-Bjornson no fumaban cigarrillos, no pasaban horas en el tráfico ni consumían cantidades suficientemente grandes de alimentos o productos que contuvieran estos compuestos como para explicar completamente por qué sus niveles de estos compuestos eran mucho más altos que los de la mayoría de los estadounidenses.
La mayor diferencia entre esta familia y el estadounidense promedio: la proximidad de su hogar a los pozos de fracturación.
"Más o menos sabía que estábamos siendo expuestos aquí", dijo la madre de Gunnar, Lois Bower-Bjornson, a EHN, "pero no tenía idea de que fuera a este nivel. Ver esto en papel fue una verdadera revelación ".
También encontramos sustancias químicas nocivas en las muestras de orina de Lois; el 23 de julio de 2019, su muestra contenía el nivel más alto de naftaleno detectado en nuestro estudio. No hay datos nacionales disponibles para comparar su nivel, pero el nivel de naftaleno detectado en la muestra de orina de Lois ese día fue más de 15 veces mayor que el nivel medio que detectamos en otros residentes del suroeste de Pensilvania.
Desde la izquierda, Gunnar, Lois, Odessa, Nels y Kylan en su casa en Scenery Hill, PA. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
"Cuando tomamos muestras de aire y de orina, generalmente no encontramos naftalina a menos que haya una fuente industrial que libere naftaleno muy cerca", dijo a EHN Wilma Subra, una científica ambiental y fundadora de la firma consultora ambiental Subra Company. A través de su firma, Subra lleva décadas realizando estudios similares a los de EHN en comunidades expuestas a sustancias tóxicas. También se desempeñó anteriormente como vicepresidenta del Consejo Asesor Nacional de Política Ambiental de la Agencia de Protección Ambiental (EPA) y recibió una beca MacArthur por su trabajo relacionado con la exposición ambiental.
Todos nos exponemos a diario a innumerables sustancias químicas tóxicas, un subproducto de vivir en un mundo moderno repleto de vehículos, industria pesada, plásticos y pesticidas. El estudio piloto de EHN fue pequeño y se necesita más investigación para determinar las exposiciones y tendencias del fracking. Sin embargo, las exposiciones que encontramos en Gunnar, su familia y otros cuatro hogares del suroeste de Pensilvania sugieren que los aproximadamente 18 millones de estadounidenses que viven a una milla de un pozo de petróleo y gas activo podrían enfrentar niveles superiores al promedio de exposición a sustancias químicas que les perjudican.
Para muchas de esas familias, incluyendo los Bower-Bjornson, la proximidad de la industria a sus hogares no sólo ha generado ansiedad por su salud, sino que también ha dañado su calidad de vida y les ha hecho sentirse desprotegidos y abandonados por las agencias federales y estatales que se supone que deben protegerlos.
Un sueño que se convirtió en pesadilla
Lois Bower-Bjornson en su casa de Scenery Hill, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
El condado de Washington es un 93 por ciento de población blanca y en su mayoría rural, salpicado de antiguos pueblos mineros. La excepción es la sede del condado, una pequeña ciudad con el mismo nombre que el condado que alberga a la Washington & Jefferson College y alrededor del 7 por ciento de los aproximadamente 207,298 residentes del condado. La mayor parte del condado es de clase media. La tasa de pobreza es de alrededor del 10 por ciento, unos pocos puntos más bajo que la tasa de pobreza estatal del 12 por ciento.
La pintoresca casa de campo blanca de los Bower-Bjornson, construida en 1830, fue originalmente el almacén general del pueblo. Las paredes de la gran sala de estar tienen estanterías de piso a techo, y en uno de los estantes, que se ha dejado sin pintar para la posteridad, hay listas de productos, cantidades y precios, y cuentas de lo que parecen ser fichas familiares rayadas con lápiz descolorido.
El resto de las estanterías están llenas de libros, una colección de discos musicalmente diversa y recuerdos de la infancia como dioramas escolares y casas de lego.
Cuando eran una pareja joven, Lois y su esposo Dave vivían en el lado norte de Pittsburgh en las históricas Calles de la Guerra de México (Mexican War Streets), pero después de la llegada de su segundo hijo comenzaron a buscar más espacio. Vieron esta casa en Scenery Hill y se enamoraron de la idea de una idílica vida en el campo.
Se mudaron y matricularon a los niños en una escuela primaria de una sola aula, donde pasaban los días practicando yoga, cultivando el jardín y ayudando a preparar las comidas compartidas. Odessa, el más joven de los cuatro niños, le dijo a EHN: "Es la mejor escuela del mundo".
Gunnar y Odessa juegan en la casa de su familia en Scenery Hill, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
Cuando las empresas de fracturación llegaron en el 2011, los Bower-Bjornson no se preocuparon: vieron una oportunidad para el crecimiento económico. Le concedieron permiso a una compañía para tender líneas de transmisión de gas natural debajo de su propiedad por $ 12,500 (aunque no han arrendado sus derechos mineros). Pero en los años siguientes, la tranquila vida en el campo de la familia se transformó en otra cosa.
Su propiedad estaba rodeada de un voluminoso tráfico de camiones, grandes llamas que salían disparadas hacia el cielo, malos olores, luces brillantes, ruidos fuertes y una costosa rotura de la tubería de gas que atribuyeron al aumento del tráfico. Pronto empezaron a sentirse abrumados y no son los únicos.
En las ciudades de fracturación hidráulica de todo el país, los residentes se han visto en la disyuntiva sobre si arrendar sus tierras y sacar provecho o en luchar contra la industria. Cuando la industria de fracturación industrializa repentinamente zonas que antes eran rurales y suburbanas, las investigaciones han revelado que el sentido del lugar y la identidad de los residentes se ven alterados, y que vivir en medio del fracking puede aumentar la preocupación, la ansiedad y la depresión.
Las preocupaciones sobre la contaminación del agua también han persistido desde el comienzo del auge de la fracturación hidráulica, cuando se hicieron virales las imágenes de agua del grifo de las casas cercanas a las plataformas de pozos que se incendiaba debido a su alto contenido de metano.
Los hermanos Kylan Bjornson y Nels Bjornson en su casa en Scenery Hill, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
Los investigadores han documentado la contaminación del agua potable causada por la fracturación en Pensilvania, Ohio, Dakota del Norte y Wyoming en varios momentos, y en 2016 la EPA concluyó que la industria representaba una amenaza para el suministro de agua de Estados Unidos. Una revisión de la literatura publicada en 2020 analizó una década de investigación sobre los impactos de sólo la eliminación de aguas residuales del fracking y encontró que el agua potable en las comunidades que practican la fracturación hidráulica tiene niveles más altos de sólidos disueltos totales (como calcio, magnesio, cloruros y sulfatos), sal y metano.
Kathleen Sgamma, presidenta de la Western Energy Alliance, un grupo industrial que representa a 200 empresas de petróleo y gas no convencionales que operan en el oeste de EE. UU., declaró a EHN que, si bien las empresas siempre han trabajado para minimizar la posibilidad de que ocurra contaminación en el agua, han realizado algunas mejoras adicionales en los últimos años.
"La integridad de los pozos lleva décadas mejorando y casi todos los estados con mayor presencia de petróleo y gas han endurecido sus normas de fracturación, por lo que el riesgo de contaminación de las aguas subterráneas sigue siendo muy bajo", dijo Sgamma. "Cuando observamos el manejo del agua en la superficie, es generalmente ahí donde pueden ocurrir los derrames. Es raro que las aguas superficiales se contaminen, pero cuando esto sucede, tiene que ser remediado y las empresas son responsables de ello ".
"Nadie quiere tener un derrame por varias razones", añadió. "Uno, porque cuesta mucho más dinero limpiar un derrame que prevenirlos desde el principio, y dos, porque puede dañar la reputación de una empresa". Agregó que las empresas han mejorado su capacidad para reciclar las aguas residuales, lo que resulta en un menor uso de agua dulce y ayuda a explicar algunos de los problemas de vertido que se han producido.
El agua de Bower-Bjornson proviene del sistema municipal local, Tri County Joint Municipal Authority, que da servicio a más de 10,000 clientes en el sureste del condado de Washington. Durante los últimos años, la familia Bower-Bjornson ha recibido avisos de la autoridad municipal del agua y de la Oficina de Agua Potable del Departamento de Protección Medioambiental de Pensilvania (DEP) en los que se indica que el agua municipal contiene contaminantes químicos no regulados, como ácidos haloacéticos, trihalometanos totales, nitratos y compuestos inorgánicos, entre otros. Los avisos advierten que las personas embarazadas, con hijos, con el sistema inmunológico comprometido o de edad avanzada deben consultar con un médico antes de beber el agua del grifo.
La industria del petróleo y el gas es una fuente probable de estos contaminantes, junto con la minería y otras industrias pesadas. Algunos contaminantes, como los trihalometanos, se forman cuando los contaminantes del agua de origen interactúan con químicos utilizados para su tratamiento.
Marcas para el crecimiento de los niños en el hogar de Bower-Bjornson. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
Sydney Evans, una analista científica del Grupo de Trabajo Ambiental (Environmental Working Group), una organización sin fines de lucro para la defensa de la salud pública dijo a EHN, en los últimos 20 años se han actualizado pocas regulaciones federales o estatales sobre el agua, por lo que existe una brecha entre lo que es legal y lo que es seguro.
"Las personas tienden a dar por sentada la seguridad de su agua del grifo porque está siendo monitoreada, probada y tratada", dijo Evans. "Pero es importante que la gente se dé cuenta de que legal no necesariamente significa segura".
La mayor parte del agua potable pública en la región proviene del río Monongahela (o "el Mon", en la jerga local). En el 2014, el DEP encontró sustancias químicas radiactivas en niveles 60 veces más altos a los permitidos por los estándares federales de consumo en Ten Mile Creek, cerca de la casa de los Bower-Bjornson, que desemboca en el Mon, y muchos lugareños creen que las aguas residuales de la fracturación son la fuente.
El año pasado, se descubrió que una planta municipal de aguas residuales en las cercanías de Belle Vernon estaba aceptando y vertiendo sin saberlo, lixiviados de fracturación procedentes de un vertedero cercano que contenían altos niveles de cloruros, bario y radio en niveles superiores a los permitidos por las normas federales de agua potable en el Mon- uno de los muchos casos similares en todo el estado.
A principios del verano del 2019, EHN recolectó muestras de agua en tres lugares de la casa de la familia Bower-Bjornson: en el grifo de la cocina filtrado por ósmosis inversa, en el grifo de la bañera y en el grifo exterior de la manguera. Encontramos niveles detectables de 20 de las 40 sustancias químicas comúnmente utilizadas en la fracturación hidráulica que buscamos en las muestras de al menos uno de esos lugares, incluyendo el benceno, que se sabe que aumenta el riesgo de cáncer, y el naftaleno, que está catalogado como "posiblemente cancerígeno para humanos" por la EPA.
Existen límites regulatorios federales para sólo cinco de los 40 químicos que analizamos, y las muestras de agua de la familia no excedieron esos límites. Algunos estados establecen límites de advertencia de salud para las sustancias químicas que no están reguladas oficialmente. Vermont recomienda no más de 0,5 microgramos por litro de naftalina en el agua potable para evitar efectos sobre la salud, incluyendo un mayor riesgo de cáncer. Los Bower-Bjornson tenían 5,83 microgramos por litro de naftalina en el agua, casi 12 veces más alto que el límite de recomendación de salud de Vermont. La Autoridad Municipal Conjunta de Tri-County se negó a comentar sobre estos hallazgos.
Lois, que ha estado rastreando los síntomas de los niños desde que comenzó la perforación, dijo que ver los resultados de estas pruebas confirmó lo que ya temía.
"[La Fracturación] simplemente nos abarca por completo", dijo. "No es como si pudiéramos mirar a nuestra derecha o izquierda y decir que no está ahí. Y dondequiera que vayan, a la escuela o donde sea, también está allí ".
Beneficios económicos en cuestión
Una plataforma de perforación de fracturación hidráulica en el oeste de Pensilvania durante la noche. (Crédito: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
La fracturación hidráulica sí aporta beneficios económicos, al menos temporalmente. Un artículo publicado en el 2019 en American Economic Journal: Applied Economics encontró que en los primeros tres años de auge, las comunidades con fracking generalmente ven aumentar los ingresos totales en alrededor del 3 al 6 por ciento, el empleo aumenta en alrededor del 4 al 6 por ciento y los salarios aumentan en alrededor del 5 por ciento al 11 por ciento. Los precios de la vivienda aumentan alrededor del 6 por ciento, mientras que los gobiernos locales ven un aumento del 16 por ciento en los ingresos.
Teniendo en cuenta tanto el aumento de los ingresos como la disminución de la calidad de vida (por factores como el aumento de las tasas de delincuencia, el tráfico de camiones y la contaminación), los autores de ese estudio concluyeron que en las regiones donde se practica la fracturación hidráulica en todos los yacimientos de esquisto de EE. UU., la industria dio como resultado un promedio de ganancia neta de aproximadamente 2,500 dólares por hogar en los tres primeros años, aunque en algunas comunidades las ganancias fueron mucho mayores y otras no vieron ninguna.
Con el tiempo, estos impactos en las economías locales disminuyen. Un estudio publicado en febrero del 2021 por el Instituto del Valle del Río Ohio (Ohio River Valley Institute), un grupo de expertos sin fines de lucro, reveló que si bien la producción económica en los condados de los Apalaches donde se practica el fracking creció un 60 por ciento entre 2008 y 2019, la participación de los condados en los ingresos personales, los puestos trabajo y todos los niveles de población de la nación disminuyeron.
El estudio analizó los 22 condados de Ohio, Pensilvania y Virginia Occidental que producen más del 90 por ciento del gas natural de la región. En 2008, esos condados fueron responsables de $ 2,46 de cada $ 1,000 de producción económica nacional. Para 2019, los condados generaban $ 3.31 de cada $ 1,000 generados a nivel nacional, un aumento de más del triple de la tasa de crecimiento nacional. Pero durante el mismo período, la participación de esos condados en el ingreso personal de la nación se redujo en un 6,3 por ciento, su participación en el empleo se redujo en un 7,5 por ciento y su participación en la población de la nación se redujo en un 9,7 por ciento. El análisis concluyó que alrededor del 90 por ciento de la riqueza creada a partir de la extracción de gas de esquisto sale de las comunidades locales.
De los tres estados que analizados en el informe, el Pensilvania mostró las mejores medidas de prosperidad, y algunos condados de Pensilvania obtuvieron mejores resultados que otros; el condado de Washington fue el mejor, con una tasa de crecimiento de los ingresos personales que superó ligeramente el crecimiento nacional y un crecimiento del empleo igual a la tasa nacional, mientras que cinco de los otros siete condados de Pensilvania obtuvieron muy pocos puestos de trabajos o experimentaron pérdidas.
Diana Irey Vaughan, presidenta de la Junta de Comisionados del Condado de Washington, comentó que la industria ha transformado la economía local.
"La industria del petróleo y el gas ha tenido un tremendo impacto positivo en nuestra economía", comentó Vaughan a EHN. "Por ejemplo, del 2000 a 2018, nuestro ingreso medio aumentó de $ 47,287 a $ 78,895". También se refirió a un informe de la Oficina de Trabajo y Estadísticas de EE. UU. que situaba al condado de Washington en el tercer lugar de la nación en cuanto al crecimiento del empleo entre 2010 y 2011, justo al comienzo del auge del fracking en la región.
Vaughan dijo que el condado de Washington ha podido mantener bajos los impuestos a la propiedad en parte debido a las tarifas que el condado recibe de la industria del petróleo y el gas.
Desde el 2012, la industria ha tenido que pagar una "tarifa de impacto" por cada plataforma de pozos en Pensilvania para ayudar a cubrir sus impactos negativos. Esas tarifas se distribuyen a los gobiernos estatales y locales, que suelen utilizarlas para proyectos de infraestructura, seguridad pública y preparación para emergencias.
Los defensores del medio ambiente afirman que las tarifas son demasiado bajas para abordar todos los problemas medioambientales que provoca la industria. Pero muchos gobiernos locales dependen de las tarifas. El dinero recaudado de las tarifas de impacto en Pensilvania se redujo en 2019, pero el condado de Washington siguió recaudando $6.6 millones, más que cualquier otro condado del estado.
"Esto nos ha permitido avanzar en proyectos de capital sin tomar dinero de nuestros fondos generales o de los impuestos", dijo Vaughan. Añadió que el condado también ha vendido contratos de arrendamientos de minerales en propiedades del condado, como parques, aeropuertos y recintos feriales, y ha utilizado los pagos de arrendamiento y regalías para realizar mejoras en esas propiedades.
Vista aérea de la planta de procesamiento de gas natural Mark West en el condado de Washington, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
A diferencia de muchos otros estados, Pensilvania no cobra una indemnización por despido de los operadores de petróleo y gas. En Texas, por ejemplo, el estado recaudó $1,69 billones en impuestos y tarifas de la producción de gas natural, más de ocho veces más que los aproximadamente $200 millones que Pensilvania recaudó en tarifas de impacto el mismo año. El gobernador demócrata de Pensilvania, Tom Wolf, ha intentado en repetidas ocasiones promulgar un impuesto de indemnización a la industria del gas natural, pero esos esfuerzos han sido frustrados por la legislatura controlada por los republicanos, cuyos miembros dicen que obstaculizará el crecimiento de la industria y dañará las economías locales.
Muchos legisladores estatales siguen creyendo que la industria ha sido buena para Pensilvania. "Es la industria más grande que ha venido a Pensilvania en los últimos 50 años", dijo a EHN el senador republicano Gene Yaw, que preside el Comité de Recursos Ambientales y Energía del Senado estatal. "Intentamos que Amazon viniera a Pittsburgh o a Filadelfia y estuvimos elaborando programas que sumaban miles de millones de dólares en subsidios. La industria del gas ya está aquí y han pedido muy poco ".
Yaw ha promovido numerosas leyes destinadas a ayudar a la industria a expandirse en Pensilvania, y también ha intentado impedir que los estados con prohibiciones de fracturación hidráulica compren el gas natural de Pensilvania. También arrienda sus propios derechos mineros: su declaración financiera del 2018 mostró que recibió ingresos de cinco compañías de perforación a través de arrendamientos en tierras que posee (pero en las que no vive).
En lo que respecta a la creación de empleo, Kathy Hipple, analista financiera del Instituto de Economía Energética y análisis Financiero (IEEFA) Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis) IEEFA y profesora de finanzas en Bard College, dijo que numerosos estudios han demostrado que la industria a menudo promete en exceso la cantidad de empleos permanentes que creará.
"Especialmente en la región de Pittsburgh, ha habido una búsqueda casi desesperada de la próxima industria del acero porque se recuerda como un momento realmente grandioso en la historia de Pittsburgh", dijo Hipple a EHN. "Pero la realidad del negocio de la fractura hidráulica es que al principio hay muchos trabajos para la construcción que a menudo los ocupan personas que no son del área local. Debido a los avances tecnológicos, por los que la industria debería ser aplaudida en cierto sentido, ya que se ha vuelto bastante competente en la producción de petróleo y gas, las etapas posteriores no requieren mucha mano de obra, ya sea local o fuera de la ciudad. "
Odessa Bjornson y Damien Shaffer juegan en la casa de Bower-Bjornson en Scenery Hill, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
El Instituto Estadounidense del Petróleo ha afirmado que la industria respalda casi 500,000 empleos en Pensilvania, pero los datos de los departamentos laborales estatales y federales muestran que en realidad hay alrededor de unos 26,000 empleos relacionados con la fracturación hidráulica en el estado. En todo el estado, esto significa que la industria ni siquiera se encuentra entre los 50 sectores principales que emplean a residentes de Pensilvania.
"Los casi 500.000 puestos de trabajo, extraídos de un análisis realizado por PwC [PricewaterhouseCoopers], representan el total de puestos de trabajo de la industria respaldados en Pensilvania, incluyendo el refinado, el transporte y distribución, y no sólo los puestos de trabajo de perforación, producción y desarrollo", dijo a EHN Emily Smith, portavoz del Instituto Americano del Petróleo, en un correo electrónico, y añadió que los datos de la Oficina de Estadísticas Laborales sólo incluyen los puestos de trabajos asalariados, lo que excluye a los contratistas privados. "Según la Oficina de Análisis Económico de Estados Unidos, los empleos asalariados sólo representan aproximadamente el 30 por ciento del sector de extracción de petróleo y gas ... a nivel nacional".
Algunas investigaciones sugieren que la relación costo-beneficio final de la industria en realidad puede ser negativa. Un estudio de 2019 realizado por investigadores de las universidades de Princeton, Carnegie Mellon y Stanford estimó que la contaminación del aire de la industria del fracking causó entre 1.200 y 4.600 muertes prematuras en los campos de esquisto de Marcellus y Utica que abarcan Pensilvania, Ohio y Virginia Occidental entre 2004 y 2016. Durante el mismo período de tiempo, la industria creó un impulso económico regional de aproximadamente $ 21 billones de dólares, pero esas ganancias se vieron eclipsadas por $ 23 billones en costos de atención médica pública relacionados con esas muertes prematuras.
Mientras tanto, como resultado de la recesión provocada por la pandemia del COVID-19, la industria del petróleo y el gas a nivel nacional perdió más de 100.000 puestos de trabajo el año pasado.
En el aire
Lois Bower-Bjornson se encuentra frente a una plataforma de pozos de fracturación hidráulica en construcción en el condado de Washington, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Kristina Marusic para Environmental Health News)
Lois, que es alta y esbelta con cabello oscuro, piel pálida y ojos grandes y luminosos, trabajó como modelo y bailarina profesional antes de tener hijos. Todavía se mueve por el mundo como una bailarina; a menudo está en movimiento y es propensa a pararse sobre una pierna con el pie opuesto apoyado casualmente contra su rodilla como un flamenco.
Además de impartir varias clases de danza y yoga a la semana en su granero convertido en estudio de danza, Lois también dirige un negocio de limpieza ecológica residencial y trabaja como organizadora pagada a tiempo parcial para el Clean Air Council, algo que se sintió obligada a hacer, después de estar cada vez más alarmada por el aparente impacto que el fracking estaba teniendo en la calidad del aire de la región.
El proceso de fracturación suele implicar hasta 1,000 químicos, incluyendo disolventes, tensioactivos, detergentes y biocidas, y los estudios de monitoreo del aire han detectado más de 100 químicos en las emisiones atmosféricas de los desplazamientos, como benceno, tolueno, etilbenceno, xileno y mercurio. Un estudio de 2019 encontró que la contaminación del aire de los pozos de fracturación hidráulica específicamente mató a unas 20 personas en Pensilvania entre el 2010 y el 2017, y que se pueden detectar niveles de contaminación del aire más superiores al promedio hasta seis millas a favor del viento de una plataforma de pozos.
Durante el verano de 2019, cuando EHN recolectó muestras de orina de los Bower-Bjornsons, también les pedimos que usaran monitores de aire personales. Cada miembro de la familia usó un monitor de aire conectado a una bomba que imita la respiración al aspirar aire durante seis a ocho horas antes de la recolección de sus dos primeras muestras de orina. (En una tercera fecha, recolectamos una muestra de orina adicional sin ningún tipo de monitoreo del aire). Las muestras se analizaron para detectar la presencia de 40 sustancias químicas que, según los estudios de monitoreo del aire se emiten con frecuencia durante la fracturación.
El 6 de agosto del 2019, el monitor de aire de Gunnar registró los niveles más altos de n-propilbenceno como de 1,3,5-trimetilbenceno detectados entre el total de 39 muestras de aire que EHN recogió en cinco hogares del suroeste de Pensilvania. Gunnar ayudó a su papá a pintar y raspar pisos de vinilo en su estudio de sonido ese día, lo que podría haber contribuido a estas exposiciones. El mismo día, el monitor de aire de Lois registró los niveles más altos de hexanal, etilciclohexano y octanos observados en nuestro estudio. Ese día limpió dos casas con productos de limpieza "ecológicos", lo que podría haber contribuido a estas exposiciones.
Niños de Bjornson en movimiento. (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
Solo unos cuantos de estos químicos tienen límites legales o incluso directrices no ejecutables basadas en la salud, la mayoría de las cuales se refieren a exposiciones a corto plazo en el lugar de trabajo. Las muestras de aire de la familia Bower-Bjornson excedieron una pauta estatal para tres sustancias químicas: los límites recomendados para la exposición al benceno, el etilbenceno y el naftaleno establecidos por la Oficina de Evaluación de Peligros para la Salud Ambiental de California (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment) para mantener el riesgo de cáncer por debajo de uno en un millón.
"Siempre es un poco difícil interpretar lo que se entiende por 'exceso de riesgo de cáncer'", dijo a EHN James Fabisiak, toxicólogo de la Escuela de Salud Pública de la Universidad de Pittsburgh. "A veces se utiliza uno entre un millón como punto de referencia para un riesgo insignificante, pero la mayoría de nosotros no tenemos un riesgo tan bajo. No creo que la EPA tome o recomiende acciones hasta que los riesgos se sitúen entre uno de cada 10,000 y uno de cada 100,000. Existe una zona gris entre lo que equivale a un 'riesgo nulo' y lo que equivale a un 'riesgo procesable' "
Fabisiak también comparó los hallazgos de monitoreo del aire de EHN con los de dos grandes encuestas que midieron compuestos orgánicos volátiles en hogares promedio en los Estados Unidos, y encontró que la mayoría de los niveles detectados en los monitores del aire de los Bower-Bjornson estaban dentro de los rangos encontrados en esos estudios, aunque algunos compuestos estaban cerca del extremo superior.
"Si supiera que estas concentraciones están ahí todo el tiempo en mi propia casa", dijo, "podría pensar en cómo podría volver a acercarlas al promedio".
Fabisiak agregó que, si bien el riesgo asociado al nivel de cada compuesto individual puede no ser un problema, los niveles altos de numerosos compuestos dentro del mismo hogar tienen un efecto aditivo, ya que se combinan entre sí e interactúan con el estilo de vida y los factores genéticos de formas impredecibles, lo que amplía el riesgo general.
"Eso es especialmente cierto en el caso de los contaminantes del aire que afectan a enfermedades comunes como el asma y el cáncer", explicó Fabisiak.
Los Bower-Bjornsons y otros residentes del condado de Washington también se han preocupado de que el aumento de la contaminación del aire debido a la fracturación les haga más vulnerables al COVID-19. En la primavera de 2020, la organización de defensa de la salud comunitaria sin fines de lucro, Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project * (que ayudó a poner en contacto a EHN con las familias que estaban interesadas en participar en nuestra investigación) llevó a cabo una revisión informal de la literatura sobre la contaminación del aire y las infecciones respiratorias para ayudar a educar a los residentes del suroeste de Pennsylvania sobre los vínculos entre ambos.
"Basándonos en lo que hemos visto en numerosos estudios que han tratado enfermedades similares al COVID-19, sabemos que una mayor exposición a la contaminación por partículas empeora los síntomas de las enfermedades pulmonares infecciosas", comentó a EHN Alison Steele, directora ejecutiva del Proyecto de Salud Ambiental del Suroeste de Pensilvania (Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project).
Lecciones aprendidas
Un activista usa una mascarilla para protestar por la mala calidad del aire causada por el fracking, antes del COVID-19, en una reunión comunitaria de 2019 en Braddock, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Kristina Marusic para Environmental Health News)
Lois no es ajena a la historia de extracción industrial de la región. Creció en Fredericktown, un pueblo minero de carbón cercano, y dividía su tiempo entre el hotel que construyeron sus abuelos y la antigua destilería de manzanas que construyeron sus tatarabuelos.
Ella y los niños del vecindario solían ver las barcazas de carbón flotar río abajo y montar en los buggies por los vertederos de escorias, montones de desechos tóxicos y escombros generados por el procesamiento del carbón. También nadaban en el río, a pesar de que a veces estaba aceitoso debido a los residuos industriales, las aguas residuales vertidas por las tuberías municipales y las ratas de río abundaban.
"Sabíamos que podría ser dañino, pero los padres de muchas personas eran mineros del carbón que el daño potencial parecía una parte normal de la vida", dijo.
Ella ve que esas mismas actitudes persisten en lo que respecta al fracking, y especialmente cuando se trata del inminente auge petroquímico en la región.
En el 2016, Royal Dutch Shell comenzó la construcción de un enorme craqueador de etano en el condado de Beaver, a unas 33 millas al noroeste de Pittsburgh y a 57 millas al norte de Scenery Hill. La planta, que ya está casi terminada, acabará convirtiendo un enorme volumen de gas natural y líquidos en 1.8 millones de toneladas de polietileno al año para su uso en la fabricación de plásticos. Es una de las cinco instalaciones de este tipo que se han propuesto en la región de la cuenca de los Apalaches que abarca Pensilvania, Ohio y Virginia Occidental, aunque todas ellas, excepto el proyecto de Shell, se han suspendido indefinidamente debido a las condiciones desfavorables del mercado.
Cuatro de los emplazamientos propuestos se sitúan directamente junto al río Ohio o a uno de sus afluentes, y cada instalación demandará líquidos de gas natural de aproximadamente 1,000 nuevos pozos de fracturación al año, según los investigadores de la Universidad de Duquesne. Un corredor petroquímico similar en Luisiana tiene una de las peores contaminaciones en el aire y los mayores índices de cáncer del país, lo que ha hecho que la región sea apodada como "El Callejón del Cáncer".
Sitio de construcción del cracker de etano Shell en el condado de Beaver, Pensilvania. (Crédito: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
El suroeste de Pensilvania ya tiene problemas de cáncer. La región tiene tasas más altas que el promedio de los tipos de cáncer asociados con la contaminación del aire, y en 2019, el Pittsburgh Post-Gazette documentó 27 casos de sarcoma de Ewing, un cáncer de huesos y tejidos blandos de uno en un millón, en los condados de Washington, Greene, Fayette y Westmoreland durante la última década. Estos condados combinados tienen una población de aproximadamente 750,000 habitantes y es donde ocurre la mayoría de la fracturación hidráulica del estado, y en medio de las preocupaciones sobre el mal manejo de los desechos radiactivos de la industria del petróleo y el gas, los residentes han exigido respuestas a los funcionarios electos. Las investigaciones están en curso, pero hasta ahora no se ha confirmado ningún vínculo entre los cánceres raros y la industria del petróleo y el gas.
Shell solicitó permisos de contaminación del aire que fueron aprobados en el 2015, pero presentó una nueva solicitud de permiso en febrero del 2020 que busca niveles de emisiones más bajos para algunos contaminantes, pero niveles mucho más altos de otros, incluidos los gases de efecto invernadero.
Durante años, los ambientalistas locales, los miembros de la comunidad y los grupos indígenas han luchado para detener la expansión petroquímica, pero a pesar de sus esfuerzos, y de las advertencias de los analistas financieros de que la industria no es una inversión viable a largo plazo, muchos legisladores locales han acogido con satisfacción los puestos de trabajo que la industria promete.
"En los años 70 y principios de los 80 vimos la desaparición de la industria del acero y lo que supuso para nuestra economía: vimos cómo nuestros amigos y familiares se marchaban porque los puestos de trabajo habían desaparecido", dijo a EHN el representante demócrata del estado de Pensilvania, Robert Matzie. El distrito de Matzie está adyacente al sitio del cracker de etano de Shell, y Matzie fue uno de los pocos demócratas de Pensilvania que apoyó el proyecto desde el principio. "Como legisladores, tenemos que sopesar y equilibrar la protección del medio ambiente, así como también la creación de buenos empleos que aprovechen nuestros recursos naturales, y creo que podemos tener ambos".
Matzie dijo que se proyecta que la planta creará de 10,000 a 15,000 empleos en un radio de 50 millas. Al mismo tiempo, dijo que algunos de sus electores temen convertirse en otro "Callejón del Cáncer".
"Vivo a un tiro de piedra del lugar", dijo Matzie. "Mi familia y yo tenemos que beber esa agua y respirar ese aire también". Agregó que cree que esta planta será diferente porque es más nueva que las de Louisiana y utilizará la mejor tecnología disponible para minimizar los impactos ambientales.
En el pasado, Matzie también introdujo una legislación destinada a mantener los pozos de fracturación hidráulica al menos a 4.000 pies de distancia de presas y embalses en un intento de proteger el depósito de agua de su propio distrito. Hasta ahora no ha tenido éxito.
Lois Bower-Bjornson no es ajena a la historia de extracción industrial de la región. "Sabíamos que podría ser dañino, pero los padres de muchas personas eran mineros del carbón que el daño potencial parecía una parte normal de la vida". (Crédito: Connor Mulvaney para Environmental Health News)
"Ahora mismo se puede perforar en medio de una fuente de agua dulce", dijo. "Tengo un problema con eso. Puede mostrarme toda la tecnología que dice que es segura; pero todavía sigo sin querer verla ".
En lugar de esa legislación, Matzie dice que ayudó a negociar protecciones adicionales para el depósito del gasoducto de gas natural que alimentará el craqueador de etano de Shell, cosas como un revestimiento de acero más grueso y un acceso más fácil a las válvulas de cierre de emergencia, trabajando directamente con la empresa.
"Shell dio un paso al frente y fue más allá de la política y los estatutos actuales para el gasoducto", dijo, y agregó que también ha defendido los proyectos de energía solar, se desempeña como copresidente del grupo de energía nuclear del estado y da la bienvenida a cualquier industria que traiga puestos trabajo a su distrito.
Este tema puede ser complejo para los políticos, pero, para Gunnar, de 13 años, parece sencillo.
No le gusta que le sangre la nariz, no le gusta que su madre se preocupe y le preocupa el cambio climático, al que sabe que contribuye el fracking. "La única razón por la que la gente no cree que el cambio climático sea real es porque le tienen miedo", dijo a EHN. "Creo que el fracking es ruidoso, molesto, imprudente y algo idiota. Ojalá pudiéramos mudarnos solo para poder dormir un poco ".
Vaughan, presidenta de la Junta de Comisionados del Condado de Washington, dijo que rara vez escucha a personas que han experimentado impactos negativos de la industria. Reconoció las preocupaciones de la comunidad por los grupos de cáncer infantil, pero dijo: "No hemos visto pruebas científicas de que exista una correlación entre ambos" y señaló otros emplazamientos industriales en la región que podrían estar contribuyendo a posibles exposiciones ambientales.
"Hay momentos en los que tienes inconvenientes con el ruido, las luces o los camiones", agregó, "pero creo que la mayoría de los habitantes en el condado de Washington han estado dispuestos a tolerar estas cosas por el mayor beneficio", dijo. "Esta zona también era muy rica en reservas de carbón y anteriormente había acogido la minería en nuestra región. Antes de eso, también teníamos la industria del acero. Así que creo que esta región acepta más este tipo de inconvenientes que otras regiones debido a nuestra historia ".
Lois lo ve de otra manera.
"Es casi un rasgo genético extraño entre las personas de esta región, que esto sea siempre lo que hacemos", dijo Lois. "Seguimos volviendo una y otra vez, cambiando nuestra salud por puestos de trabajos. ¿En qué momento se aprende la lección y no se sigue haciendo lo mismo una y otra vez? "
* El Proyecto de Salud Medioambiental del Sudoeste de Pensilvania y la EHN reciben fondos de Heinz Endowments.
Traducido del inglés al español por Katia Rodríguez Cabreja, Bronx, NY, 28 de marzo 2021
Fractured: Harmful chemicals and unknowns haunt Pennsylvanians surrounded by fracking
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—In the summer of 2019, 13-year-old Gunnar Bjornson spent most days banging on his drums, playing video games, antagonizing his siblings, wandering outdoors, and scrounging for junk food in his home's mostly healthy kitchen.
Gunnar is tan and blond with bright blue eyes and all the charisma required to survive being the younger of two middle children in a big family. He's the household entertainer, constantly cracking jokes and falling into contagious giggling fits.
Gunnar lives with his mom, dad, older brothers and younger sister about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh in the aptly-named community of Scenery Hill, where narrow country roads wind through shady woods that open up onto hilltop vistas of rolling fields. The hills are peppered with farmhouses, fruit orchards, and fields of corn and squash. The roadsides are punctuated by little white churches, farm stands, and dirt driveways marked with hand-painted signs like "The Jones's" and "Hidden Family Farm."
Scenery Hill is in Washington County, the most heavily fracked county in Pennsylvania, with about 1,584 wells in its 861 square miles, so the idyllic country roads are also flanked with signs directing oil and gas well traffic: "No well traffic beyond this point," "Staging area ---->," "Truck traffic: No engine breaks," and ads that read, "We buy mineral rights!"
August 19, 2019, was a typical day for Gunnar—he played drums, took the dog outside, and argued and joked with his siblings. But unbeknownst to him and his family, Gunnar had a number of harmful chemicals coursing through his body.
A urine sample taken from Gunnar that day contained 11 harmful industrial chemicals, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and lesser-known chemicals linked to a range of health effects including respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, skin and eye irritation, organ damage, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk.
These chemicals are found in things like gasoline, pesticides, industrial solvents and glues, varnishes, paints, car exhaust, industrial emissions, and tobacco smoke. They're also commonly detected in air emissions from fracking wells.
Gunnar Bjornson in his family's Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Fracking, another name for hydraulic fracturing, is the process of extracting oil and gas from the Earth by drilling deep wells and injecting liquid at high pressure. Over the last decade, fracking has transformed the U.S. energy industry—total crude oil production more than doubled from 2010 to 2020, and natural gas, once in short supply, is now so over-abundant it's exported overseas. But in that same time period, concerns about the health effects of fracking have escalated.
In Texas, researchers found that babies born near frequent flaring—the burning off of excess natural gas from fracking wells—are 50 percent more likely to be premature. In Colorado, the state Department of Health found that people living near fracking sites face elevated risk of nosebleeds, headaches, breathing trouble, and dizziness. In Pennsylvania, researchers found that people living near fracking face increased rates of infant mortality, depression, and hospitalizations for skin and urinary issues. Studies of fracking communities throughout the country have found that living near fracking wells increases the risk of premature births, high-risk pregnancies, asthma, migraines, fatigue, nasal and sinus symptoms, skin disorders and heart failure; and laboratory studies have linked chemicals used in fracking fluid to endocrine disruption—which can cause hormone imbalance, reproductive harm, early puberty, brain and behavior problems, improper immune function, and cancer.
"We have enough evidence at this point that these health impacts should be of serious concern to policymakers interested in protecting public health," Irena Gorski Steiner, an environmental epidemiology doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Environmental Health News (EHN).
EHN has reported on this increasing evidence of fracking's impacts on human health for years. But we saw a gap in the science—almost no one was checking to see if harmful fracking chemicals were actually in the bodies of people living near wells. In 2019, EHN collected urine samples, along with air and water samples, from five families in southwestern Pennsylvania, including the Bower-Bjornsons, and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking. We found:
- Chemicals in water, air and urine samples that are linked to a wide range of harmful health impacts
- Cancer-causing chemicals in air samples at levels that exceeded recommended safety thresholds
- Biomarkers (also referred to as breakdown products or metabolites) for harmful chemicals like ethylbenzene, styrene, and toluene in the bodies of southwestern Pennsylvanians at levels significantly higher than the average American. For example, we found a biomarker for toluene in a 9 year-old boy living near fracking wells at a level 91 times as high as the level seen in the average American
- Families that live closer to fracking wells had higher levels of chemicals like 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene, 2-heptanone, and naphthalene in their urine than families that live further away. Exposure to these compounds is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory issues, gastrointestinal illness, liver problems, neurological issues, immune system and kidney damage, developmental issues, hormone disruption, and increased cancer risk.
Read about how we conducted our study
We collected a total of 17 urine samples from Gunnar and his family during the summer of 2019. Some chemical exposures aren't detectable in urine if the body has already broken them down, so we also looked for breakdown products, or biomarkers, of harmful chemicals. The presence of these chemicals and their biomarkers in urine generally reflect exposures that occurred within a few days of sampling.
Some of these biomarkers have sources other than these chemicals. For example, trans, trans-muconic acid is a biomarker for benzene, but eating sorbic acid (a common food preservative) also produces trans, trans-muconic acid. Hippuric acid is a biomarker for toluene, which can damage the nervous system or kidneys, but it's also formed when the body processes tea, wine, and certain fruit juices. As a result, we expect everyone to have a certain level of these compounds in their bodies. To determine whether the levels we saw in Pennsylvania families were normal, we compared the levels of these biomarkers in the families we tested to the levels seen in the average American using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
More than half of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for phenylglyoxylic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, and 41 percent of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for hippuric acid and trans, trans-muconic acid—biomarkers for toluene and benzene, respectively. Exposure to these compounds is linked to skin, lung, and eye irritation; central nervous system, liver and kidney damage; and cancer.
Gunnar's urine sample contained a level of mandelic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, 55 times as high as the average American (according to CDC data) and higher than levels typically seen in the average adult cigarette smoker.
Mandelic acid isn't itself harmful—it's used in small amounts in some medicines and skincare products—but exposure to ethylbenzene and styrene is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and increased cancer risk.
A few years ago, when drilling began simultaneously at three of the fracking well pads within a few miles of the Bower-Bjornson home, Gunnar frequently got nosebleeds that lasted up to 20 minutes and drained all the color from his face. Sometimes he'd cough up blood clots afterwards. Once, he recalled, this happened at school and he asked his teacher not to tell his mom about it, knowing it worried her.
Gunnar still gets nosebleeds, but they're less frequent now that all three of those wells are in production—meaning they're no longer actively drilled and fracked, but are producing oil and gas. They aren't the only three wells nearby. The family's home is within five miles of at least 25 active well pads, many of which contain multiple wells. The nearest pad, owned by Pittsburgh-headquartered EQT Corporation—the largest producer of natural gas in the country—is home to 10 operational wells.
There's no way to know for certain whether Gunnar and his family's exposures came from fracking emissions. We looked for other potential sources of exposure by visiting their home, asking them to complete an extensive survey, and recording their activities around the time of our sampling.
On the days we collected samples, the family generally engaged in normal summer activities—running errands, working in the garden, and lounging around the house. When we observed other potential sources of exposure, they're noted in our reporting. To our knowledge, the Bower-Bjornsons did not smoke cigarettes, spend hours in traffic, or consume vast enough quantities of foods or products containing these compounds to entirely explain why their levels for these compounds were so much higher than they are in most Americans.
The biggest difference between this family and the average American: their home's proximity to fracking wells.
"I sort of knew we were being exposed here," Gunnar's mom, Lois Bower-Bjornson, told EHN, "but I had no idea it was at this level. Seeing this on paper was a real eye opener."
We found harmful chemicals in Lois's urine samples, too—on July 23, 2019, her sample contained the highest level of naphthalene detected in our study. There isn't any national data available to compare her level against, but the level of naphthalene detected in Lois's urine sample that day was more than 15 times higher than the median level we detected in other southwestern Pennsylvania residents.
From left, Gunnar, Lois, Odessa, Nels and Kylan at their home in Scenery Hill, PA. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"When we do air samples and we do urine samples we don't usually find naphthalene unless there's an industrial source releasing naphthalene very close by," Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist and founder of the environmental consulting firm the Subra Company, told EHN. Through her firm, Subra has spent decades conducting studies similar to EHN's in communities facing toxic exposures. She also previously served as vice-chair of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and received a MacArthur fellowship for her work related to environmental exposures.
We all face myriad exposures to toxic chemicals every day—a byproduct of living in a modern world replete with vehicles, heavy industry, plastics, and pesticides. EHN's pilot study was small, and more research is needed to tease out fracking exposures and trends. Still, the exposures we found in Gunnar, his family, and four other southwestern Pennsylvania households suggest that the approximately 18 million Americans who live within a mile of an active oil and gas well might face above-average levels of exposure to chemicals that are harming them.
For many of those families, including the Bower-Bjornsons, the industry's proximity to their homes has not only led to anxiety about their health, but also damaged their quality of life, and made them feel disempowered and neglected by the federal and state agencies that are supposed to protect them.
A dream that became a nightmare
Lois Bower-Bjornson at her Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Washington County is about 93 percent White and mostly rural, dotted with aging mining towns. The exception is the county seat, a small city of the same name as the county that's home to Washington & Jefferson College and about 7 percent of the county's approximately 207,298 residents. Most of the county is middle class. The poverty rate is about 10 percent, a few points lower than the state poverty rate of 12 percent.
The Bower-Bjornson's picturesque white farmhouse, built in 1830, was originally the town general store. The walls of the large living room are shelved floor to ceiling, and on one shelf, left unpainted for posterity, there are lists of goods, quantities and prices, and tallies for what appear to be family tabs scratched in faded pencil.
The rest of the shelves are filled with books, a musically diverse record collection, and childhood memorabilia like school dioramas and lego houses.
As a young couple, Lois and her husband Dave lived in Pittsburgh's North Side on the historic Mexican War Streets, but after the arrival of their second child they started looking for more space. They saw this house in Scenery Hill and fell in love with the idea of an idyllic country life.
They moved in and enrolled the kids in a one-room elementary school where they spent their days practicing yoga, growing a garden, and helping prepare shared meals. Odessa, the youngest of the four Bower-Bjornson children, told EHN, "It's the best school in the world."
Gunnar and Odessa play in their family's Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
When fracking companies arrived in 2011, the Bower-Bjornson's weren't worried—they saw an opportunity for economic growth. They granted one company permission to run natural gas transmission lines beneath their property for $12,500 (though they haven't leased their mineral rights). But over the next few years, the family's quiet country life morphed into something else.
Their property was surrounded by voluminous truck traffic, large flames shooting into the sky, bad smells, bright lights, loud noises, and an expensive ruptured gas line they chalked up to the increased traffic. They soon began to feel overwhelmed—and they're not alone.
In fracking towns across the country, residents have found themselves at odds over whether to lease their land and cash in or fight back against the industry. When formerly rural and suburban areas are suddenly industrialized by the fracking industry, research has found that residents' sense of place and identity are disrupted, and that living amidst fracking can increase worry, anxiety, and depression.
Concerns about water contamination have also persisted since the beginning of the fracking boom, when footage of tap water from homes near well pads catching on fire due to its high methane content went viral.
A line of fracking wastewater trucks in Moundsville, West Virginia (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Aerial view of fracking wastewater storage ponds in central Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Researchers have documented drinking water contamination from fracking in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota, and Wyoming at various points in time, and in 2016 the EPA concluded the industry posed a threat to the U.S. water supply. A literature review published in 2020 looked at a decade of research on the impacts of just fracking wastewater disposal and found that drinking water in fracking communities has higher levels of total dissolved solids (like calcium, magnesium, chlorides and sulfates), salt, and methane.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group representing 200 unconventional oil and gas companies that operate in the Western U.S., told EHN that, while companies have always worked to minimize the chance of water contamination occurring, they've made some additional improvements in recent years.
"Wellbore integrity has been improving for decades and almost every state with a major oil and gas presence has tightened up its fracturing rules, so the risk of groundwater contamination continues to be managed to a very low level," Sgamma said. "When we look at surface handling of water, that's generally where spills can occur. It's rare for surface water to be contaminated, but when that happens it has to be remediated and companies are held liable for that."
"Nobody wants to have a spill for several reasons," she added. "One, because it takes a lot more money to clean up a spill than it does to just prevent it in the first place, and two, because it can harm a company's reputation." She added that companies have improved their ability to recycle wastewater, resulting in less freshwater use and helping to account for some of the wastewater disposal issues that have occurred.
The Bower-Bjornson's water comes from the local municipal system, Tri County Joint Municipal Authority, which serves more than 10,000 customers in southeastern Washington County. For the last several years, the Bower-Bjornson family has received notices from the municipal water authority and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) Bureau of Safe Drinking Water stating that the municipal water contains unregulated chemical contaminants including haloacetic acids, total trihalomethanes, nitrates, and inorganic compounds, among others. The notices advise anyone who is pregnant, has an infant, has a compromised immune system, or is elderly should consult with a physician before drinking their tap water.
Brothers Kylan Bjornson and Nels Bjornson in their home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
The oil and gas industry is one likely source of these contaminants, along with mining and other heavy industries. Some contaminants, such as trihalomethanes, are formed when contaminants in source water interact with chemicals used for treatment.
Sydney Evans, a science analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy nonprofit, told EHN that few federal or state water regulations have been updated in the last 20 years, so there's a gap between what's legal and what's safe.
"People tend to take the safety of their tap water for granted because it's being monitored, tested, and treated," Evans said. "But it's important for people to realize that legal doesn't necessarily mean safe."
Most public drinking water in the region comes from the Monongahela River (or "the Mon," in local parlance). In 2014, the DEP found radioactive chemicals at levels 60 times higher than what federal drinking standards allow in Ten Mile Creek near the Bower-Bjornson's home, which feeds into the Mon, and many locals feel certain fracking wastewater is the source.
Last year, it was discovered that a municipal sewage plant in nearby Belle Vernon was unknowingly accepting and releasing untreated fracking leachate from a nearby landfill containing high levels of chlorides, barium, and radium at higher levels than federal drinking water standards allow into the Mon—one of many similar instances across the state.
Marks for children's growth in the Bower-Bjornson home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
At the beginning of the summer of 2019, EHN collected water samples from three locations in the Bower-Bjornson's family's home: The reverse osmosis-filtered kitchen tap, the bathtub faucet, and the outside hose spigot. We found detectable levels of 20 of the 40 chemicals commonly used in fracking that we looked for in samples from at least one of those locations, including benzene, which is known to increase cancer risk, and naphthalene, which is listed as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" by the EPA.
Federal regulatory limits exist for just five of the 40 chemicals we looked at, and the family's water samples did not exceed those limits. Some states set health advisory limits for chemicals that aren't officially regulated. Vermont recommends no more than 0.5 micrograms per liter of naphthalene in drinking water to avoid health effects including increased cancer risk. The Bower-Bjornsons had 5.83 micrograms per liter of naphthalene in their water—nearly 12 times as high as Vermont's health advisory limit. Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority declined to comment on these findings.
Lois, who has been tracking the kids' symptoms since the drilling began, said that seeing these test results confirmed what she already feared.
"[Fracking] just completely encompasses us," she said. "It's not like we can look to our right or left and say it's not there. And everywhere that they go, school or wherever, it's there too."
Economic gains in question
A hydraulic fracturing drilling rig in western Pennsylvania at night. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
Fracking does bring economic benefits—at least temporarily. A 2019 paper in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics found that in the initial three years of a boom, fracked communities typically see total incomes increase by around 3-6 percent, employment increase by about 4-6 percent, and salaries increase by about 5-11 percent. Housing prices increase about 6 percent, while local governments see about a 16 percent increase in revenue.
Taking into account both increased incomes and decreased quality of life (from things like increased crime rates, truck traffic, and pollution), the authors of that study concluded that in regions where fracking occurs across all U.S. shale plays, the industry resulted in an average net gain of approximately $2,500 per household in the first three years—though some communities saw much higher gains and others saw none.
Over time, these impacts on local economies are diminished. A study published in February, 2021 by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank, revealed that while economic output in Appalachian fracking counties grew by 60 percent from 2008-2019, the counties' share of the nation's personal income, jobs, and population levels all declined.
The study looked at the 22 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia that produce more than 90 percent of the region's natural gas. In 2008, those counties were responsible for $2.46 of every $1,000 of national economic output. By 2019, the counties were generating $3.31 of every $1,000 generated nationally—an increase more than triple the rate of national growth. But over the same period, those counties' share of the nation's personal income fell by 6.3 percent, their share of jobs fell by 7.5 percent, and their share of the nation's population fell by 9.7 percent. The analysis concluded that about 90 percent of the wealth created from shale gas extraction leaves local communities.
Related: Appalachia's fracking boom has done little for local economies
Among the three states the report looked at, Pennsylvania's showed the best prosperity measures, and some Pennsylvania counties performed better than others—Washington County fared the best, with a personal income growth rate that slightly exceeded national growth, and job growth equal to the national rate, while five of the other seven Pennsylvania counties either gained very few jobs or experienced a loss.
Diana Irey Vaughan, chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, said the industry has transformed the local economy.
"The oil and gas industry has had a tremendous positive impact on our economy," Vaughan told EHN. "For example, from 2000 to 2018, our median income grew from $47,287 to $78,895." She also pointed to a U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics report that ranked Washington County third in the nation in job growth from 2010-2011, right at the beginning of the region's fracking boom.
Vaughan said that Washington County has been able to maintain low property taxes in part due to fees the county receives from the oil and gas industry.
Since 2012, the industry has had to pay an "impact fee" for each well pad in Pennsylvania to help cover its negative impacts. Those fees are distributed to the state and local governments, which typically use them for infrastructure projects, public safety, and emergency preparedness. Environmental advocates say the fees are too low to address all of the environmental issues the industry causes. But many local governments rely on the fees. The money collected from impact fees in Pennsylvania dropped in 2019, but Washington County still collected $6.6 million—more than any other county in the state.
"This has allowed us to advance capital projects without taking money from our general funds or tax dollars," Vaughan said. She added that the county has also sold mineral leases on county-owned properties including parks, airports, and fairgrounds and used the lease and royalty payments to make improvements to those properties.
Aerial view of the Mark West natural gas processing plant in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania does not collect a severance fee from oil and gas operators. In Texas, for example, the state collected $1.69 billion in taxes and fees from natural gas production—more than eight times as much as the approximately $200 million Pennsylvania collected in impact fees the same year. Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has repeatedly attempted to enact a severance tax on the natural gas industry, but those efforts have been thwarted by the Republican-controlled legislature, whose members say it will hinder the growth of the industry and harm local economies.
Many state lawmakers still believe the industry has been good for Pennsylvania. "It's the biggest industry to come to Pennsylvania in the last 50 years," Republican Senator Gene Yaw, who chairs the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, told EHN. "We tried to get Amazon to come to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia and we were putting together programs that totaled billions of dollars in subsidies. The gas industry has already come here and they've asked for very little."
Yaw has advanced numerous pieces of legislation aimed at helping the industry expand in Pennsylvania, and has also attempted to block states with fracking bans from buying Pennsylvania's natural gas. He also leases his own mineral rights—his 2018 financial disclosure showed that he received income from five drilling companies through leases on land he owns (but does not live on).
When it comes to job creation, Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and finance professor at Bard College, said numerous studies have shown the industry often over-promises the number of permanent jobs it will create.
"In the Pittsburgh region especially, there's been an almost desperate search for the next steel industry because that's remembered as a really great time in Pittsburgh's history," Hipple told EHN. "But the reality of the fracking business is that it's a lot of jobs at the beginning for construction that are often filled by people who aren't from the local area. Due to the technological advances—which the industry should be applauded for in a sense, as it's become quite proficient at producing oil and gas—the later stages don't require very much of the labor force at all, whether local or out of town."
The American Petroleum Institute has claimed that the industry supports nearly 500,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, but data from state and federal labor departments show there are actually about 26,000 fracking-related jobs in the state. Statewide, this means the industry isn't even among the top 50 sectors that employ Pennsylvanians.
Natural gas construction in Michigan. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016)
"The nearly 500,000 jobs, which is taken from an analysis conducted by PwC [PricewaterhouseCoopers], represents total industry jobs supported in Pennsylvania including refining, transportation, and distribution, not just drilling, production and development jobs," Emily Smith, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, told EHN in an email, adding that data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data only includes salaried jobs, which excludes private contractors. "According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, salaried jobs only represent approximately 30 percent of the oil and gas extraction sector...on a national basis."
Some research suggests that the ultimate cost-benefit ratio of the industry may actually skew negative. A 2019 study by researchers at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford Universities estimated that air pollution from the fracking industry caused between 1,200 and 4,600 premature deaths in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays spanning Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia from 2004-2016. During the same time period, the industry created a regional economic boost of approximately $21 billion dollars, but those gains were overshadowed by $23 billion in public healthcare costs related to those premature deaths.
Meanwhile, as a result of the recession spurred by COVID-19 pandemic, the oil and gas industry nationally lost more than 100,000 jobs last year.
In the air
Lois Bower-Bjornson stands in front of an under-construction fracking well pad in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Lois, who is tall and willowy with dark hair, pale skin, and large, luminous eyes, worked as a model and professional dancer before having kids. She still moves through the world like a dancer—she's often in motion, and is prone to standing on one leg with the opposite foot casually propped up against her knee like a flamingo.
In addition to teaching several dance and yoga classes a week in her barn-turned-dance-studio, Lois also runs a residential green cleaning business and works as a paid part-time organizer for the Clean Air Council—something she felt compelled to do after growing increasingly alarmed about the apparent impact that fracking was having on the region's air quality.
The fracking process typically involves as many as 1,000 chemicals including solvents, surfactants, detergents, and biocides, and air monitoring studies have detected more than 100 chemicals in air emissions from the sites, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and mercury. A 2019 study found that air pollution from fracking wells specifically killed an estimated 20 people in Pennsylvania from 2010-2017, and that higher-than-average levels of air pollution can be detected as far as six miles downwind of a well pad.
During the summer of 2019 when EHN collected urine samples from the Bower-Bjornsons, we also had them wear personal air monitors. Each family member wore an air monitor attached to a pump that mimics breathing by pulling in air for six to eight hours leading up to the collection of their first two urine samples. (On a third date, we collected one additional urine sample without any air monitoring.) The samples were analyzed for the presence of 40 chemicals that air monitoring studies have reported as frequently emitted during fracking.
Odessa Bjornson and Damien Shaffer play at the Bower-Bjornson home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
On August 6, 2019, Gunnar's air monitor recorded the highest levels of both n-propylbenzene and 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene detected among 39 total air samples EHN collected from five southwestern Pennsylvania households. Gunnar helped his dad paint and scrape vinyl flooring at his sound studio in Pittsburgh that day, which could have contributed to these exposures. On the same day, Lois's air monitor recorded the highest levels of hexanal, ethylcyclohexane, and octane seen in our study. She cleaned two houses using "green" cleaning products that day, which could have contributed to these exposures.
Only a handful of these chemicals have legal limits or even non-enforceable health-based guidelines, most of which pertain to short-term workplace exposures. The Bower-Bjornson family's air samples exceeded one state guideline for three chemicals—the recommended limits on benzene, ethylbenzene, and naphthalene exposure set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to keep cancer risk below one in a million.
"It's always a little hard to interpret what's meant by 'excess cancer risk,'" James Fabisiak, a toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, told EHN. "One in a million is sometimes used as a benchmark for negligible risk, but most of us don't have a risk that low. I don't think you would see EPA take or recommend action until risks were in the range of one in 10,000 to one in 100,000. There's some gray area between what amounts to 'no risk' and what amounts to 'actionable risk.'"
Bjornson kids on the move. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Fabisiak also compared EHN's air monitoring findings against those of two large surveys that measured volatile organic compounds in average homes in the U.S., and found that most of the levels detected in the Bower-Bjornson's air monitors fell within the ranges found in those studies, though some compounds were near the high end.
"If I knew these concentrations were there all the time in my own home," he said, "I might think about how I could get them back closer to the average."
Fabisiak added that while the risk associated with the level of each individual compound may not be a problem, high levels of numerous compounds within the same household have an additive effect—combining with one another and interacting with lifestyle and genetic factors in unpredictable ways that amplify overall risk.
"That's especially true of those air pollutants that affect common diseases like asthma and cancer," Fabisiak explained.
The Bower-Bjornsons and other residents of Washington County have also worried that the increased air pollution from fracking makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19. In the spring of 2020, nonprofit community health advocacy organization the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project* (which helped connect EHN with families that were interested in participating in our research) conducted an informal literature review on air pollution and respiratory infections to help educate southwestern Pennsylvania residents about the links between the two.
"Based on what we saw in numerous studies that have dealt with diseases similar to COVID-19, we know that increased exposure to particulate matter pollution makes the symptoms of infectious lung diseases worse," Alison Steele, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told EHN.
Lessons learned
An activist wears a face mask to protest poor air quality caused by fracking, pre-COVID-19, at a 2019 community meeting in Braddock, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Lois is no stranger to the region's history of industrial extraction. She grew up in Fredericktown, a nearby coal mining town, splitting her time between the hotel her grandparents built and the former apple distillery her great-great-great-great grandparents built.
She and the neighborhood kids used to watch coal barges float down the river and ride dune buggies on slag dumps—piles of toxic, rubbly waste generated by coal processing. They also swam in the river, even though it was sometimes oily from industrial residue, raw sewage poured in from the municipal pipes, and river rats abounded.
"We knew it might be harmful, but so many people's parents were coal miners that potential for harm just seemed like a normal part of life," she said.
She sees those same attitudes persisting when it comes to fracking—and especially when it comes to the impending petrochemical boom in the region.
In 2016, Royal Dutch Shell began construction on a massive ethane cracker in Beaver County, about 33 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 57 miles north of Scenery Hill. The plant, which is now nearly complete, will eventually convert a massive volume of natural gas and liquids into 1.8 million tons of polyethylene every year for use in plastics manufacturing. It's one of up to five such facilities that have been proposed in the Appalachian basin region spanning Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia—though all but the Shell project have been indefinitely put on hold due to unfavorable market conditions.
Construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Four of the proposed locations sit directly alongside the Ohio River or one of its tributaries, and each facility will demand natural gas liquids from an estimated 1,000 new fracking wells per year, according to researchers at Duquesne University. A similar petrochemical corridor in Louisiana has some of the worst air pollution and highest cancer rates in the country, resulting in the region being dubbed "Cancer Alley."
Southwestern Pennsylvania already has cancer problems. The region has higher than average rates of the types of cancer associated with air pollution, and in 2019, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette documented 27 cases of Ewing sarcoma—a one-in-a-million bone and soft tissue cancer—in Washington, Greene, Fayette and Westmoreland counties over the last decade. These counties combined have a population of about 750,000 and are where a majority of the state's fracking occurs, and amid concerns about radioactive waste from the oil and gas industry being mishandled, residents have demanded answers from elected officials. Investigations are ongoing, but so far no link between the rare cancers and the oil and gas industry has been confirmed.
Shell applied for air pollution permits that were approved back in 2015, but submitted a new permit application in February 2020 that seeks lower emissions levels for some pollutants, but much higher levels of others, including greenhouse gases.
For years, local environmentalists, community members, and Indigenous groups have fought to stop the petrochemical buildout, but despite their efforts—and warnings from financial analysts that the industry isn't a viable long-term investment—many local policymakers have welcomed the jobs the industry promises.
"In the 70s and early 80s we saw the demise of the steel industry and what it did to our economy—we saw our friends and family members move away because the jobs were gone," Democratic Pennsylvania State Representative Robert Matzie told EHN. Matzie's district is adjacent to the site of the Shell ethane cracker, and Matzie was one of a handful of Pennsylvania Democrats to support the project from its outset. "As policymakers we have to weigh and balance both protecting the environment and having good jobs that take advantage of our natural resources, and I believe we can have both."
Construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, at night. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Matzie said the plant is projected to create 10,000 to 15,000 jobs in a 50-mile radius. At the same time, he said some of his constituents fear becoming another "Cancer Alley."
"I live a stone's throw from the site," Matzie said. "Me and my family have to drink that water and breathe that air too." He added that he believes this plant will be different because it's newer than the ones in Louisiana and will use the best available technology to minimize environmental impacts.
In the past, Matzie has also introduced legislation aimed at keeping fracking wells at least 4,000 feet away from dams and reservoirs in an attempt to protect his own district's water reservoir. So far he has been unsuccessful.
"Right now you can drill right in the middle of a freshwater source," he said. "I have a problem with that. You can show me all the technology that says it's safe—I still don't want to see it."
In lieu of that legislation, Matzie says he helped negotiate additional protections for the reservoir from the natural gas pipeline that will feed the Shell ethane cracker—things like a thicker steel lining and easier access to emergency shutoff valves—by working directly with the company.
"Shell stepped up and went above and beyond current policy and statutes for the pipeline," he said, adding that he has also championed solar energy projects, serves as co-chair of the state's nuclear energy caucus, and welcomes any industry that would bring jobs to his district.
This issue might be complex for politicians, but for 13-year-old Gunnar, it looks simple.
Lois Bower-Bjornson is no stranger to the region's history of industrial extraction. "We knew it might be harmful, but so many people's parents were coal miners that potential for harm just seemed like a normal part of life." (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
He doesn't like getting nose bleeds, he doesn't like his mom worrying, and he's worried about climate change—which he knows fracking contributes to. "The only reason people don't think climate change is real is because they're afraid of it," he told EHN. "I think fracking is noisy, annoying, reckless, and kind of idiotic. I wish we could move away just to be able to actually get some sleep."
Vaughan, the chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, said she rarely hears from people who've experienced negative impacts from the industry. She acknowledged community concerns about the childhood cancer clusters, but said, "We have not seen scientific proof that there is a correlation between the two," and pointed to other industrial sites in the region that could be contributing to potential environmental exposures.
"There are times when you have inconveniences with noise or lights or trucks," she added, "but I think the majority of people in Washington County have been willing to tolerate these things for the greater benefit," she said. "This area was also very rich in coal reserves and had previously welcomed mining to our region. Prior to that we also had the steel industry. So I think this region is more accepting of those types of inconveniences than other regions because of our history."
Lois sees it differently.
"It's almost a bizarre genetic trait among people in this region that this is just always what we do," Lois said. "We keep going back again and again, trading our health for jobs. At what point do you learn your lesson and not keep doing the same thing over and over again?"
Frequently Asked Questions about Fractured: What to do, who to call, how to push for change.
Have you been impacted by fracking? We want to hear from you. Fill out our fracking impact survey and we'll be in touch.
In part 2 of this series: The mental health and social toll of feeling surrounded by fracking wells and pollution.
This story was fact-checked by Dani Leviss.
*The Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project and EHN both receive funding from the Heinz Endowments
