Kristina covers environmental health and justice issues in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. She has received recognition or awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Institute of Health Care Management, the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Science Center, and the Pittsburgh-based Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) for her reporting on these topics.
Prior to joining EHN, Kristina covered issues related to environmental and social justice as a freelancer for a wide range of digital media outlets including Slate, Vice, Women's Health, MTV News, The Advocate, CNN, and Bustle. She is also the co-president and co-founder of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Association of LGBTQ Journalists.
She lives in Pittsburgh, where she spends much of her free time kayaking the city's iconic three rivers, consuming coffee and eating adventurously.
Here are the responses we've gotten so far from politicians about our study that found Pennsylvania families living near fracking wells are being exposed to high levels of harmful industrial chemicals.
EHN conducted a two-year study that found Pennsylvania families living near fracking wells are being exposed to high levels of harmful industrial chemicals. Our findings are documented in the four-part series Fractured: The body burden of living near fracking.
A few weeks after the series was published, a group of 34 lawmakers from the state House and Senate issued a public letter to Governor Tom Wolf, Acting Secretary of the Department of Health Alison Beam, and Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection Patrick McDonnell calling on them to take action in response to our findings.
"[The findings] are alarming in terms of the effects on the long-term health and safety of these residents," the lawmakers wrote. "Does this administration believe it has adequately protected Pennsylvanians from the harms of fracking? Does this administration honestly believe that fracking is safe for our families? The people of Pennsylvania deserve answers to these questions."
The full letter is available here. This is a complete list of the politicians who signed it:
Rep. Jessica Benham (D) District 36 (Allegheny County)
Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D) District 184 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D) District 177 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Leanne Krueger (D) District 161 (Delaware County)
Sen. Steve Santasarieo (D) District 10 (Bucks County)
Rep. Greg Vitali (D) District 166 (Delaware and Montgomery Counties)
Sen. Jim Brewster (D) District 45 (Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties)
Sen.Wayne Fontana (D) District 42 (Allegheny County)
Sen. Vincent Hughes (D) District 7 (Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties)
Rep. Summer Lee (D) District 34 (Allegheny County)
Sen. Nikil Saval (D) District 1 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Perry Warren (D) District 31 (Bucks County)
Rep. Tim Briggs (D) District 149 (Montgomery County)
Rep. Danielle Friel-Otten (D) District 155 (Chester County)
Rep. Sara Innamorato (D) District 21 (Allegheny County)
Sen. Katie Muth (D) District 44 (Berks, Chester, and Montgomery Counties)
Rep. Pete Schweyer (D) District 22 (Lehigh County)
Rep. Joe Webster (D) District 150 (Montgomery County)
Sen. Amanda Cappelletti (D) District 17 (Delaware and Montgomery Counties)
Rep. Nancy Guenst (D) District 152 (Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties)
Rep. Mary Issacson (D) District 175 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Napoleon Nelson (D) District 57 (Westmoreland County)
Rep. Melissa Shusterman (D) District 157 (Chester and Montgomery Counties)
Sen. Lindsey Williams (D) District 38 (Allegheny County)
Sen. Maria Collett (D) District 12 (Bucks and Montgomery Counties)
Rep. Dianne Herrin (D) District 156 (Chester County)
Sen. Tim Kearny (D) District 26 (Chester and Delaware Counties)
Rep. Christopher Rabb (D) District 200 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Mike Sturla (D) District 96 (Lancaster County)
Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D) District 2 (Philadelphia County)
Sen. Carolyn Comitta (D) District 19 (Chester County)
Rep. Carol Hill-Evans (D) District 95 (York County)
Rep. Rick Krajewski (D) District 188 (Philadelphia County)
Rep. Ben Sanchez (D) District 153 (Montgomery County)
About a month after the series was published we began reaching out to Pennsylvania politicians who didn't sign the letter to hear their thoughts on our findings and ask what they're doing to protect Pennsylvania residents from harmful pollution from the oil and gas industry.
Some were eager to talk. Some ignored us entirely. Others politely (or not so politely) blew us off. A few interviews are still pending. We'll update this list as responses continue rolling in, so if you're a politician or policy-maker interested in sharing your thoughts, please get in touch.
Here are the responses we've gotten so far from a range of regional and state politicians, along with their contact information for constituents who'd like to follow up (see sample language here):
Banner photo: Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw (top left), State Rep. and Pittsburgh Mayoral Candidate Ed Gainey (top center), Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (right), State Sen. Katie Muth (bottom left), and Washington County Commissioner Larry Maggi (bottom center) Photo credit: Creative Commons/EHN
Living among fracking wells is linked to higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to heart attacks, according to a new 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.
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."
PITTSBURGH—A recent study found that people with asthma who live near a U.S. Steel facility experienced worsened symptoms following a 2018 fire that damaged pollution controls—and that even prior to the fire, a trend of lower lung function was observed in people living close to the plant.
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."
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 Timesstory 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)
PITTSBURGH—Lead was detected in 80 percent of water systems in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which encompasses Pittsburgh, in 2019, according to a new two-year analysis.
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.
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).
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.
Esta es la parte 1 de nuestra serie de 4 partes, "Fractura Hidráulica", una investigación de las sustancias químicas de fracturación en el aire, el agua y las personas del oeste de Pensilvania.
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.
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
This is part 1 of our 4-part series, "Fractured," an investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.
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.
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.
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?"
This is part 2 of our 4-part series, "Fractured," an investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—In the spring of 2019, after years worrying about exposures from a fracking well about a half mile from her grandkids' school, Jane Worthington decided to move them to another school district.
Her granddaughter Lexy* had been sick on and off for years with mysterious symptoms, and Jane believed air pollution from the fracking well was to blame. She was embroiled in a legal battle aimed at stopping another well from being drilled near the school. She felt speaking out had turned the community against them.
"It seemed like practically everyone in the district had leased their mineral rights," Jane told Environmental Health News (EHN). "We couldn't get anywhere with the school board, and it seemed like they all had a reason to want us to just shut up and go away."
The social strain combined with her granddaughter's illness was enough to make her want to leave.
Money was tight for Jane, who is a single caregiver, but she found a deal on a foreclosure in another school district.
The house, white with sage green shutters, sat on a quiet residential street. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but she didn't mind the work—she just wanted a safe, comfortable home for her grandchildren, Lexy and Damien, who she'd raised since they were babies. At the time, Lexy was 15-years old and Damien was 13.
The kids fell in love with the house. There were still fracking wells nearby—they're virtually impossible to avoid in Washington County—but there were none within a mile of the school, and they didn't see any new wells being drilled close to the house.
Soon after moving in, though, they learned that their new home was within a mile and a half of a well pad with six wells already in production (meaning no longer being "fracked" or drilled, but producing natural gas and oil), and less than a half mile away from a large metal casting facility. An EHN analysis of the air and water at their new home, along with urine samples from the family, suggest they're being exposed to higher-than-average levels of many of the chemicals they were concerned about at their old house.
"We don't seem to be able to get away from this," Jane said.
Lexy, Jane Worthington and Damien. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
In 2019, EHN collected urine samples, along with air and water samples, from five families in southwestern Pennsylvania and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking.
Jane and her grandchildren were one of the five families we studied. We collected a total of nine urine samples from the family over a 5-week period and found 18 chemicals known to be commonly emitted from fracking sites in one or more samples, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and lesser-known compounds—all of which are linked to negative health impacts including respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, skin and eye irritation, organ damage, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk.
Some chemical exposures aren't detectable in urine if the body has already processed them, so we also looked for breakdown products, or biomarkers, for harmful chemicals. Some of these biomarkers show up when people consume certain foods or beverages, so to determine whether the levels we saw in Pennsylvania families were normal, we compared them against those seen in the average American using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
We found that urine samples for Jane and her grandkids contained biomarkers for fracking chemicals at levels higher than the U.S. 95th percentile—the value that 95 percent of Americans fall below, according to that CDC data.
All of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for mandelic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene. More than half of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for phenylglyoxylic acid, another biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, and for trans, trans-muconic acid, a biomarker for benzene. A third of the family's samples exceeded the 95th percentile for hippuric acid, a biomarker for toluene.
The Worthington family's new home. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Exposure to these compounds is linked to eye, skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation; neurological, immune, kidney, cardiovascular, blood, and developmental disorders; hormone disruption; and increased cancer risk.
The family's urine samples also suggested that they had higher-than-average exposures to biomarkers for toluene and xylenes, which are linked to skin and eye irritation, drowsiness and dizziness, and central nervous system damage.
There's no way to know for certain whether the family's exposures came from fracking emissions. We visited Jane's home, had her complete an extensive survey about other possible sources of exposure, and recorded the family's activities around the time of our sampling and did not find other obvious explanations, though the metal casting facility near Jane's new home could also contribute to these exposures.
The exposures confirm Jane's worst fears—that the children she's tasked with protecting are exposed to harmful chemicals simply because of where they live. But the impacts run deeper. The family seemingly cannot escape the effects of an industry that wields tremendous power in the state and is allowed to operate within 500 feet of schools and homes housing children and other vulnerable residents. Researchers warn the impacts extend to the more out-of-sight aspects of health—people's sleep, their social network, and their overall mental well being.
"I just wish there was more awareness that it really is dangerous for every family that lives here," Jane said. "It isn't as safe as we tend to want to make ourselves feel. This is proof."
Exposed
A fracking well pad in southwestern Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
When she was in third grade, Lexy became very sick—she developed unusual rashes and had bouts of vomiting. She also developed asthma and started having severe nose bleeds.
After years of unknowns, Lexy's doctor noticed abnormalities in her growth plates, which led him to believe that her symptoms could be the result of a toxic exposure. A toxicologist found that Lexy had been exposed to benzene, a volatile organic compound (VOC). Because neither her brother nor grandmother were sick—and, seemingly, no other kids at her school—her doctor said she likely had a higher than average sensitivity to benzene.
Benzene is found in tobacco smoke, wood smoke, vehicle exhaust, and industrial emissions. It's also emitted into the air during both fracking and conventional oil and gas extraction, and is often found in fracking wastewater. Research has found that some workers at fracking sites are regularly exposed to high levels of benzene. Exposure is linked to cancer, organ damage with repeat exposure, fertility issues, skin and eye irritation, drowsiness and dizziness.
Despite having moved to a new neighborhood and a new school district, the levels of trans, trans-muconic acid—a biomarker for benzene—measured in all nine urine samples EHN collected from Jane Worthington and her grandchildren exceeded the U.S. median.
Two agencies—the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists and its German equivalent, the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)— established reference values that reflect people's typical background level exposure for trans, trans-muconic acid. The levels of trans, trans-muconic acid measured in five of the nine urine samples EHN collected from Jane Worthington and her grandchildren over a 5-week period exceeded both of those reference values by up to 11-fold.**
While Jane has frequently fretted over air emissions, she didn't previously worry about their water. At both their old home and their new one they used the local municipal service provided by Pennsylvania American Water, and at both houses the family consumed unfiltered tap water.
"I've always assumed they'd take care of making sure it's safe," Jane said.
We found benzene in the water at all three locations we sampled at Jane's house—the kitchen tap, the bathtub faucet, and the outdoor hose spigot. The highest level was in the outdoor hose spigot, which contained benzene at a level of 3.46 parts per billion. This was the highest level of benzene detected in the five households in our study.
Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have a maximum legal threshold of 5 parts per billion for benzene in drinking water, but the EPA has set a goal of no detectable benzene in drinking water because it can cause leukemia.
The levels of contaminants detected in different faucets at the same house can vary for a number of reasons, Chris Kassotis, an endocrine toxicologist and assistant professor at Wayne State University's Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who has researched water quality extensively, told EHN. He explained that after water enters the home, it sometimes sits in pipes or tanks where it can pick up additional contaminants, and it sometimes travels through filtration systems that remove contaminants.
"I've always assumed they'd take care of making sure it's safe," Jane said of her water. (Credit: Kelbv/Flickr)
A fracking wastewater pond in southwestern Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
"Either way," Kassotis explained, "outside samples from a hose spigot are usually more reflective of what's coming from the water authority or groundwater in your region."
A spokesperson for Pennsylvania American Water who reviewed our findings told EHN in an emailed statement, "We follow a thorough sampling regimen as required by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Our monitoring continues to determine that levels of benzene are non-detectable."
Lauren Fraley, a spokesperson for the DEP, told EHN that, while they do not require action if benzene levels are below the 5 parts per billion threshold, levels at or above 4 parts per billion would trigger quarterly monitoring and follow-up measures.
"I guess maybe this means we should start filtering our water since we know [Lexy] is so sensitive to benzene," Jane said.
The family's exposure to other compounds was higher than average, too. For example on August 5, 2019, a urine sample from Jane Worthington showed a level of phenylglyoxylic acid, a breakdown product of ethylbenzene and styrene, more than 17 times as high as that of the average cigarette smoker (Jane does not use any tobacco products).
On two of the three days when EHN collected urine samples from the family, they also wore personal air monitors for six to eight hours. Lexy's monitor recorded the highest levels of decanal, pentadecane, heptanal, n-octanal, and n-nonane seen among the 39 air samples EHN collected last summer on August 6, 2019—a day when she stayed home and her only activities were going for a walk and taking a nap.
EHN reporter Kristina Marusic sets up an air monitor for Damien Schaffer. (Credit: Mason Secreti)
These chemicals can be found in household products, gasoline, and emissions from industrial and fracking facilities. Exposure to them is linked to a variety of negative health outcomes, including eye and skin irritation and respiratory problems.
Only a handful of these chemicals have regulatory limits, most of which pertain to short-term workplace exposures. Jane and her grandkids' air samples exceeded one regulatory threshold for three chemicals—the recommended limits on benzene, ethylbenzene, and naphthalene exposure set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to minimize cancer risk.
Since her first episodes in elementary school, Lexy has had similar symptoms—rashes, nose bleeds, joint pain and stiffness, vomiting, and migraines—on and off, which Jane said have coincided with the times when active drilling or flaring (the burning off of excess natural gas) was happening at well pads near their home or near Lexy's school.
Lexy. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Both active drilling and flaring are associated with higher levels of air pollution and more reported health effects than wells in the production phase.
The DEP has conducted air monitoring studies near fracking wells, but critical data gaps persist.
"When monitoring is done, it's often reported based on daily averages or weekly averages, or a short monitoring time that might be one day a week, and then that value is assigned to the whole week," Alison Steele, executive director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project†, a community health advocacy group, told EHN.
"If you look at a 15 minute average readout you can actually see when there are intense spikes in emissions," she explained. "But if you take that out to a whole day as an average, you completely lose that information and it's not useful at all...you lose the opportunity to identify events that might be causing health impacts."
Jane witnessed the challenges related to air monitoring studies firsthand.
In response to public concern about the wells' proximity to Fort Cherry schools—much of which was raised due to Lexy's illness—Range Resources, the company that owns the well pad closest to the school, commissioned an air monitoring study in 2017. The company hired Gradient, a Boston-based environmental consulting firm that has previously published research aimed at discrediting the known links between exposure to asbestos, lead, and arsenic and negative health effects, and has had the scientific validity of its other air emissions research called into question after its test results contradicted EPA findings in Texas. The two-year study found that the wells near Fort Cherry schools "do not pose any acute or chronic health concerns," and that the data "showed no air quality impacts of potential health concern." But the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project issued a public statement calling the report "highly flawed in its methodology, scope, and objectivity" in part because it was not set up to catch sporadic emissions.
Jane felt that the whole undertaking was disingenuous and unhelpful—and she felt both validated and left out when, in June of 2020, Range Resources pleaded "no contest" to charges of environmental crimes filed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office over its actions at two other well sites in Washington County.
Ostracized and alienated
Jane Worthington, left, and her granddaughter Lexy. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
For Jane, fracking seemed to split her community: Those who got jobs or made money from mineral leases, and those whose quality of life was damaged or loved ones got sick. Because their own kids weren't sick, many of Jane's neighbors refused to believe that what happened to Lexy could be related to fracking.
These issues have caused Lexy to experience depression and anxiety about her symptoms, about her alienation from classmates and community members who benefit from the industry, and about the feeling that the industry's impacts are inescapable.
At her old school, things got progressively worse after she became sick. On numerous occasions she got sick and vomited in front of classmates, which mortified her. She started wearing an air monitor that made loud noises when air pollution reached an unsafe level for her, which was embarrassing. Teachers and students would grill Lexy about her symptoms, implying—and sometimes saying outright—that she must be making it all up.
"A lot of kids would ask, 'If it's because of fracking, why aren't all of us sick like you?' Lexy said. "That really frustrates me, because I don't know the answer."
It wasn't just the kids—adults in the school district were also cruel. Jane said that at several public meetings they were shouted at, called liars, and told to leave town. She said that a few other parents quietly approached her to share stories about how their own children had also experienced mysterious health symptoms once fracking moved in, but that most were too afraid to speak up.
The family has been making trips to Harrisburg and Washington D.C. for more than eight years to plead with their representatives and other lawmakers to protect them. The kids have even spoken on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Damien Shaffer. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Damien, Lexy's easy-going half brother, told EHN, "We are feeling that people are starting to listen. Finally."
Lexy cut him off—"No," she said, "they really aren't. None of it does any good. It's not fair. I just want to be normal and have a normal life like other kids."
She isn't the only one feeling anxious and disempowered.
A 2017 literature review that looked at all available studies on the mental health impacts of fracking found that it's common for people in fracked communities to experience "worry, anxiety, and depression about lifestyle, health, safety, and financial security," and that "entire communities can experience collective trauma as a result of the boom/bust cycle that often occurs when industries impinge on community life."
And similar evidence keeps piling up:
A 2018 study found that stress and depression are higher among Pennsylvanians who live near fracking wells.
A 2020 study of a community in Denton, Texas, found increased stress, and animosity and tension between community members as a result of fracking.
Another 2020 study that surveyed Colorado households found that uncertainty about environmental and health risks of fracking and feelings of political powerlessness led to chronic stress and depression.
The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project has been tracking symptoms experienced by people who live near fracking wells in Pennsylvania for the last decade. In the spring of 2020 they published a paper on data collected from 2012-2017 that documented 17 symptoms, which increased in severity the closer people lived to a higher volume of fracking wells. The top three were difficulty sleeping, anxiety/worry, and depressed mood.
"One community member told me that since fracking moved in, they now understood why sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique," Hannah Blinn, a former environmental health educator and fellow at the organization and lead author of the 2020 study, told EHN. "That kind of stress creates its own health impacts. When we document that someone has a headache, for example, is that because of a chemical exposure or because they haven't slept and their neighbors don't trust them anymore?"
Proponents of the industry's economic benefits are quick to point out that being jobless also impacts people's mental health. Democratic Pennsylvania State Representative Robert Matzie has been a vocal supporter of the petrochemical plant being built by Shell adjacent to his district in Beaver County (33 miles northwest of Pittsburgh), which will convert ethane from an estimated 1,000 new fracked wells per year into plastic.
Aerial view of the construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.(Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Aerial view of the construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
He recalled watching the demise of the steel industry and watching people struggle to adapt.
"I went to community college for my first two years in the 80s, and I remember having classes with guys in their 40s or 50s who'd been working in a steel mill since the day they left high school struggling with their course load and seeing any other future for themselves," he told EHN. He worries that without a comprehensive transition plan, something similar could occur if the oil and gas industry left the region, and he sees the petrochemical industry as an opportunity to help community members who are struggling.
"I know a number of people in my community, including my neighbor who is an operating engineer and a steamfitter down the street from me, who are doing very well as a result of construction of that plant," Matzie said. "While those jobs are temporary, these people have been able to keep working and paying the bills during a global pandemic, which is a big deal and means a whole lot to them."
Blinn pointed out that feelings of division and alienation can be experienced by community members who benefit from the industry, too.
"People who have jobs with oil and gas or who lease their land and are getting yelled at in community meetings or by their neighbors who fear for their health are often distressed too," she said. "They feel like they were just trying to take care of their families and now everyone is mad at them for it. It really can cause rifts across the entire community."
"Safe" distances
Flaring at a compressor station in Ohio. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2018)
Jane's primary concern with the Fort Cherry School District was how close the wells were to the building where her granddaughter spent her days.
In Pennsylvania, unless municipalities set more stringent regulations, horizontally drilled well pads are required to be at least 500 feet away from the nearest occupied building—including homes, schools, and daycares.
Private property owners can waive this requirement, so wells are sometimes even closer to homes and businesses in the state. There are no federal regulations about how far fracking wells should be from schools, so states and municipalities are left with a patchwork of different protections. According to the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, the closest well to a school in Pennsylvania is in Butler County, about 85 miles north of Washington County, where a well pad sits about 633 feet from Summit Township Elementary School.
Credit: (Southwest PA Environmental Health Project/Google Maps)
Proximity to fracking wells has been linked to higher cases of low birth weights, childhood cancers, skin problems, asthma exacerbations, and migraines and fatigue in hundreds of studies since the beginning of the boom. The state of New York banned fracking in 2014 on the basis of 400 studies showing potential health harms from the industry. As of August 2020, there were 2,015 studies indicating harm—about five times the amount that prompted New York to ban the practice—according to a literature review conducted by the health advocacy groups Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York.
"What makes fracking different from any other industry I've studied in public health is that there's no industrial zone," Sandra Steingraber, a professor of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College and co-author of the 2020 literature review, told EHN. "It's taking place literally in our backyards, and unfortunately some of the best evidence for both polluting emissions and emerging health crises is coming out of southwestern Pennsylvania."
Children are more vulnerable to harmful effects from environmental pollutants because they breathe about four times more air and drink more water pound for pound than adults, and their bodies—not yet fully developed— are less able to filter out pollutants. This makes them more vulnerable to short-term health effects like asthma and stomach problems, and also to long-term health effects like heart disease and cancer.
"The thinking is that chemicals get into cells in human bodies and cause changes to genes," Dr. Philip Landrigan, pediatrician, epidemiologist and director of the Global Public Health Program and the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health at Boston College, told EHN. "A single hit on a gene won't typically cause cancer...most cancers evolve over a span of many years with multiple hits accumulating over time. If it takes five or six hits to a gene to produce cancer and a child goes through the first two or three hits in early childhood, that child is then much closer to developing cancer once they become an adult."
Damien Shaffer. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Researchers also warn that many of the chemicals emitted during fracking can be harmful at lower levels than current regulations account for—even the most stringent regulations on the books.
At least 21 common fracking chemicals (including many of the ones we found) are also endocrine disruptors, meaning they mimic the body's hormones. This can lead to numerous negative impacts on reproductive, respiratory, metabolic and immune systems and children's development.
Carol Kwiatkowski, a professor at North Carolina State University and former executive director of the nonprofit research institution The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, warned that current regulations don't take this into account because many of these effects occur at very low levels of exposure, which traditional toxicology testing doesn't measure.
She explained that generally when scientists see adverse health effects at a certain level, they keep dropping the exposure lower and lower until they no longer see those effects. Then they set an exposure limit a hundred or a thousand times lower than that.
"They think they're being extra cautious," Kwiatkowski told EHN, "setting our safe exposure level so much lower than where they saw effects. But they never test that level. It's just an assumption that it will be safe."
Ultimately, Kwiatkowski said, this means that being exposed to some of these pollutants at any level isn't safe—even if they're seen at levels well below existing legal thresholds.
A 2020 study found that doubling the current Pennsylvania setback distance of 500 feet to 1,000 feet (a little less than a quarter of a mile) would reduce the number of people who are exposed to emissions greater than the EPA's recommended annual limit for particulate matter pollution by 86 percent.
A drilling rig in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016)
"The science does not say that any distance is safe," Alison Steele, executive director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told EHN. Her organization published a 2018 study that recommended a minimum setback of 0.25 miles, or about 1,320 feet. They're among a number of groups that have unsuccessfully pushed for these changes at the state level.
In the summer of 2020, a grand jury report on fracking from the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, which concluded that current regulations aren't protective of residents' health, recommended wells be placed at least 5,000 feet (just shy of a mile) from schools.
"We have a profound gap between the 'clean air and pure water' promised in our Constitution and the reality that too many Pennsylvanians live with every day," Shapiro told EHN. "It is up to us to close that gap to protect the health and safety of every Pennsylvanian."
A spokesperson for Attorney General Shapiro who reviewed highlights from EHN's investigation said our findings are in line with those of the grand jury, and "serve to reinforce the stories that the various Pennsylvania homeowners have been telling for over 14 years now," which suggest fracking is occurring too close to residents.
Many states have similar—or even less stringent—setback regulations. Colorado is a notable exception.
In 2019 the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released a 380-page report on the potential health impacts of oil and gas operations, which found that air pollution from wells could impact human health within a 2,000-foot radius.
A 2015 fracking protest outside former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper's home (Credit: John Duffy/Flickr)
A 2015 fracking protest outside former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper's home. (Credit: John Duffy/flickr)
In November 2020, following more than 180 hours of public hearings with industry groups, scientific researchers, public health officials, homeowners associations and environmental advocates, the newly revamped Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission announced numerous new oil and gas regulations—many of which are the strongest in the country—including a 2,000-foot setback distance (with an option for well operators to apply for exceptions).
"By taking a more cautious approach through increased setback distances, we're reducing the likelihood of community exposure to hazardous air pollutants and other emissions," John Putnam, former director of environmental programs at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, told EHN. (Putnam recently left the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to take a position as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation.)
In Pennsylvania, some lawmakers believe current setback regulations are adequate, while others are pushing for additional regulations.
"Nobody has complained to me about a health issue," Republican Pennsylvania Senator Gene Yaw, who chairs the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, told EHN. "The purpose of some of the things that have been tried in Pennsylvania regarding setbacks has just been to eliminate the oil and gas industry entirely. I don't know of any significant problem areas that would merit changing setbacks."
When asked about the grand jury report's findings on the need for greater setbacks Yaw said, "The Attorney General's report is truly embarrassing. He relied on witnesses who have been preaching the same story for the past 12 years… It's embarrassing that he fell for it."
Matzie, the Democratic Pennsylvania State Representative who supports the Shell Ethane Cracker—which will require ethane from an estimated 1,000 new fracked wells per year—told EHN he doesn't believe current fracking regulations are adequate to protect the health of Pennsylvanians.
"That's one thing that's been hard to reconcile and hard to explain to the general public," Matzie said. "I support the plant and the downstream jobs it's expected to create, but at the same time we've lacked as policymakers to ensure that we have adequate safeguards in place for physical fracking wells. It's a tough balance."
He said he voted against the state's controversial Act 13, which originally allowed the state to override local municipality regulations on the industry like greater setback rules—one of several portions of the law that were eventually overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Matzie also unsuccessfully introduced legislation that would create greater setbacks from freshwater sources in the state.
"Implementing new oil and gas regulations isn't necessarily at the top of the list of things to get done by Republican-controlled legislatures," he said.
Ongoing anxieties
Jane Worthington. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Lexy and Damien. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
The new school district Jane and her family just moved to is Canon-McMillan. This school district is home to multiple cases of Ewing sarcoma, a rare childhood cancer, which many residents fear are related to fracking. So far no link has been found, but a Pennsylvania Department of Health investigation is ongoing.
After learning the results of our study, Jane and Lexy both expressed concern over their continued exposure.
"I don't know why Lexy is so much more affected by this than other kids," Jane said, "but she shouldn't have to worry about her sensitivity—because there shouldn't be benzene in our water or our air where we live everyday."
Since the move, Lexy has had a few nosebleeds, but otherwise her symptoms have been better. She's no longer known as "the sick girl" at school, she's made new friends, and she feels more comfortable with her new teachers and school administrators. But she still experiences fear and anxiety.
"Every time I go near that factory near the trail my stomach hurts and I feel like I can't breathe," she said, referring to the metal casting facility near her new home.
"I'm afraid it could just happen again, and we'll have to go through the same process over and over again," she said. "I'm so sick of being sick and of all the testing, and of never actually knowing what's wrong with me."
Lexy sees a counselor every week and is on medication for her anxiety. "But," she said, "I don't really talk about fracking or these exposures in therapy. It doesn't really help to talk about it."
"What would help?" asked Jane.
"For it to stop," Lexy said. "For all of it to just stop."
This is part 3 of our 4-part series, "Fractured," an investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—For nearly a decade, Bryan Latkanich has been telling anyone who'd listen that allowing two fracking wells to be drilled on his farm is the worst mistake he's ever made.
He's a single father on disability who leased his land in 2010 at the height of the fracking boom, thrilled to have two wells 400 feet from his home in exchange for what he thought would be millions of dollars in royalties, only to run into problem after problem.
The drilling disturbed more land than had been agreed to or permitted, which he alleges damaged the foundation of his home. He caught workers illegally pumping water out of a pit into the woods behind his property. His well water became undrinkable and he and his son Ryan, who was 2 years-old when the wells went in, developed a rash of ongoing, mysterious health issues. The royalties were a pittance compared to what he expected.
Chevron, which owned and operated the two wells, denies any responsibility for these problems, and Bryan has gotten few answers from the state agencies he's called upon to investigate.
"I was a total cheerleader for this industry at the beginning," Bryan told Environmental Health News (EHN). "Now I just want to make sure no one else makes the same mistake I did. This has ruined my health and my kid's health and destroyed my farm. It has ruined my life."
If any of this sounds familiar, it could be because parts of Bryan's story have been told in local and national news stories. Or it could be because there are many stories like this.
In fracking towns across the state and country, people like Bryan have struggled to get answers about what's happening on their land, in their communities—even in their bodies. The state agencies tasked with overseeing the industry and responding to citizen complaints about pollution and health issues are often under-budgeted, understaffed, and overwhelmed.
In Ohio, for example, a three-year investigation published in September 2020 by environmental advocacy group Earthworks showed that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources failed to act on 39 percent of public complaints filed regarding air pollution from the oil and gas industry. The consequences are exemplified by a 2018 incident: After an explosion at an Exxon fracking well in Belmont County, Ohio, the site leaked methane at a rate of about 132 U.S. tons an hour for 20 days, ultimately emitting more of the powerful greenhouse gas than the entire oil and gas industries of France, Norway or the Netherlands do in an entire year. Methane is 84 times more climate-warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
Similar stories have also cropped up in Colorado, where researchers uncovered a pattern of fracking-related crimes going unreported or unacknowledged; in North Dakota, where journalists found that accidents and spills were underreported and that regulators rarely used the enforcement tools at their disposal to impose sanctions; and in Texas, where reporters revealed the industry was largely left to self-regulate.
On the federal level, fracking wells are virtually unregulated compared to other polluting industries. While oil and gas wells are technically subject to the Clean Air Act, there are no air monitoring requirements for fracking wells, so monitoring and enforcement are largely left to states.
Natural gas flaring at a compressor station in Butler County, Ohio. Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2018)
The same goes for impacts to drinking water—part of a 2005 Bush/Cheney energy bill that's commonly referred to as the "Halliburton Loophole" exempted natural gas drilling from the national Safe Drinking Water Act. There have been many attempts to close this loophole, but none have succeeded.
Even where federal regulations do exist, meaningful enforcement has been lacking, especially in recent years—the Trump Administration oversaw a 70 percent decrease in criminal prosecutions under the Clean Water Act and more than a 50 percent decrease in prosecutions under the Clean Air Act.
In Pennsylvania, inadequate regulatory oversight has led to criminal charges. In the summer of 2020, following a two-year grand jury investigation, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro charged fracking giants Range Resources and Cabot with environmental crimes related to leaks, pollution, and water contamination, promising that he's still investigating "more than a dozen" criminal cases related to the oil and gas industry and that more charges are forthcoming.
The grand jury released a scathing 235-page report that documents the litany of health issues experienced by residents living near fracking sites, linking them to a long list of failures on the part of the two state agencies charged with protecting them—the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH). That list includes failing to adequately regulate the industry at its outset, failing to adequately train employees to respond to complaints, failing to adequately test for safety, and failing to notify residents about problems that could impact their health in a timely manner.
A fracking well pad in West Branch Township, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
The Pennsylvania DEP denies those allegations and has hired outside attorneys to respond to the ongoing criminal investigations.
The report also highlighted the problem of a "revolving door" between industry and the department—DEP employees are often hired away by the industry at a much higher pay rate, creating a clear conflict of interest. In one example, the grand jury learned that a DEP employee was hired by an oil and gas company after he'd issued the same company two improper "plugging" certificates, allowing the company to shut down wells without completing the legally required work to ensure that they were safe.
"Such career progression was not uncommon," the report stated. "This sort of hiring created an unfortunate talent drain for DEP—but more concerning to us was the potential effect on the integrity of the Department's investigations."
At a press conference about the grand jury report in July, Attorney General Shapiro said "DEP and DOH have failed Pennsylvanians, particularly during the early years of the fracking boom."
This pattern has left many residents feeling that even when their complaints are investigated, the results can't be trusted. A 2017 investigation by Public Herald journalists found that of the more than 4,100 oil and gas-related drinking water complaints filed by residents over a 13-year period, the PA DEP ruled that water contamination occurring near wells was not related to oil and gas activity 93 percent of the time.
Bryan Latkanich's complaints were among them. In repeated investigations over the years, the DEP acknowledged that Bryan's water was contaminated, but ruled that Chevron—the company that drilled, operated, and recently plugged the wells on his property—was not to blame. Chevron has maintained that Bryan's issues are coincidental and have nothing to do with their wells.
Bryan (left) and Ryan Latkanich (right) in front of their Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"DEP found no evidence that oil and gas activity adversely impacted Mr. Latkanich's private water supply," DEP spokesperson Lauren Fraley told EHN, "but did alert him to sampling results that did not meet statewide health and/or aesthetic standards for his consideration."
Chevron spokesperson Veronica Flores-Paniagua told EHN, "We have taken Mr. Latkanich's concerns very seriously. Chevron has thoroughly investigated Mr. Latkanich's concerns, tested his water, and demonstrated that its operations have not affected Mr. Latkanich's water."
Regarding the cracks in the foundation, Flores-Paniagua said a Chevron-hired engineer found a crack in the foundation was the result of an improper design, and not because of Chevron's operations.
Up until now, Bryan has gotten little help figuring out what's wrong from doctors, oil and gas employees, or state agency representatives. In 2019, EHN collected urine samples, along with air and water samples, from five families in southwestern Pennsylvania—including Bryan and his son—and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking.
Now for the first time, Bryan has clear evidence that he and Ryan are being exposed to harmful chemicals.
High exposures, nowhere to turn
Bryan Latkanich makes breakfast in his Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home in the summer of 2019 while Environmental Health News reporter Kristina Marusic prepares to package urine samples for freezing and shipping. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
EHN collected three water samples, four air monitoring samples, and six urine samples over a 5-week period from Bryan and his son Ryan, a precocious redhead who was 9 years old at the time.
We found 12 chemicals that are commonly emitted from fracking sites in one or more of their urine samples, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and lesser- known compounds linked to negative health impacts including respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, skin and eye irritation, organ damage, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk.
Some chemical exposures aren't detectable in urine if the body has already processed them, so we also looked for breakdown products, or biomarkers, for harmful chemicals. Some of these biomarkers show up when people consume certain foods or beverages, so to determine whether the levels we saw in Pennsylvania families were normal, we compared them against those seen in the average American using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
We found that urine samples for Bryan and Ryan also contained biomarkers of other fracking chemicals at levels higher than the U.S. 95th percentile—the value that 95 percent of Americans fall below, according to that CDC data.
All six of Bryan and Ryan's urine samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for mandelic acid, and phenylglyoxylic acid, both of which are biomarkers for ethylbenzene and styrene. Four of the six samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for trans, trans-muconic acid, a biomarker for benzene.
Ryan (left) and Brian Latkanich (right) near a natural gas well in the backyard of their Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Exposure to these compounds is linked to eye, skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation; neurological, immune, kidney, cardiovascular, blood, and developmental disorders; hormone disruption; and increased cancer risk.
On July 24, 2019, Ryan had a level of hippuric acid in his urine more than 91 times as high as the U.S. median and nearly five times as high as the U.S. 95th percentile. Hippuric acid is a biomarker that forms when the body is exposed to toluene, which is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory irritation; drowsiness and dizziness; and, with chronic exposure, infertility, reproductive harm, and damage to the nervous system, liver, and kidneys.
Both Bryan and Ryan spent July 24, 2019 at home, watching TV, using the computer, and sitting on the porch.
There's no way to know for certain whether the family's exposures came from fracking emissions. But EHN visited their home, had them complete an extensive survey about other possible sources of exposure, and recorded their activities around the time of our sampling and did not find other obvious explanations. Bryan uses chewing tobacco, which may have contributed to some of his exposures, but not Ryan's.
On July 24, 2019, Ryan's urine sample also showed a level of mandelic acid—a biomarker of ethylbenzene and styrene—nearly 42 times as high as the U.S. median and nearly 13 times as high as high as the U.S. 95th percentile. He also showed a level of 4-methylhippuric acid, a biomarker of xylene, nearly 13 times as high as the general U.S. median and nearly three times as high as the 95th percentile for 6 to 11-year-olds nationally.
Bryan's sample that day also showed a high level of mandelic acid—more than 12 times as high as the U.S. median and nearly four times as high as the 95th percentile.
On August 19th, 2019, Ryan's urine sample showed a level of trans, trans-muconic acid—a biomarker for benzene, which increases cancer risk—that was more than 28 times as high as that of the average adult cigarette smoker.
"These results are pretty shocking," Bryan said. "I don't know what else these exposures could possibly be from except the wells. In summertime when Ryan isn't in school, we both spend 99 percent of our time right here at home."
On two of the days we collected urine samples, Bryan and Ryan both wore personal air monitors for six to eight hours. We looked for 40 chemicals that are commonly emitted from fracking sites and compressor stations, and found detectable levels of each of the 40 chemicals at least once across Bryan and Ryan's air samples. On July 24, 2019, Bryan's sample showed detectable levels of all 40 chemicals.
Bryan and Ryan Latkanich in front of the fracking infrastructure that was formerly on their property in the summer of 2019. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Only a handful of these chemicals have regulatory limits, most of which pertain to short-term workplace exposures. Bryan and Ryan's air samples exceeded one regulatory threshold for three chemicals—the recommended limits on benzene, ethylbenzene, and naphthalene exposure set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to minimize cancer risk.
On August 5, 2019, Ryan's air monitor recorded the highest levels of benzaldehyde, m/p-ethyltoluene, and 1-dodecanol seen among the 39 air samples EHN collected from five households. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to dizziness and skin, eye, and respiratory irritation.
"When you have a whole host of chemicals like you found, you have to consider the cumulative impact," Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist and founder of the environmental consulting firm the Subra Company, told EHN. "You can't just look at one chemical and say, 'this was below the health standard so that's ok'—you have to look at the cumulative impact of the other 20 chemicals present. Even at low concentrations you can have health impacts, and when you add it all together, there can be a severe impact on people's health."
Toluene was also detected in both Bryan and Ryan's air samples, mirroring the high levels of biomarkers of toluene that were found in their urine. The levels of toluene detected in their air samples varied widely from day to day.
"Usually the only time you get a range of toluene like that in the atmosphere is if you're seeing a plume," John Graham, a senior scientist with the Clean Air Task Force, told EHN. "This could imply that there's a source that was emitting toluene and that people were exposed to it on the days when it looks really high."
A compressor station in Donegal, Pennsylvania. (Credit: (Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
EHN's investigation also found detectable levels of 12 of the 40 chemicals we looked for in Bryan and Ryan's water—things like butyl cyclohexane, tetradecane, and naphthalene. Most of the chemicals we looked for are unregulated, so there is no legal limit for them in drinking water.
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 highest level of naphthalene we detected in the Latkanich's water was 6.96 micrograms per liter.
Because of the DEP's determinations about his water, Bryan says he's been spending up to $70 a month on bottled water for the better part of a decade. He's thought about connecting to the municipal water, but he's afraid it wouldn't be better. They treat the water with chloramine, which he fears could further damage his already unhealthy kidneys (water treated with chloramine is generally considered safe for people with kidney issues to drink, though it can't safely be used in dialysis machines), and there have also been numerous reports of fracking wastewater contaminating the local water supply. Ryan's school, Bethlehem-Center, also has a history of water contamination, and as many as 12 students in the district have had childhood cancer, so Bryan sends him to school with bottled water.
Despite these precautions, they still have to bathe in the well water. More than once, Ryan has come out of a bath or shower with sores all over his body. When Bryan reported this to the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), the agency suggested Bryan and Ryan stop showering at home and instead shower at the nearest YMCA—which is an almost 30-minute drive one way.
EHN reporter Kristina Marusic looks at photos Bryan Latkanich took of his son, Ryan, with sores on his face after bathing in the summer of 2019. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
DOH spokesperson Nate Wardle declined to answer specific questions about Bryan and Ryan's case. "When a resident contacts us, we can help them in interpreting the results of testing done on their water source, but do not provide medical advice," he told EHN.
Wardle said the agency encourages people with problems like Bryan to use DOH's oil and gas health registry. In response to criticism that it was hard to find and confusing to navigate, the agency recently made improvements to the registry, but it remains under-utilized—in the first three quarters of 2020, they'd only received seven complaints (data for the full year hasn't yet been published), and the agency has documented a total of just 132 formal health complaints since 2011.
In the absence of a meaningful state registry for health-related oil and gas complaints, the nonprofit Southern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project* (EHP) has collected hundreds of complaints of health symptoms experienced by residents of southwestern Pennsylvania who live near fracking wells. In 2017 they analyzed 135 health assessments conducted between 2012 and 2015, and found that the most commonly reported symptoms were sleep disruption, headache, throat irritation, stress or anxiety, cough, shortness of breath, sinus problems, fatigue, nausea, and wheezing.
The organization's executive director, Alison Steele, said that much of their work fills the gap left by the absence of a county health department or an attentive state health department—a sentiment echoed in the Attorney General's grand jury report on fracking.
A drilling rig in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016)
"We find that EHP's actions stand in stark contrast to DOH's: the government agency charged with protecting public health," the jurors wrote. "We further find it remarkable that a newly created organization like EHP swiftly gathered data and provided guidance to Pennsylvanians on how they could protect themselves from the effects of industry operations, while a long-established government entity, DOH, did not."
Only six of Pennsylvania's 67 counties have their own health departments (Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Erie, Montgomery, and Philadelphia). The cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, Wilkes-Barre, and York also have their own municipal health departments. State-run health centers in 59 counties provide vaccines and disease testing, but offer few other services and are unable to respond to complaints about health issues related to the oil and gas industry.
"We speak with a lot of people who feel very unheard," Jessa Chabeau, the Appalachian regional manager at the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project told EHN. "Having a local health department, or even a regional health department that managed a couple of counties instead of the whole state would probably be more attuned to local issues."
Across the country, fracking often takes place in rural communities with similarly limited healthcare resources.
A bird's-eye view of Bryan and Ryan Latkanich's home and the fracking well pad up the hill behind it it in the summer of 2019. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
In North Dakota, the early fracking boom put tremendous strain on the state's healthcare system (mostly due to the sudden influx of uninsured workers): The number of traumatic injuries reported in the oil patch increased 200 percent from 2007-2012, ambulance calls in one heavily-fracked district increased 59 percent from 2006 to 2011, and 12 medical facilities in western North Dakota saw their combined debt rise by 46 percent from 2011 to 2012 fiscal years. Texas is facing a rural healthcare crisis that leaves people who live amidst oil wells with limited access to care—more than one-fifth of the state's 254 counties have only one doctor or none at all. A 2020 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts found that nationwide, at least 179 rural hospitals have closed since 2005—with more than 70 percent closing since 2012.
Bryan also feels that doctors have failed to protect him and Ryan. There are very few medical toxicologists in the greater Pittsburgh region. Bryan called the one his insurance would cover repeatedly for weeks until he managed to get Ryan an appointment with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Dr. Michael Abesamis in spring of 2018.
The doctor returned a written report stating that Ryan had "possible hydrocarbon exposure," and advising that as treatment, he should "stay away from his exposure source (the house site—air and water) as much as is possible."
"So basically the toxicologist's only advice was to move," Bryan said, "which we can't afford to do."
Paranoia and distrust
Bryan Latkanich in his Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Bryan and Ryan live in a sprawling, white, custom-built farmhouse with an attached 2.5 car garage and a wraparound porch. The house sits on a picturesque hillside overlooking a small pond on the 33-acre farm. In summer, sunflowers grow all over the yard. Bryan has let Ryan plant seeds wherever he wanted because it helps hide the well pad behind their home from view.
"We don't want to look at that mess," Ryan said, "this way we can just look at the flowers instead."
There are stacks of American Rifleman magazine and books of children's Bible stories on the coffee table in the living room. There's a framed painting of Jesus Christ on the wall bearing text that reads, "Pray more, worry less." The first time I met Ryan, he proudly proclaimed, "I'm the countriest kid you ever met."
Bryan had the house built in 2000 with money from an inheritance. He planned to make it the family homestead for future generations.
"That plan is gone," he said. "We can barely live here now."
Bryan and Ryan's dog, Digby, resting on their front porch. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Bryan woke up one day in March 2020 to find construction vehicles at the well pad. When he asked what was going on, a Chevron employee told him the wells were being plugged.
More than 250 North American oil and gas producers have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015. As part of that shrinkage, numerous large fracking companies have left Pennsylvania, including Chevron, which announced in December 2019 that it would sell it's Appalachian Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale assets—roughly 890,000 acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.
The company closed its office in Coraopolis, a Pittsburgh suburb, and laid off about 300 employees. In October 2020, EQT Corp, the largest natural gas producer in the nation (headquartered in Pittsburgh), announced it would purchase Chevron's Appalachian assets for $735 million. Bryan's wells, which have now been filled with concrete, are not among those assets.
"It's a huge relief to have them gone," Bryan said, "but I know this isn't over yet."
Chevron maintains that they've operated in good faith, but at this point Bryan doesn't trust them—or any other fracking company, for that matter. And he isn't alone.
"It's a huge relief to have them gone, but I know this isn't over yet." (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"We hear a lot about distrust and paranoia toward the industry from community members," Hannah Blinn, a former environmental health educator and fellow at the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told EHN. "We've even had people tell us they think industry reps have stolen their air monitors."
In the course of conducting interviews for this project, we heard from residents of Washington County who fear the industry is infiltrating local governments, spying on community Facebook groups, and plotting cover-ups of spills and illegal emissions in cahoots with state agencies like the DEP and DOH. Studies on the mental health impacts associated with fracking suggest that fear, distrust, and paranoia about the industry's impacts is common in fracked communities throughout the U.S.
Meanwhile, oil and gas companies go to great lengths to make clear the benefits they bring to communities.
"One thing that's changed these communities is the gas industry's charitable giving," Republican Pennsylvania Senator Gene Yaw, who chairs the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, told EHN. "In one of my counties the oil and gas industry is responsible for leading an effort to build a new hospital. Today one of the companies is making a presentation to a volunteer fire department about giving them funds to buy new emergency equipment. Things like that go on all the time—they're the norm now."
EHN reached out to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a regional industry trade group, for insights about ways the industry strives to protect people from potential emissions and to invite comment on our study's findings. Their response revealed that sometimes those within the industry experience mistrust and paranoia, too.
Former Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer (who retired in January 2021) responded with an email calling EHN biased and deriding the author, the publication, its funders, and our research. He dismissed our findings indicating potential exposures out of hand and accused EHN of intentionally "peddl[ing] misinformation and fear aimed at driving clicks to [our] site." (As a nonprofit newsroom, EHN does not benefit financially from clicks.)
A fracking well pad near two homes in Gamble Township, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2020)
The president of a similar group in the Western U.S. struck a different tone.
"Any energy source has an impact on the environment, from mining to wind and solar," Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, told EHN. "The key is to minimize that risk, which happens especially well with the oil and gas industry because it's so heavily regulated. If companies make a mistake and have a spill or too much pollution, they're not only held liable under the law, but they also get lots of bad publicity. It is absolutely in a company's best interest to comply with environmental standards and be good corporate citizens."
A similar national organization, the American Petroleum Institute (API), has developed more than 700 standards for the industry aimed at promoting safety and efficiency over its 100-year history.
"As an industry we rely on data, facts and science, and we put that in practice every day by employing thousands of scientists and engineers," API spokesperson Emily Smith told EHN. "It is our top priority to protect the health and safety of the communities and environment in which we operate, and we follow industry best practices, standards and government regulations to ensure strong environmental and public health protections."
As for Bryan, he doesn't think it should matter what a corporation's true motivations are or even how honest they are—people who live in fracking communities should be able to rely on local and state governments for protection.
"Everything would be different here if regulators actually did their jobs and defended the Pennsylvania constitution, which guarantees me as a resident the right to clean air and pure water," he said. "Instead they protect and defend fracking companies, which are always just looking at the bottom line."
A major mission change
Bryan Latkanich talks with fellow Washington County residents Kurt and Janice Blanock on his front porch in the summer of 2019. In 2016 the Blanock's son Luke died of Ewing sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 19. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of 46 environmental organizations in the Pittsburgh region, told EHN he was saddened but not surprised by the results of EHN's research.
"To see this kind of proof that people who have endured terrible health issues have had these kinds of exposures from those bad decisions and actions is heartbreaking," he said. "What your study has done is the work that someone who actually works for a health agency should probably do."
While a large body of scientific research has linked living near fracking to numerous health effects, state governments approach these studies in very different ways.
The state of New York banned fracking outright in 2014 on the basis of 400 peer-reviewed studies showing potential health harms from the industry (As of August 2020, there were 2,015 studies indicating potential harm). Other states that have looked to the science on both health and climate change impacts and passed permanent or temporary bans on fracking include Vermont, Washington, Maryland, and Oregon. France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Wales, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica have also passed fracking bans.
A 2012 fracking protest outside of European Parliament. (Credit: Greens EFA/Flickr)
In contrast, states with economies that already rely heavily on the fracking industry are often more reluctant to take a precautionary approach.
A 2017 study by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment looked at available scientific studies, determined that only 12 of them were scientifically rigorous enough to use, and concluded that there is "limited" and "insufficient" evidence of health harms from exposures associated with oil and gas operations. In 2019, Colorado conducted another literature review in collaboration with the Pennsylvania DOH, which also found little evidence of harm. That review was criticized by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project for including just 20 peer-reviewed studies.
In the last year, though, things have changed drastically in Colorado.
Colorado state toxicologist Kristy Richardson, who co-authored the 2019 literature review in collaboration with the DOH, told EHN that many studies were excluded because of how difficult it is to determine with scientific certainty whether health issues experienced by people living near fracking wells are being caused by exposures associated with the wells, other environmental exposures, or lifestyle factors.
"The literature reviews we did both here and with researchers in Pennsylvania pointed to a need for higher quality analysis that allow us to control for confounding factors in people's health so we can better understand what's attributable to oil and gas versus other variables in people's lives," Richardson said.
In an attempt to close that gap, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment also conducted its own multiyear study that used weather and emissions data from Colorado fracking wells to estimate the levels of harmful chemicals up to 2,000 feet from well pads under various weather conditions—things like high vs. low winds, various temperatures, and precipitation. Their findings, which were published in 2019, were groundbreaking.
"We found that during worst case weather conditions, the levels of emissions for chemicals like benzene and xylene are high enough to cause short-term health effects at every distance we studied—from 300 to 2,000 feet from oil and gas operations," Richardson explained.
These short-term health effects include things like headaches, nosebleeds, difficulty breathing and dizziness. Richardson noted that the study did not account for simultaneous exposures from multiple well pads or assess potential long-term health effects from these exposures.
Before that study came out, Colorado had already begun an overhaul of the way it regulates the industry. In April that year, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 19-181, which fundamentally changed the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (which oversees permitting for the industry), from "fostering" oil and gas development to "regulating" the industry in a way that protects "public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources."
That shift combined with the new report from the state health department kicked off a barrage of policy changes.
In November 2020, following more than 180 hours of public hearings involving 93 parties representing industry groups, scientific researchers, public health officials, homeowners associations and environmental groups, the newly revamped Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission announced that it would begin implementing some of the strongest fracking regulations and policies in the country. They include:
A 2,000-foot setback distance for new unconventional oil and gas wells
A requirement that fracking companies capture and eliminate 95 percent of harmful air pollutants released during fracking
A requirement that emissions are monitored from the start of construction of a new fracking well through the first six months of production
A ban on routine flaring or venting (burning off or releasing excess natural gas, which also releases toxic chemicals)
A new system aimed at tracking the industry's cumulative impacts
New protections for wildlife and waterways
Increased transparency and public input
The incorporation of environmental justice considerations (assessing the poverty rate and racial makeup of communities that will be impacted) during the permitting process
Both Richardson and John Putnam, the former environmental programs director at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said that engaging with people who live near oil and gas wells and incorporating their concerns into research and policy decisions has been critical.
"Even while we invest in a rigorous, scientific data-driven approach, we need to make sure that we're engaging with the community to really hear their concerns and communicate the science in an accessible, empathetic way," Putnam told EHN. (Putnam recently left the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to take a position as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation.)
He also said there's no reason states like Pennsylvania should have to reinvent the wheel.
"Colorado has some of the best air quality, public health, and climate scientists in the world doing great work and researching collaboratively," Putnam said. "I think other states could take a look at the body of work Colorado has done, from research to policy implementation, to learn from our lessons and build on our successes."
Ongoing ailments
Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News
Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News
Despite the wells on his property being plugged, Bryan remains worried about his and Ryan's exposures.
In addition to the well pad on his property, Bryan's house is surrounded by dozens of wells and other pieces of industry infrastructure owned by numerous operators including Chevron, EQT, Range Resources, and Diversified Oil & Gas.
About a year after the wells on his property went in, Ryan was diagnosed with asthma. In the years since, he has had frequent earaches and respiratory issues, including pneumonia and bronchitis. For the last three years, he's also had bouts of vomiting and difficulty controlling his bowels.
Bryan was sick before the wells went in. He had polycystic kidney disease, and when he initially signed his lease, he'd recently woken up after having a benign brain tumor removed to learn that he was permanently blind in one eye and had impaired vision in the other. He's had a number of other symptoms emerge in the last decade, many of which began following the flaring of wells on his property. When the flaring was underway, the huge flames licking up into the air were so close to the house they could feel the heat.
"I thought the damn siding was gonna melt," Bryan said. "The flames were higher than our roof."
Bryan in front the fracking infrastructure that was formerly on his property. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
View of the well pad that was formerly on the Latkanich property from their living room window. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Natural gas flaring emits a slew of toxic chemicals including benzene, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, acetaldehyde, acrolein, propylene, toluene, xylenes, ethyl benzene and hexane, among others. Exposure to those chemicals is linked to a host of negative health effects including increased cancer risk, respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation, endocrine disruption, and central nervous system damage. Very few studies have been conducted on the health effects of exposure to flaring specifically, but one 2020 study concluded that babies born near natural gas flaring are 50 percent more likely to be premature.
Soon after flaring began, Bryan got sick to his stomach and was diagnosed with inflammation in his intestines. He began losing all his body hair, eventually learning that he'd become sterile, and he was prescribed testosterone shots. He developed neuropathy, a type of nerve damage that causes pain and numbness in the limbs and joints, and he was diagnosed with adult onset asthma. Many of his ailments are ongoing—Bryan has been in and out of the hospital at least five times since February 2018.
It isn't just their physical health that continues to suffer. Both Bryan and Ryan feel anxious about their health, and Ryan has been bullied at school over his incontinence. Bryan has been teaching him how to box in case it ever gets physical.
Previously, Bryan planted his farmland with tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, pumpkins, and peach, apple, cherry, plum, and pear trees to sell at local markets and farm stands. But Brian said that when restoring the parts of the property they'd disrupted, Chevron filled the land with stones and left ditches that have made it impossible to get through it with the tractor. Even if he could, he said, he'd be afraid to sell anything he grew for fear that the soil could be contaminated.
For a while, Bryan was staying up late looking for houses every night, even though they can't afford to move—they're getting by on a small pension and Bryan's disability payments.
"The house is still damaged, our health is still affected, the water's still not drinkable, and the property isn't put together," he said. "I'm glad they're gone. But I'm still not whole."
Editor's note: Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project (EHP) was a partner in this project, along with the University of Missouri. EHP and EHN both receive some funding from the Heinz Foundation but remain independent from the foundation.
Banner photo: Bryan Latkanich makes breakfast in his Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
EHN.org scientific investigation finds western Pennsylvania families near fracking are exposed to harmful chemicals, and regulations fail to protect communities' mental, physical, and social health.
Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline construction is running into tribal resistance over fears of water pollution, wild rice impacts, climate change, and exploitation of Native women.
