PITTSBURGH—Toxic “forever chemicals”, also known as PFAS, have been used in at least eight oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, but the exact location of those wells has never been publicly disclosed — until now.
Experts say it’s possible that communities where PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been used by the oil and gas industry could face contamination of soil, groundwater and drinking water — and that contamination could be widespread.
The chemicals don’t break down naturally, so they linger in the environment and human bodies. Exposure is linked to health problems including kidney and testicular cancer, liver and thyroid problems, reproductive problems, lowered vaccine efficacy in children and increased risk of birth defects, among others.
Last year, a report by the environmental health advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility revealed that PFAS have been used in hydraulic fracturing and other types of oil and gas extraction across the U.S. for at least a decade, and an EHN investigation published in August documented PFAS contamination in one Pennsylvania fracking community resident’s drinking water.
A 2021 op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that the chemicals were used in at least eight wells in Pennsylvania, but did not disclose the location of the wells. Physicians for Social Responsibility recently published a new report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells. In a footnote, that report listed the location for all eight Pennsylvania wells where well operators reported using PFAS in public fracking chemical disclosures.
The Pennsylvania wells where PFAS have been used are located in the following communities:
Chippewa Township, Beaver County (population 7,953)
Donegal Township, Washington County (population 2,192)
Independence Township, Washington County (two wells) (population 1,515)
Pulaski Township, Lawrence County (three wells) (population 3,102)
West Finley Township, Washington County (population 813)
The operators for all eight wells reported using polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE, which is a type of PFAS marketed as Teflon, in fracking fluid. PFAS may also be used during other phases of oil and gas extraction that don’t require any kind of public disclosure. It’s likely that the chemicals have been used in additional Pennsylvania oil and gas wells, but a lack of transparency makes it impossible to know.
PFAS are likely being used in oil and gas wells throughout the country, but little research exists on how widespread the practice is and whether it’s causing drinking water contamination. Most existing research on PFAS has focused on other sources of the chemicals, like firefighting foam used at airports and military bases and industrial emissions. Investigations have found drinking water contamination in communities across the country.
“It’s critical for state regulators to start looking for these contaminants in people’s drinking water near these oil and gas sites,” Dusty Horwitt, a co-author of Physicians for Social Responsibility’s reports on PFAS, told EHN.
Jamar Thrasher — press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which is responsible for overseeing the oil and gas industry — told EHN the agency investigates spills and releases at well sites and documents its investigations, but "absent a spill or release on the surface or below surface, there is no reason to conclude that well site fluids (whether including PFAS compounds or not) would have reached nearby soils or drinking water.”
PFAS use at oil and gas wells nationwide
At the national level, Physicians for Social Responsibility has reported that PFAS or substances that could break down into PFAS have been used in more than 1,200 fracking wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming, and that this number likely represents only a fraction of potentially contaminated sites.
The organization’s recent report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells found that the chemicals have been used in at least 101 fracking wells in eight counties in the state since 2013.
That number might represent just a fraction of the actual wells where the chemicals were used, according to the report, because oil and gas companies withheld the identity of at least one trade secret chemical in more than 2,100 oil and gas wells during the same period.
“We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in other states, but this is a huge number of trade secret chemicals and surfactants being used in Ohio,” Horwitt said. “That means use of PFAS and other dangerous chemicals in Ohio may be much greater than what’s been publicly reported.”
The organization published a similar report on Colorado in January, which found that PFAS were used in nearly 300 oil and gas wells in the state between 2011 and 2021. That report was influential in state regulators’ decision to ban the use of PFAS in oil and gas wells.
“It’s impossible to know how widespread PFAS contamination from oil and gas wells might be at this point,” Horwitt said. “We need more transparency before we can begin to address this issue.”
A dangerous waste stream
Waste from the Pennsylvania drill sites, including fracking fluid, drill cuttings and soil, may also have been contaminated by PTFE. Waste from each well site was sent to various secondary locations for disposal or reuse including other fracking wells, injection wells, sewage treatment facilities and landfills.
“These chemicals are very persistent, so it’s entirely possible that those disposal sites could also be contaminated with PFAS,” Horwitt said.
And because Pennsylvania doesn’t require complete public disclosure of all the chemicals used by the oil and gas industry, these eight wells and the locations where waste from them was disposed could represent just a fraction of the oil and gas wells throughout the state where PFAS have been used or disposed of.
Thrasher said there is no plan at this time to test any additional oil and gas wastewater disposal sites, but added "PFAS is an emerging issue and we will continue to explore the prevalence of PFAS in our environment. Our focus at this time remains on our efforts on the rulemaking to establish enforceable PFAS standards in drinking water."
PFAS are a subset of many substances associated with health problems that are generated by the oil and gas industry.
How PA’s fracking communities can protect themselves from PFAS
On Wednesday, Oct. 19, the Environmental Health Project, an environmental health advocacy nonprofit, will host a free webinar about PFAS and health specifically for fracking communities.
Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization that has spent years mapping PFAS contamination across the U.S., will speak at the event.
“In communities where we know there’s significant PFAS contamination either from a specific industry or point source, drinking water is a primary concern,” Stoiber told EHN. “Reverse osmosis and activated carbon filters are both effective at reducing PFAS in drinking water at home.”
Stoiber and Horwitt both said that regulatory agencies like the Pennsylvania DEP, which is responsible for overseeing the oil and gas industry, should test soil, groundwater and drinking water for PFAS in communities where we know the chemicals have been used in oil and gas extraction.
In Pennsylvania, that would mean specifically testing for PTFE and its breakdown products. Residents of these communities can contact the DEP to report potential PFAS contamination and request testing.
Stoiber said Pennsylvania residents should also ask their elected officials to consider phasing out the use of PFAS by the oil and gas industry.
Federal workers worry about job security and policy reversals under a potential second Trump administration.
Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, supports firing mid-level bureaucrats to reshape the federal workforce.
Democrats are divided over President Biden’s re-election campaign amid his recent COVID-19 diagnosis.
Key quote:
“I think he’s learned more about what he needs to do with his incoming administration if he were to be elected.”
— National Park Service employee
Why this matters:
Federal employees are anxious about losing their jobs and seeing their work undone if Trump wins. This instability could impact the effectiveness and morale of the civil service.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
Alberta's Canadian Energy Centre, created to counter green energy narratives, has shut down due to impending federal regulations on oil industry advertising.
The Canadian Energy Centre, launched in 2019, aimed to rebut criticisms of Alberta's oil industry but faced multiple public embarrassments and credibility issues.
Funded by oil and gas companies through Alberta's carbon pricing program, the Centre was required to register as a foreign agent in the U.S.
New federal requirements for accuracy in oil advertising led to the Centre's abrupt closure before the regulations took effect.
Key quote:
“You’d have been forgiven for wondering if the sole mission of the [the war room] was to make every other government expenditure seem like a bargain.”
— Andrew Leach, Alberta Energy economist
Why this matters:
The closure highlights the growing impact of regulatory measures on misleading advertising and underscores the challenges Alberta faces in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
The Rio Grande's water levels are critically low, pushing South Texas cities to find alternative water sources.
Edinburg plans a new water treatment facility to extract water from underground aquifers and reuse wastewater.
Reverse osmosis is gaining popularity in the region despite high costs and environmental concerns.
Key quote:
"We see the future and we've got to find different water alternatives, sources. You know how they used to say water is gold? Now it's platinum."
— Tom Reyna, Edinburg assistant city manager
Why this matters:
With the Rio Grande no longer reliable, South Texas faces water scarcity that threatens both residential and agricultural needs. Innovative solutions are essential but may be financially unattainable for smaller communities without state support.
Root Hill Cafe in Brooklyn faces frequent flood damage, losing about $3,500 in sales and employee pay for each day closed.
Small businesses nationwide struggle with high flood insurance costs and insufficient coverage, as seen in Vermont's $300 million flood damage last summer.
Experts urge infrastructure upgrades and better flood risk transparency to support small businesses.
Key quote:
“We are constantly checking the weather... If we see that there’s a hurricane in Florida, it’s like, oh my God, please let it not come here.”
— Alejandra Palma, co-owner of Root Hill Cafe
Why this matters:
Flooding threatens the survival of small businesses, which employ nearly half of US workers and contribute significantly to the economy. Communities are calling for greater support from both state and federal governments, emphasizing the need for improved flood defenses, better urban planning, and more accessible disaster relief funds. Advocates argue that proactive measures, such as investing in green infrastructure and restoring natural floodplains, could mitigate future risks.
The Center for American Progress found 123 House and Senate Republicans deny the scientific consensus on climate change.
This group includes prominent leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Despite the reduction in numbers, these members have collectively received $52 million from the fossil fuel industry.
Key quote:
“It's also concerning because it’s so obvious what the facts are, and to watch so many members of Congress pretend that the science is not settled, it just reveals a willingness to disregard truth.”
— Trevor Higgins, senior vice president for energy and environment, Center for American Progress
In 1977, a publication by a predecessor of Marathon Petroleum warned that rising global temperatures could cause severe economic and social disruptions, including widespread starvation.
The 1977 article from Marathon Petroleum's predecessor predicted climate-related disasters due to industrial expansion.
The lawsuit claims Marathon and other companies concealed their knowledge of climate risks for decades.
Marathon is accused of opposing climate policies while privately acknowledging the dangers of carbon emissions.
Key quote:
"The climate is not going to get better, only worse. Over the long haul, we are going to have to brace ourselves for the prospect of a lot of poor harvests."
— J Murray Mitchell, NOAA scientist
Why this matters:
Companies like Marathon Petroleum knew about climate change risks long ago but continued to prioritize profit over environmental responsibility. Understanding this history is vital for holding them accountable and addressing current climate challenges.
Power shutoffs or wildfire evacuations can be deadly for disabled people, especially nondrivers who may not have a way to get to a cooling center or evacuation point.