Fractured: Harmful chemicals and unknowns haunt Pennsylvanians surrounded by fracking
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—In the summer of 2019, 13-year-old Gunnar Bjornson spent most days banging on his drums, playing video games, antagonizing his siblings, wandering outdoors, and scrounging for junk food in his home's mostly healthy kitchen.
Gunnar is tan and blond with bright blue eyes and all the charisma required to survive being the younger of two middle children in a big family. He's the household entertainer, constantly cracking jokes and falling into contagious giggling fits.
Gunnar lives with his mom, dad, older brothers and younger sister about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh in the aptly-named community of Scenery Hill, where narrow country roads wind through shady woods that open up onto hilltop vistas of rolling fields. The hills are peppered with farmhouses, fruit orchards, and fields of corn and squash. The roadsides are punctuated by little white churches, farm stands, and dirt driveways marked with hand-painted signs like "The Jones's" and "Hidden Family Farm."
Scenery Hill is in Washington County, the most heavily fracked county in Pennsylvania, with about 1,584 wells in its 861 square miles, so the idyllic country roads are also flanked with signs directing oil and gas well traffic: "No well traffic beyond this point," "Staging area ---->," "Truck traffic: No engine breaks," and ads that read, "We buy mineral rights!"
August 19, 2019, was a typical day for Gunnar—he played drums, took the dog outside, and argued and joked with his siblings. But unbeknownst to him and his family, Gunnar had a number of harmful chemicals coursing through his body.
A urine sample taken from Gunnar that day contained 11 harmful industrial chemicals, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and lesser-known chemicals linked to a range of health effects including respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, skin and eye irritation, organ damage, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk.
These chemicals are found in things like gasoline, pesticides, industrial solvents and glues, varnishes, paints, car exhaust, industrial emissions, and tobacco smoke. They're also commonly detected in air emissions from fracking wells.
Gunnar Bjornson in his family's Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Fracking, another name for hydraulic fracturing, is the process of extracting oil and gas from the Earth by drilling deep wells and injecting liquid at high pressure. Over the last decade, fracking has transformed the U.S. energy industry—total crude oil production more than doubled from 2010 to 2020, and natural gas, once in short supply, is now so over-abundant it's exported overseas. But in that same time period, concerns about the health effects of fracking have escalated.
In Texas, researchers found that babies born near frequent flaring—the burning off of excess natural gas from fracking wells—are 50 percent more likely to be premature. In Colorado, the state Department of Health found that people living near fracking sites face elevated risk of nosebleeds, headaches, breathing trouble, and dizziness. In Pennsylvania, researchers found that people living near fracking face increased rates of infant mortality, depression, and hospitalizations for skin and urinary issues. Studies of fracking communities throughout the country have found that living near fracking wells increases the risk of premature births, high-risk pregnancies, asthma, migraines, fatigue, nasal and sinus symptoms, skin disorders and heart failure; and laboratory studies have linked chemicals used in fracking fluid to endocrine disruption—which can cause hormone imbalance, reproductive harm, early puberty, brain and behavior problems, improper immune function, and cancer.
"We have enough evidence at this point that these health impacts should be of serious concern to policymakers interested in protecting public health," Irena Gorski Steiner, an environmental epidemiology doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Environmental Health News (EHN).
EHN has reported on this increasing evidence of fracking's impacts on human health for years. But we saw a gap in the science—almost no one was checking to see if harmful fracking chemicals were actually in the bodies of people living near wells. In 2019, EHN collected urine samples, along with air and water samples, from five families in southwestern Pennsylvania, including the Bower-Bjornsons, and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking. We found:
- Chemicals in water, air and urine samples that are linked to a wide range of harmful health impacts
- Cancer-causing chemicals in air samples at levels that exceeded recommended safety thresholds
- Biomarkers (also referred to as breakdown products or metabolites) for harmful chemicals like ethylbenzene, styrene, and toluene in the bodies of southwestern Pennsylvanians at levels significantly higher than the average American. For example, we found a biomarker for toluene in a 9 year-old boy living near fracking wells at a level 91 times as high as the level seen in the average American
- Families that live closer to fracking wells had higher levels of chemicals like 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene, 2-heptanone, and naphthalene in their urine than families that live further away. Exposure to these compounds is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory issues, gastrointestinal illness, liver problems, neurological issues, immune system and kidney damage, developmental issues, hormone disruption, and increased cancer risk.
Read about how we conducted our study
We collected a total of 17 urine samples from Gunnar and his family during the summer of 2019. Some chemical exposures aren't detectable in urine if the body has already broken them down, so we also looked for breakdown products, or biomarkers, of harmful chemicals. The presence of these chemicals and their biomarkers in urine generally reflect exposures that occurred within a few days of sampling.
Some of these biomarkers have sources other than these chemicals. For example, trans, trans-muconic acid is a biomarker for benzene, but eating sorbic acid (a common food preservative) also produces trans, trans-muconic acid. Hippuric acid is a biomarker for toluene, which can damage the nervous system or kidneys, but it's also formed when the body processes tea, wine, and certain fruit juices. As a result, we expect everyone to have a certain level of these compounds in their bodies. To determine whether the levels we saw in Pennsylvania families were normal, we compared the levels of these biomarkers in the families we tested to the levels seen in the average American using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
More than half of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for phenylglyoxylic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, and 41 percent of the family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for hippuric acid and trans, trans-muconic acid—biomarkers for toluene and benzene, respectively. Exposure to these compounds is linked to skin, lung, and eye irritation; central nervous system, liver and kidney damage; and cancer.
Gunnar's urine sample contained a level of mandelic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, 55 times as high as the average American (according to CDC data) and higher than levels typically seen in the average adult cigarette smoker.
Mandelic acid isn't itself harmful—it's used in small amounts in some medicines and skincare products—but exposure to ethylbenzene and styrene is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and increased cancer risk.
A few years ago, when drilling began simultaneously at three of the fracking well pads within a few miles of the Bower-Bjornson home, Gunnar frequently got nosebleeds that lasted up to 20 minutes and drained all the color from his face. Sometimes he'd cough up blood clots afterwards. Once, he recalled, this happened at school and he asked his teacher not to tell his mom about it, knowing it worried her.
Gunnar still gets nosebleeds, but they're less frequent now that all three of those wells are in production—meaning they're no longer actively drilled and fracked, but are producing oil and gas. They aren't the only three wells nearby. The family's home is within five miles of at least 25 active well pads, many of which contain multiple wells. The nearest pad, owned by Pittsburgh-headquartered EQT Corporation—the largest producer of natural gas in the country—is home to 10 operational wells.
There's no way to know for certain whether Gunnar and his family's exposures came from fracking emissions. We looked for other potential sources of exposure by visiting their home, asking them to complete an extensive survey, and recording their activities around the time of our sampling.
On the days we collected samples, the family generally engaged in normal summer activities—running errands, working in the garden, and lounging around the house. When we observed other potential sources of exposure, they're noted in our reporting. To our knowledge, the Bower-Bjornsons did not smoke cigarettes, spend hours in traffic, or consume vast enough quantities of foods or products containing these compounds to entirely explain why their levels for these compounds were so much higher than they are in most Americans.
The biggest difference between this family and the average American: their home's proximity to fracking wells.
"I sort of knew we were being exposed here," Gunnar's mom, Lois Bower-Bjornson, told EHN, "but I had no idea it was at this level. Seeing this on paper was a real eye opener."
We found harmful chemicals in Lois's urine samples, too—on July 23, 2019, her sample contained the highest level of naphthalene detected in our study. There isn't any national data available to compare her level against, but the level of naphthalene detected in Lois's urine sample that day was more than 15 times higher than the median level we detected in other southwestern Pennsylvania residents.
From left, Gunnar, Lois, Odessa, Nels and Kylan at their home in Scenery Hill, PA. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"When we do air samples and we do urine samples we don't usually find naphthalene unless there's an industrial source releasing naphthalene very close by," Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist and founder of the environmental consulting firm the Subra Company, told EHN. Through her firm, Subra has spent decades conducting studies similar to EHN's in communities facing toxic exposures. She also previously served as vice-chair of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and received a MacArthur fellowship for her work related to environmental exposures.
We all face myriad exposures to toxic chemicals every day—a byproduct of living in a modern world replete with vehicles, heavy industry, plastics, and pesticides. EHN's pilot study was small, and more research is needed to tease out fracking exposures and trends. Still, the exposures we found in Gunnar, his family, and four other southwestern Pennsylvania households suggest that the approximately 18 million Americans who live within a mile of an active oil and gas well might face above-average levels of exposure to chemicals that are harming them.
For many of those families, including the Bower-Bjornsons, the industry's proximity to their homes has not only led to anxiety about their health, but also damaged their quality of life, and made them feel disempowered and neglected by the federal and state agencies that are supposed to protect them.
A dream that became a nightmare
Lois Bower-Bjornson at her Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Washington County is about 93 percent White and mostly rural, dotted with aging mining towns. The exception is the county seat, a small city of the same name as the county that's home to Washington & Jefferson College and about 7 percent of the county's approximately 207,298 residents. Most of the county is middle class. The poverty rate is about 10 percent, a few points lower than the state poverty rate of 12 percent.
The Bower-Bjornson's picturesque white farmhouse, built in 1830, was originally the town general store. The walls of the large living room are shelved floor to ceiling, and on one shelf, left unpainted for posterity, there are lists of goods, quantities and prices, and tallies for what appear to be family tabs scratched in faded pencil.
The rest of the shelves are filled with books, a musically diverse record collection, and childhood memorabilia like school dioramas and lego houses.
As a young couple, Lois and her husband Dave lived in Pittsburgh's North Side on the historic Mexican War Streets, but after the arrival of their second child they started looking for more space. They saw this house in Scenery Hill and fell in love with the idea of an idyllic country life.
They moved in and enrolled the kids in a one-room elementary school where they spent their days practicing yoga, growing a garden, and helping prepare shared meals. Odessa, the youngest of the four Bower-Bjornson children, told EHN, "It's the best school in the world."
Gunnar and Odessa play in their family's Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
When fracking companies arrived in 2011, the Bower-Bjornson's weren't worried—they saw an opportunity for economic growth. They granted one company permission to run natural gas transmission lines beneath their property for $12,500 (though they haven't leased their mineral rights). But over the next few years, the family's quiet country life morphed into something else.
Their property was surrounded by voluminous truck traffic, large flames shooting into the sky, bad smells, bright lights, loud noises, and an expensive ruptured gas line they chalked up to the increased traffic. They soon began to feel overwhelmed—and they're not alone.
In fracking towns across the country, residents have found themselves at odds over whether to lease their land and cash in or fight back against the industry. When formerly rural and suburban areas are suddenly industrialized by the fracking industry, research has found that residents' sense of place and identity are disrupted, and that living amidst fracking can increase worry, anxiety, and depression.
Concerns about water contamination have also persisted since the beginning of the fracking boom, when footage of tap water from homes near well pads catching on fire due to its high methane content went viral.
A line of fracking wastewater trucks in Moundsville, West Virginia (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Aerial view of fracking wastewater storage ponds in central Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Researchers have documented drinking water contamination from fracking in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota, and Wyoming at various points in time, and in 2016 the EPA concluded the industry posed a threat to the U.S. water supply. A literature review published in 2020 looked at a decade of research on the impacts of just fracking wastewater disposal and found that drinking water in fracking communities has higher levels of total dissolved solids (like calcium, magnesium, chlorides and sulfates), salt, and methane.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group representing 200 unconventional oil and gas companies that operate in the Western U.S., told EHN that, while companies have always worked to minimize the chance of water contamination occurring, they've made some additional improvements in recent years.
"Wellbore integrity has been improving for decades and almost every state with a major oil and gas presence has tightened up its fracturing rules, so the risk of groundwater contamination continues to be managed to a very low level," Sgamma said. "When we look at surface handling of water, that's generally where spills can occur. It's rare for surface water to be contaminated, but when that happens it has to be remediated and companies are held liable for that."
"Nobody wants to have a spill for several reasons," she added. "One, because it takes a lot more money to clean up a spill than it does to just prevent it in the first place, and two, because it can harm a company's reputation." She added that companies have improved their ability to recycle wastewater, resulting in less freshwater use and helping to account for some of the wastewater disposal issues that have occurred.
The Bower-Bjornson's water comes from the local municipal system, Tri County Joint Municipal Authority, which serves more than 10,000 customers in southeastern Washington County. For the last several years, the Bower-Bjornson family has received notices from the municipal water authority and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) Bureau of Safe Drinking Water stating that the municipal water contains unregulated chemical contaminants including haloacetic acids, total trihalomethanes, nitrates, and inorganic compounds, among others. The notices advise anyone who is pregnant, has an infant, has a compromised immune system, or is elderly should consult with a physician before drinking their tap water.
Brothers Kylan Bjornson and Nels Bjornson in their home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
The oil and gas industry is one likely source of these contaminants, along with mining and other heavy industries. Some contaminants, such as trihalomethanes, are formed when contaminants in source water interact with chemicals used for treatment.
Sydney Evans, a science analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy nonprofit, told EHN that few federal or state water regulations have been updated in the last 20 years, so there's a gap between what's legal and what's safe.
"People tend to take the safety of their tap water for granted because it's being monitored, tested, and treated," Evans said. "But it's important for people to realize that legal doesn't necessarily mean safe."
Most public drinking water in the region comes from the Monongahela River (or "the Mon," in local parlance). In 2014, the DEP found radioactive chemicals at levels 60 times higher than what federal drinking standards allow in Ten Mile Creek near the Bower-Bjornson's home, which feeds into the Mon, and many locals feel certain fracking wastewater is the source.
Last year, it was discovered that a municipal sewage plant in nearby Belle Vernon was unknowingly accepting and releasing untreated fracking leachate from a nearby landfill containing high levels of chlorides, barium, and radium at higher levels than federal drinking water standards allow into the Mon—one of many similar instances across the state.
Marks for children's growth in the Bower-Bjornson home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
At the beginning of the summer of 2019, EHN collected water samples from three locations in the Bower-Bjornson's family's home: The reverse osmosis-filtered kitchen tap, the bathtub faucet, and the outside hose spigot. We found detectable levels of 20 of the 40 chemicals commonly used in fracking that we looked for in samples from at least one of those locations, including benzene, which is known to increase cancer risk, and naphthalene, which is listed as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" by the EPA.
Federal regulatory limits exist for just five of the 40 chemicals we looked at, and the family's water samples did not exceed those limits. Some states set health advisory limits for chemicals that aren't officially regulated. Vermont recommends no more than 0.5 micrograms per liter of naphthalene in drinking water to avoid health effects including increased cancer risk. The Bower-Bjornsons had 5.83 micrograms per liter of naphthalene in their water—nearly 12 times as high as Vermont's health advisory limit. Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority declined to comment on these findings.
Lois, who has been tracking the kids' symptoms since the drilling began, said that seeing these test results confirmed what she already feared.
"[Fracking] just completely encompasses us," she said. "It's not like we can look to our right or left and say it's not there. And everywhere that they go, school or wherever, it's there too."
Economic gains in question
A hydraulic fracturing drilling rig in western Pennsylvania at night. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
Fracking does bring economic benefits—at least temporarily. A 2019 paper in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics found that in the initial three years of a boom, fracked communities typically see total incomes increase by around 3-6 percent, employment increase by about 4-6 percent, and salaries increase by about 5-11 percent. Housing prices increase about 6 percent, while local governments see about a 16 percent increase in revenue.
Taking into account both increased incomes and decreased quality of life (from things like increased crime rates, truck traffic, and pollution), the authors of that study concluded that in regions where fracking occurs across all U.S. shale plays, the industry resulted in an average net gain of approximately $2,500 per household in the first three years—though some communities saw much higher gains and others saw none.
Over time, these impacts on local economies are diminished. A study published in February, 2021 by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank, revealed that while economic output in Appalachian fracking counties grew by 60 percent from 2008-2019, the counties' share of the nation's personal income, jobs, and population levels all declined.
The study looked at the 22 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia that produce more than 90 percent of the region's natural gas. In 2008, those counties were responsible for $2.46 of every $1,000 of national economic output. By 2019, the counties were generating $3.31 of every $1,000 generated nationally—an increase more than triple the rate of national growth. But over the same period, those counties' share of the nation's personal income fell by 6.3 percent, their share of jobs fell by 7.5 percent, and their share of the nation's population fell by 9.7 percent. The analysis concluded that about 90 percent of the wealth created from shale gas extraction leaves local communities.
Related: Appalachia's fracking boom has done little for local economies
Among the three states the report looked at, Pennsylvania's showed the best prosperity measures, and some Pennsylvania counties performed better than others—Washington County fared the best, with a personal income growth rate that slightly exceeded national growth, and job growth equal to the national rate, while five of the other seven Pennsylvania counties either gained very few jobs or experienced a loss.
Diana Irey Vaughan, chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, said the industry has transformed the local economy.
"The oil and gas industry has had a tremendous positive impact on our economy," Vaughan told EHN. "For example, from 2000 to 2018, our median income grew from $47,287 to $78,895." She also pointed to a U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics report that ranked Washington County third in the nation in job growth from 2010-2011, right at the beginning of the region's fracking boom.
Vaughan said that Washington County has been able to maintain low property taxes in part due to fees the county receives from the oil and gas industry.
Since 2012, the industry has had to pay an "impact fee" for each well pad in Pennsylvania to help cover its negative impacts. Those fees are distributed to the state and local governments, which typically use them for infrastructure projects, public safety, and emergency preparedness. Environmental advocates say the fees are too low to address all of the environmental issues the industry causes. But many local governments rely on the fees. The money collected from impact fees in Pennsylvania dropped in 2019, but Washington County still collected $6.6 million—more than any other county in the state.
"This has allowed us to advance capital projects without taking money from our general funds or tax dollars," Vaughan said. She added that the county has also sold mineral leases on county-owned properties including parks, airports, and fairgrounds and used the lease and royalty payments to make improvements to those properties.
Aerial view of the Mark West natural gas processing plant in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania does not collect a severance fee from oil and gas operators. In Texas, for example, the state collected $1.69 billion in taxes and fees from natural gas production—more than eight times as much as the approximately $200 million Pennsylvania collected in impact fees the same year. Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has repeatedly attempted to enact a severance tax on the natural gas industry, but those efforts have been thwarted by the Republican-controlled legislature, whose members say it will hinder the growth of the industry and harm local economies.
Many state lawmakers still believe the industry has been good for Pennsylvania. "It's the biggest industry to come to Pennsylvania in the last 50 years," Republican Senator Gene Yaw, who chairs the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, told EHN. "We tried to get Amazon to come to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia and we were putting together programs that totaled billions of dollars in subsidies. The gas industry has already come here and they've asked for very little."
Yaw has advanced numerous pieces of legislation aimed at helping the industry expand in Pennsylvania, and has also attempted to block states with fracking bans from buying Pennsylvania's natural gas. He also leases his own mineral rights—his 2018 financial disclosure showed that he received income from five drilling companies through leases on land he owns (but does not live on).
When it comes to job creation, Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and finance professor at Bard College, said numerous studies have shown the industry often over-promises the number of permanent jobs it will create.
"In the Pittsburgh region especially, there's been an almost desperate search for the next steel industry because that's remembered as a really great time in Pittsburgh's history," Hipple told EHN. "But the reality of the fracking business is that it's a lot of jobs at the beginning for construction that are often filled by people who aren't from the local area. Due to the technological advances—which the industry should be applauded for in a sense, as it's become quite proficient at producing oil and gas—the later stages don't require very much of the labor force at all, whether local or out of town."
The American Petroleum Institute has claimed that the industry supports nearly 500,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, but data from state and federal labor departments show there are actually about 26,000 fracking-related jobs in the state. Statewide, this means the industry isn't even among the top 50 sectors that employ Pennsylvanians.
Natural gas construction in Michigan. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016)
"The nearly 500,000 jobs, which is taken from an analysis conducted by PwC [PricewaterhouseCoopers], represents total industry jobs supported in Pennsylvania including refining, transportation, and distribution, not just drilling, production and development jobs," Emily Smith, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, told EHN in an email, adding that data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data only includes salaried jobs, which excludes private contractors. "According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, salaried jobs only represent approximately 30 percent of the oil and gas extraction sector...on a national basis."
Some research suggests that the ultimate cost-benefit ratio of the industry may actually skew negative. A 2019 study by researchers at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford Universities estimated that air pollution from the fracking industry caused between 1,200 and 4,600 premature deaths in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays spanning Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia from 2004-2016. During the same time period, the industry created a regional economic boost of approximately $21 billion dollars, but those gains were overshadowed by $23 billion in public healthcare costs related to those premature deaths.
Meanwhile, as a result of the recession spurred by COVID-19 pandemic, the oil and gas industry nationally lost more than 100,000 jobs last year.
In the air
Lois Bower-Bjornson stands in front of an under-construction fracking well pad in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Lois, who is tall and willowy with dark hair, pale skin, and large, luminous eyes, worked as a model and professional dancer before having kids. She still moves through the world like a dancer—she's often in motion, and is prone to standing on one leg with the opposite foot casually propped up against her knee like a flamingo.
In addition to teaching several dance and yoga classes a week in her barn-turned-dance-studio, Lois also runs a residential green cleaning business and works as a paid part-time organizer for the Clean Air Council—something she felt compelled to do after growing increasingly alarmed about the apparent impact that fracking was having on the region's air quality.
The fracking process typically involves as many as 1,000 chemicals including solvents, surfactants, detergents, and biocides, and air monitoring studies have detected more than 100 chemicals in air emissions from the sites, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and mercury. A 2019 study found that air pollution from fracking wells specifically killed an estimated 20 people in Pennsylvania from 2010-2017, and that higher-than-average levels of air pollution can be detected as far as six miles downwind of a well pad.
During the summer of 2019 when EHN collected urine samples from the Bower-Bjornsons, we also had them wear personal air monitors. Each family member wore an air monitor attached to a pump that mimics breathing by pulling in air for six to eight hours leading up to the collection of their first two urine samples. (On a third date, we collected one additional urine sample without any air monitoring.) The samples were analyzed for the presence of 40 chemicals that air monitoring studies have reported as frequently emitted during fracking.
Odessa Bjornson and Damien Shaffer play at the Bower-Bjornson home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
On August 6, 2019, Gunnar's air monitor recorded the highest levels of both n-propylbenzene and 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene detected among 39 total air samples EHN collected from five southwestern Pennsylvania households. Gunnar helped his dad paint and scrape vinyl flooring at his sound studio in Pittsburgh that day, which could have contributed to these exposures. On the same day, Lois's air monitor recorded the highest levels of hexanal, ethylcyclohexane, and octane seen in our study. She cleaned two houses using "green" cleaning products that day, which could have contributed to these exposures.
Only a handful of these chemicals have legal limits or even non-enforceable health-based guidelines, most of which pertain to short-term workplace exposures. The Bower-Bjornson family's air samples exceeded one state guideline for three chemicals—the recommended limits on benzene, ethylbenzene, and naphthalene exposure set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to keep cancer risk below one in a million.
"It's always a little hard to interpret what's meant by 'excess cancer risk,'" James Fabisiak, a toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, told EHN. "One in a million is sometimes used as a benchmark for negligible risk, but most of us don't have a risk that low. I don't think you would see EPA take or recommend action until risks were in the range of one in 10,000 to one in 100,000. There's some gray area between what amounts to 'no risk' and what amounts to 'actionable risk.'"
Bjornson kids on the move. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Fabisiak also compared EHN's air monitoring findings against those of two large surveys that measured volatile organic compounds in average homes in the U.S., and found that most of the levels detected in the Bower-Bjornson's air monitors fell within the ranges found in those studies, though some compounds were near the high end.
"If I knew these concentrations were there all the time in my own home," he said, "I might think about how I could get them back closer to the average."
Fabisiak added that while the risk associated with the level of each individual compound may not be a problem, high levels of numerous compounds within the same household have an additive effect—combining with one another and interacting with lifestyle and genetic factors in unpredictable ways that amplify overall risk.
"That's especially true of those air pollutants that affect common diseases like asthma and cancer," Fabisiak explained.
The Bower-Bjornsons and other residents of Washington County have also worried that the increased air pollution from fracking makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19. In the spring of 2020, nonprofit community health advocacy organization the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project* (which helped connect EHN with families that were interested in participating in our research) conducted an informal literature review on air pollution and respiratory infections to help educate southwestern Pennsylvania residents about the links between the two.
"Based on what we saw in numerous studies that have dealt with diseases similar to COVID-19, we know that increased exposure to particulate matter pollution makes the symptoms of infectious lung diseases worse," Alison Steele, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told EHN.
Lessons learned
An activist wears a face mask to protest poor air quality caused by fracking, pre-COVID-19, at a 2019 community meeting in Braddock, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Lois is no stranger to the region's history of industrial extraction. She grew up in Fredericktown, a nearby coal mining town, splitting her time between the hotel her grandparents built and the former apple distillery her great-great-great-great grandparents built.
She and the neighborhood kids used to watch coal barges float down the river and ride dune buggies on slag dumps—piles of toxic, rubbly waste generated by coal processing. They also swam in the river, even though it was sometimes oily from industrial residue, raw sewage poured in from the municipal pipes, and river rats abounded.
"We knew it might be harmful, but so many people's parents were coal miners that potential for harm just seemed like a normal part of life," she said.
She sees those same attitudes persisting when it comes to fracking—and especially when it comes to the impending petrochemical boom in the region.
In 2016, Royal Dutch Shell began construction on a massive ethane cracker in Beaver County, about 33 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 57 miles north of Scenery Hill. The plant, which is now nearly complete, will eventually convert a massive volume of natural gas and liquids into 1.8 million tons of polyethylene every year for use in plastics manufacturing. It's one of up to five such facilities that have been proposed in the Appalachian basin region spanning Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia—though all but the Shell project have been indefinitely put on hold due to unfavorable market conditions.
Construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Four of the proposed locations sit directly alongside the Ohio River or one of its tributaries, and each facility will demand natural gas liquids from an estimated 1,000 new fracking wells per year, according to researchers at Duquesne University. A similar petrochemical corridor in Louisiana has some of the worst air pollution and highest cancer rates in the country, resulting in the region being dubbed "Cancer Alley."
Southwestern Pennsylvania already has cancer problems. The region has higher than average rates of the types of cancer associated with air pollution, and in 2019, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette documented 27 cases of Ewing sarcoma—a one-in-a-million bone and soft tissue cancer—in Washington, Greene, Fayette and Westmoreland counties over the last decade. These counties combined have a population of about 750,000 and are where a majority of the state's fracking occurs, and amid concerns about radioactive waste from the oil and gas industry being mishandled, residents have demanded answers from elected officials. Investigations are ongoing, but so far no link between the rare cancers and the oil and gas industry has been confirmed.
Shell applied for air pollution permits that were approved back in 2015, but submitted a new permit application in February 2020 that seeks lower emissions levels for some pollutants, but much higher levels of others, including greenhouse gases.
For years, local environmentalists, community members, and Indigenous groups have fought to stop the petrochemical buildout, but despite their efforts—and warnings from financial analysts that the industry isn't a viable long-term investment—many local policymakers have welcomed the jobs the industry promises.
"In the 70s and early 80s we saw the demise of the steel industry and what it did to our economy—we saw our friends and family members move away because the jobs were gone," Democratic Pennsylvania State Representative Robert Matzie told EHN. Matzie's district is adjacent to the site of the Shell ethane cracker, and Matzie was one of a handful of Pennsylvania Democrats to support the project from its outset. "As policymakers we have to weigh and balance both protecting the environment and having good jobs that take advantage of our natural resources, and I believe we can have both."
Construction site of the Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, at night. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
Matzie said the plant is projected to create 10,000 to 15,000 jobs in a 50-mile radius. At the same time, he said some of his constituents fear becoming another "Cancer Alley."
"I live a stone's throw from the site," Matzie said. "Me and my family have to drink that water and breathe that air too." He added that he believes this plant will be different because it's newer than the ones in Louisiana and will use the best available technology to minimize environmental impacts.
In the past, Matzie has also introduced legislation aimed at keeping fracking wells at least 4,000 feet away from dams and reservoirs in an attempt to protect his own district's water reservoir. So far he has been unsuccessful.
"Right now you can drill right in the middle of a freshwater source," he said. "I have a problem with that. You can show me all the technology that says it's safe—I still don't want to see it."
In lieu of that legislation, Matzie says he helped negotiate additional protections for the reservoir from the natural gas pipeline that will feed the Shell ethane cracker—things like a thicker steel lining and easier access to emergency shutoff valves—by working directly with the company.
"Shell stepped up and went above and beyond current policy and statutes for the pipeline," he said, adding that he has also championed solar energy projects, serves as co-chair of the state's nuclear energy caucus, and welcomes any industry that would bring jobs to his district.
This issue might be complex for politicians, but for 13-year-old Gunnar, it looks simple.
Lois Bower-Bjornson is no stranger to the region's history of industrial extraction. "We knew it might be harmful, but so many people's parents were coal miners that potential for harm just seemed like a normal part of life." (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
He doesn't like getting nose bleeds, he doesn't like his mom worrying, and he's worried about climate change—which he knows fracking contributes to. "The only reason people don't think climate change is real is because they're afraid of it," he told EHN. "I think fracking is noisy, annoying, reckless, and kind of idiotic. I wish we could move away just to be able to actually get some sleep."
Vaughan, the chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, said she rarely hears from people who've experienced negative impacts from the industry. She acknowledged community concerns about the childhood cancer clusters, but said, "We have not seen scientific proof that there is a correlation between the two," and pointed to other industrial sites in the region that could be contributing to potential environmental exposures.
"There are times when you have inconveniences with noise or lights or trucks," she added, "but I think the majority of people in Washington County have been willing to tolerate these things for the greater benefit," she said. "This area was also very rich in coal reserves and had previously welcomed mining to our region. Prior to that we also had the steel industry. So I think this region is more accepting of those types of inconveniences than other regions because of our history."
Lois sees it differently.
"It's almost a bizarre genetic trait among people in this region that this is just always what we do," Lois said. "We keep going back again and again, trading our health for jobs. At what point do you learn your lesson and not keep doing the same thing over and over again?"
Have you been impacted by fracking? We want to hear from you. Fill out our fracking impact survey and we'll be in touch.
In part 2 of this series: The mental health and social toll of feeling surrounded by fracking wells and pollution.
This story was fact-checked by Dani Leviss.
*The Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project and EHN both receive funding from the Heinz Endowments
Fractured: The stress of being surrounded
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.
Read about how we conducted our study
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, director of environmental programs at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, told EHN.
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."
Pennsylvania State Capitol (Kumar Appaiah/flickr)
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."
Have you been impacted by fracking? We want to hear from you. Fill out our fracking impact survey and we'll be in touch.
In part 3 of the series: The disconnect between fracking communities and the regulators tasked with protecting them.
This story was fact-checked by Dani Leviss.
* Editor's note: Lexy is a pseudonym
*Editor's note: This story has been updated to add context for the trans, trans-muconic acid reference levels.
† The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project and EHN both receive funding from the Heinz Endowments
Fractured: Distrustful of frackers, abandoned by regulators
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.
Read about how we conducted our study
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.
A 2011 fracking protest in Erie, Colorado. (Credit: Erie Rising/Flickr)
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 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.
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."
Have you been impacted by fracking? We want to hear from you. Fill out our fracking impact survey and we'll be in touch.
In part 4 of the series: Pollution from Pennsylvania's oil and gas network extends far beyond fracking.
This story was fact-checked by Dani Leviss.
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)
Fractured: Buffered from fracking but still battling pollution
WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa.—On a balmy evening in September of 2019, eight women gathered around a conference table in a small office about 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Sunlight streamed through large windows, casting a warm glow over a side table set with coffee, biodegradable cutlery, and three kinds of pie.
"Eat pie, ladies," commanded a tall, middle-aged woman with silver-streaked hair.
As a mother of four and the outreach coordinator for the nonprofit organization hosting this event, Ann LeCuyer was comfortable telling people what to do. She'd spent the last four years helping the group, Protect PT* (short for Protect Penn-Trafford), work to keep fracking out of the small municipalities of Penn Township, Trafford, and surrounding neighborhoods.
In that time, Ann and her boss, Protect PT co-founder and executive director Gillian Graber, had compiled thousands of documents detailing the oil and gas industry's plans in the region. They'd invited all of the group's several dozen members to their office to learn how to access them—but only women showed up.
"This is pretty typical for us, actually" said Gillian, a middle-aged mom of two with chocolate-brown hair and a no-nonsense demeanor.
Protect PT's Project and Outreach Coordinator Ann LeCuyer (center) and Executive Director Gillian Graber (right), both of Trafford. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
"I think it's because we're moms, so we have more at stake when it comes to our children and grandchildren," she told Environmental Health News (EHN), noting that every member in attendance had kids and half also had grandkids. "My husband is on the board and we do have some very passionate male members. But it tends to be the women who consistently show up."
The group chattered and laughed through the presentation until Ann pulled up a map of the planned route for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline, sending a brief hush through the room.
"It's so close to my house!" someone exclaimed. "Look, I'm in the blast zone and I didn't even know until now."
Mariner East 2 is one of three pipelines (along with Mariner East 1 and Mariner East 2X) being constructed to carry highly flammable natural gas liquids—liquid components of natural gas that have been separated out—350 miles from the Utica and Marcellus Shale plays in eastern Ohio, the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and across Pennsylvania to processing facilities at Philadelphia ports. From there, the end products will be carried overseas by ship for use in plastics production. (Ethane, a byproduct of fracking, is used to manufacture plastics.)
Executive Director of Protect PT Gillian Graber of Trafford explains a map of community and natural gas infrastructure to Protect PT members during an event at the non-profit's Harrison City, Pennsylvania, headquarters. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
The project is orchestrated by Sunoco's parent company Energy Transfer LP, which also owns the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Mariner East pipeline projects have been rife with accidents, spills, and controversy, in part because Pennsylvania doesn't have a state agency that oversees the placement of such pipelines. The planned route runs across people's yards and within a half mile of 23 public schools and 17 private schools, which worries residents due to the company's safety record: Between 2002 and the end of 2017, Energy Transfer LP pipelines experienced a leak or an accident every 11 days on average.
Pipeline construction in Pennsylvania has already resulted in sinkholes, polluted waterways on public land, and an explosion in a town 35 miles west of Pittsburgh that destroyed a house. At least 25 other sites along the proposed pipeline route have been identified as being at risk for similar accidents. The Pennsylvania Utility Commission is fighting in court to keep its calculations on potential damage if such accidents occured secret, even though a recent investigation by Spotlight PA found many communities in the "blast zone"—the areas adjacent to the pipeline that could be engulfed in flames in the event of a pipeline explosion—lack adequate emergency response plans.
Gillian told the group that they planned to canvas in the blast zone nearby to inform residents they'd be at risk if the pipeline is completed.
"Oh, we're canvassing, ladies!" chirped the oldest of the group, a spry 81-year-old. "If we can stop the pipeline, we can stop the well pads. I'm getting my muckboots out!"
Members of Protect PT, a nonprofit focused on educating community members and elected officials on unconventional natural gas development, gather in their Harrison City, Pennsylvania, headquarters. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Gillian initially started Protect PT in 2015 because she wanted to stop a fracking well proposal about a quarter of a mile from her house in neighboring Penn Township. So far, her efforts have been successful—the well, which is owned by Apex Energy, received a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in 2018, but has yet to be drilled in part because of Protect PT lawsuits.
But that fracking well victory is overshadowed by a vast industrial infrastructure in the state and the region that goes well beyond unconventional drilling.
In the summer of 2019, EHN collected air, water, and urine samples from five households in southwestern Pennsylvania, including Ann and Gillian's families, and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking. EHN included Ann and Gillian's families because they live further away from fracking wells than the families we looked at in Washington County. However, despite their relative distance from fracking wells, we found they also faced above average levels of exposure to numerous chemicals associated with pollution from the oil and gas industry.
While Project PT and similar groups target new pipelines, or plastics plants, or fracking wells in court—or just the court of public opinion—it has become a game of whack-a-mole in a state where oil and gas production, infrastructure, and transportation are so ubiquitous.
"It's just alarming to think that with all the stuff that we're doing to be careful, we're still being exposed to all these chemicals," Gillian told EHN.
A rocky market
Executive Director of Protect PT Gillian Graber of Trafford at an event at the non-profit's Harrison City, Pennsylvania, headquarters. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Grassroots groups like Ann and Gillian's across the country have scored some big wins against pipeline projects in recent years, in part because opposition to them is so widespread.
Even state lawmakers who believe their communities support fracking say they've heard pipeline complaints.
"I don't think I've had a complaint about the [fracking] industry in a year—what I've heard has all been positive," Republican Pennsylvania Senator Gene Yaw, who chairs the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, told EHN. "I hear complaints about the Mariner East Pipeline near Philadelphia all the time, but that's not in my district." He added that in his district, there have been no issues with the company building the pipeline.
Emily Smith, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, pointed to her organization's comprehensive pipeline safety recommendations and told EHN the pipeline industry has "made a number of commitments to move towards their goal of zero incidents, from using the latest technologies, to creating recommended practices with regulators and forming industry work groups to sharing best practices."
While construction of Mariner East pipelines is still underway, a number of other massive pipeline projects have recently been canceled. These include Dominion Energy and Duke Energy's Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have carried natural gas from the Marcellus Shale to Virginia and the Carolinas, and Williams Cos Inc's Constitution Pipeline, which would have carried gas from Pennsylvania to New York.
Aerial view of blackened trees at the site of a 2018 explosion of the ETC Northeast Revolution Pipeline in Center Township, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019)
This is in part due to public pressure, but it's also a response to market demands.
The pandemic has devastated the industry by driving global oil prices to historic lows. But before the pandemic, the fracking industry had already seen a massive downturn: Between 2012 and 2017, the 30 biggest fracking companies lost a combined $50 billion. Fracking is expensive and many companies go into a tremendous amount of debt to get started. Due to oversupply and consistently low prices for natural gas over the last 10 years, many have yet to pay those debts back and become profitable.
"This is a mature industry in long-term decline," Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), told EHN, adding that these market conditions are also causing a slowdown in the construction of pipelines.
"In addition to public pressure, the utilities that build these pipelines are seeing that they're not operating at capacity so there's no economic need to justify the build," she explained. "Sometimes industry says 'we must, we must, we must,' but when they actually have an updated needs-analysis done, they realize demand has flattened due to efficiencies, or supply by renewables, or both."
Others remain confident the market will bounce back.
Natural gas pipeline construction in Medina, Ohio. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2018)
"Obviously COVID has been a shock to all different types of industries—airlines, restaurants and travel have all been affected, and we have too," 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. "Eventually we're all going to stop living in our basements and return to normal life, and global oil demand will recover as people go back to work and traveling and normal life."
Market conditions could remain rocky or bounce back as community groups like Protect PT wage battles against the Goliaths of the oil and gas industry one project at a time. But in places where oil and gas has a strong presence, its reach is already expansive.
Between a densely interwoven network of pipelines, conventional oil and gas wells, fracking wells and related infrastructure, and ongoing petrochemical development by dozens of companies, it has become virtually impossible to escape the environmental health impacts of the oil and gas industry in places like western Pennsylvania.
"The issue is, it's not just one facility or one pipeline," Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of 46 environmental organizations in the Pittsburgh region, told EHN. "This is an entire network of polluting facilities that pose risks to our water and air that is rapidly expanding throughout the region, and we don't have good oversight of the impacts of their combined emissions."
“Shocking” exposures
Gillian Graber lives with her husband Ryan and two children Aidan and Lilly in a two-story brick house in a quiet cul-de-sac full of homes built in the '60s and '70s. Two narrow, one-way streets separated by a grass median go into and out of the neighborhood, and the parallel rows of houses are flanked by woods on either side.
Their home is in Trafford, a small neighborhood about 17 miles east of Pittsburgh. Most of the 1.4 square mile borough is in Westmoreland County with a tiny section extending into Allegheny County. According to the most recent Census, Trafford is home to 3,039 people. There are no fracking wells within Trafford's borders.
The Grabers moved to Trafford in 2013 from Churchill, a suburb closer to Pittsburgh, when Aidan, now 12 years old, was about to start kindergarten. Lilly, who is now 10 years old, was a rambunctious 3-year-old at the time. They moved because they liked the school district and lower property taxes, and it still felt close enough to the city to visit. There was a playground and an ice cream shop within walking distance, and unlike the busy, four-lane road they lived on at their old place, Ryan told EHN, "this house was on a road where you could teach a kid how to ride a bike."
Ryan, Aiden, Lilly and Gillian Graber sit at the kitchen table in their Trafford, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Ryan Graber in his Trafford, Pennsylvania, home. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
When they were searching for homes, they found some affordable ones in Plum, another suburb of Pittsburgh, where they also liked the school district—but they realized the discount was due to the home's proximity to a coal-fired power plant and they worried about air quality. "Trafford seemed to be a good place that had clean air," Ryan said.
Ann, her husband Mike, and their four children, who were ages 8,10, 12, and 14 in the summer of 2019, live in a small two-story brick home on a quiet residential street about two miles from Gillian's house. It's a ten-minute walk from the local elementary school, which Ann and Gillian's kids attend. They have a chicken coop in the backyard and a shaggy rescue dog named Gandalf. They moved here from Plum in 2016 because they liked the kid-friendly neighborhood—wide sidewalks, lots of young families, a park nearby.
When Ann and Gillian learned that EHN wanted to study households near fracking and compare them to households further away from well pads, they jumped at the chance to participate. At Protect PT they'd already spent months collecting baseline air quality and noise data in the region so that if fracking wells did eventually come, they'd be able to document how things changed.
The nearest active fracking well is about seven miles away from Gillian's house. The nearest compressor station is about five miles away. Compressor stations pressurize and compress natural gas to keep it moving through long distance pipelines, and their emissions are linked to higher mortality rates. Ann lives about a mile further than Gillian does from both sites. EHN was seeking families living at least five miles from the nearest well or compressor station in order to compare them with families closer to fracking activity.
While many of the most shocking outliers from our project occurred within the families that are surrounded by fracking infrastructure within two miles of their homes in Washington County, we were surprised by what we found in Ann and Gillian's families.
We collected a total of 12 urine samples from Gillian's family and 15 urine samples from Ann's family over a 4-week period and found 21 chemicals in one or more samples, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, xylenes, other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and lesser-known compounds, all of which are linked to health problems.
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, 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.
Read about how we conducted our study
Ann LeCuyer and her children. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
EHN reporter Kristina Marusic (right) and Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project intern Mason Secreti (middle-right) prepare to collect urine samples from the LeCuyer-Ley family. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
We found that urine samples for both families 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 CDC data.
All samples from both families exceeded the U.S 95th percentile for mandelic acid, a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene, and 87 percent of Ann's family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for phenylglyoxylic acid, another biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene. More than half of Ann's family's samples exceeded the U.S. 95th percentile for trans, trans-muconic acid, a biomarker for benzene.
Exposure to ethylbenzene, styrene, and benzene is linked to negative health effects including skin and eye irritation, central nervous system damage, and increased cancer risk.
On August 21, 2019, Gillian's daughter Lilly, who was 9-years old at the time, had the highest level of 3-methylhippuric acid, a biomarker for xylene, detected in anyone in our study. Xylene exposure is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation, drowsiness and dizziness, and organ damage with high levels of long-term exposure.
"It's pretty shocking to know that our children, especially, are being exposed to this stuff," Gillian told EHN. "We take great pains to make sure we're not exposed to things."
Gillian and Ryan try to buy organic foods when they can. They avoid contaminants like bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastic and Teflon in cookware, and they installed a reverse osmosis filter at the kitchen tap to make their drinking water as clean as possible. They avoid using cleaning or pest control products with harsh chemicals.
The Graber family in their living room. (Credit: Kristina Marusic for Environmental Health News)
Some concerning chemicals showed up in the familys' air and water samples, too.
In Gillian's water, we found detectable levels of 14 of the 40 chemicals we analyzed the samples for, including benzene, toluene, and naphthalene. In Ann's water, we found detectable levels of 11 of the 40 chemicals we analyzed the samples for. That list also includes benzene, toluene, and naphthalene. Most of the chemicals we looked for are unregulated, so there is no legal limit for them in drinking water. There are federal limits for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, m/p-xylenes, and styrene in drinking water. None of the levels we found in Gillian and Ann's water exceeded those limits, but experts say being exposed to any level of these chemicals can be harmful.
"Regardless of what the regulatory levels are for a particular chemical, you can often find a study out there that shows health effects at lower levels," Chris Kassotis, an endocrine toxicologist and assistant professor at Wayne State University's Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told EHN. "In the U.S., experience tells us that just because something meets regulatory limits doesn't necessarily mean it's safe."
Both families get their water from Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority, which serves around 40,000 Pennsylvanians and is the fifth largest water authority in the state.
"These levels were so small they didn't surprise me," Mark Lerch, the director of supply at Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority, told EHN. "We test for much more than what's required of us by law."
Some of these families' air samples showed the highest levels of exposure to certain compounds seen in our study. On August 15, 2019, the five highest levels of both d-limonene and styrene detected in our study were detected in air monitoring samples from the five members of the LeCuyer-Ley household. On the same day, Ann's husband Mike's air monitor also detected the highest level of toluene seen in our study.
On the same day, Gillian's husband Ryan's air monitor detected the highest levels of 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene, o-diethylbenzene, undecane, m/p-diethylbenzene, decane, and 1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene seen in our study.
Only a handful of these chemicals have regulatory limits, most of which pertain to short-term workplace exposures. Ann and Gillian's families' 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.
"I was just shocked to see that my family had the highest numbers of anybody for some of this testing," Ann said. "I knew the air was bad in southwestern Pennsylvania, but it's more concrete to have tests done that show that you're being exposed."
“Airsheds don’t respect geopolitical boundaries”
LeCuyer family. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
There are a number of potential reasons for these above-average exposures. As with the other families, their results could reflect exposures from spending time in traffic, pumping gas, or exposures to diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, paint, or off-gassing carpets or furniture.
Another reason could be the notoriously poor air quality associated with vehicle emissions and other types of industrial pollution that plagues southwestern Pennsylvania in general, and neighboring Allegheny County in particular.
The region is home to the Clairton Coke Works, the largest coke battery in the country. Coke batteries are special ovens that heat coal to extremely high temperatures to convert it into coke, which is used to manufacture steel. Emissions from such plants include a carcinogenic mix of chemicals, some of which are similar to emissions from fracking wells. There are very few of these facilities remaining in the country, and an earlier EHN analysis revealed that the average level of exposure to coke oven emissions for residents of Allegheny County is 99 percent higher than it is for the U.S. population as a whole.
"Winds from the northwest will take air pollution from the Clairton Coke Works and blow it into Westmoreland County," Mehalik told EHN. "Particles can travel very long distances."
Clairton Coke Works. (Credit: (Roy Luck/flickr)
John Graham, a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force said that air pollution modeling supports the idea that Westmoreland County sees greater air quality impacts from emission sources near Pittsburgh than Washington County does. He looked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA), which estimates cancer risk from air pollution in each census tract using emission data.
"This shows that the impact on average is 64 percent greater in Westmoreland than in Washington County," Graham told EHN. "That suggests there is absolutely a health risk in the adjacent counties from emissions originating in Allegheny County. Very roughly, if the impact on average to people in Allegheny Co. is 1, it's just under half that to people in Westmoreland County, and just over 1/4 of the impact in Washington County."
In addition to pollution blowing over from neighboring Allegheny County, Westmoreland County has its own smaller coke works, ArcelorMittal Monessen (for now, at least), about 23 miles south of Trafford. The plant is one of at least 21 industrial sites in the county emitting enough air pollution to require a Title V permit—the type required under the U.S. Clean Air Act for the highest-volume air polluters in the country. Washington County, which is slightly smaller in both size and population, has just eight Title V permits. (Allegheny County, by comparison, has at least 28 such permits in an area nearly 300 square miles smaller with a population more than three times larger than Westmoreland County).
Lilly Graber at a 2019 youth climate change protest in downtown Pittsburgh. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
According to the most recent available NATA data from 2014, estimated cancer risk from air pollution overall is higher in Westmoreland County than in Washington County, but estimated cancer risk specifically from the oil and gas industry is higher in Washington County.
A third potential source of exposure is the fracking wells and compressor stations within 10 miles of Ann and Gillian's homes. Emissions are most concentrated in areas closest to wells, but some studies have found that depending on wind patterns and geography, they may impact communities much further downwind. One study published in May of 2020 documented negative changes in air quality as far as six miles downwind of fracking wells; another study led by Harvard researchers that was published in October of 2020 found increased levels of radiation up to 31 miles downwind of fracking sites.
Finally, both the women's homes are surrounded by a high volume of conventional oil and gas wells. There are at least 100 conventional wells within five miles of both Ann and Gillian's homes. Under Pennsylvania law, conventional wells can be within 200 feet of an occupied building in the state, compared to 500 feet for unconventional wells.
Gillian Graber gets set up with an air monitor in her kitchen. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Research suggests that people living near conventional wells may face similar exposures to people near fracking wells. They may also be just as under-regulated, if not more: A 2018 investigation by the environmental advocacy group Earthworks found severe leaks at conventional wells in Allegheny National Forest, and conventional wells in Pennsylvania had nearly twice the number of violations seen in unconventional wells in 2019 according to the DEP's 2019 oil and gas report.
"Airsheds don't follow geopolitical boundaries," Alison Steele, executive director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project*, told EHN. "We've run into issues with communities that have a concern about a facility that's not located in their municipality or even in their county… They don't have much recourse since elected officials there aren't beholden to them."
The exposures we found in Gillian and Ann's families show that fracking is one of many sources of emissions from polluting industries in this region. Everyone in the region—and well beyond—is impacted by air pollution.
Pennsylvania is the fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. It's not a coincidence that the state also has the third highest cancer incidence rate of all U.S. states. Approximately half of all Pennsylvanians will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime, and roughly one in five Pennsylvanians dies of cancer. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the state.
"If you want to live in the state of Pennsylvania, there's literally nowhere you can go where you won't be exposed to something," Gillian said. "In an urban environment like Pittsburgh it's industrial and traffic emissions, and in rural areas it's oil and gas."
“I just don’t know if it’s in the cards for us to go anywhere else”
Ann LeCuyer and her kids look in on the family's chicken coop. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
The stories we heard from people living among fracking wells in southwestern Pennsylvania aren't unique. In similar communities across the country, people struggle with many of the same issues: Physical and mental health symptoms, worry over the long-term impacts of chemical exposures, feeling abandoned by regulators and mistrustful of the fracking companies being left to self-regulate, grieving the industrialization of formerly idyllic countrysides, and feeling alienated and ostracized in communities divided over whether fracking is a boon or a burden.
But the exposures EHN documented in the 20 people in our study suggest that southwestern Pennsylvanians are experiencing higher-than-average levels of harmful pollution—even compared to other fracking communities.
Very few other studies have investigated whether these chemicals are getting into the bodies of people who live near oil and gas operations, but among those that have, our results stand out.
Gillian Graber with her children, Aidan and Lilly. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
A 2018 study of 29 pregnant women who live near fracking wells in Canada found trans, trans-muconic acid, a biomarker of benzene, at levels around 3.5 times as high as those seen in the general Candadian population. The median level of trans, trans-muconic acid seen in people in that study was 180 micrograms per gram (µg/g) of creatinine (a substance measured to account for different metabolic rates when looking at biomarkers). The median for the U.S. as a whole, according to CDC data, is 77 µg/g. The median level seen in our study was 484 µg/g—nearly three times as high as the level seen in the Canadian study.
"l saw that the levels of trans, trans-muconic acid you saw in your study were quite a bit higher than what we found," Élyse Caron-Beaudoin, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the lead author of the Canadian study, told EHN after reviewing our findings. "And we certainly thought the levels seen in our study were quite high."
A 2016 study in Pavillion, Wyoming tested urine samples for 11 farmers who live near fracking wells and found elevated levels of biomarkers for many of the same chemicals we looked for—but in most cases, the levels we detected in Pennsylvania were significantly higher.
The median levels we detected for 8 of the 11 biomarkers we looked for were higher in Pennsylvania than those seen in the Wyoming study; the maximum levels we detected were higher for 7 out of 11 compounds. In many cases the gaps were substantial.
A fracking well pad between homes in western Pennsylvania. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015)
For example, the median level of mandelic acid seen in the Wyoming study was nearly twice as high as the national average according to CDC data, while the median level we detected in Pennsylvania residents was more than 10 times as high as the level seen in the Wyoming study. Mandelic acid is a biomarker for ethylbenzene and styrene.
"In general, biomonitoring studies like this are really useful to help people understand more about how what's in our own bodies are reflections of what's in our environment, then work to reduce those exposures however they can," Sharyle Patton, director of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center and one of the co-authors of the Wyoming study, told EHN.
"When somebody has really high levels of exposure like the ones you saw," she added, "I generally suggest they move. People may not have the resources or capacity to move—I know it's tough—but initial indications point to these exposures being related to oil and gas production, and getting away from those is their best option."
The families EHN spoke with expressed a feeling of inescapability—like no matter where they go in the state of Pennsylvania, they'll be exposed to industrial chemicals of one type or another. They also expressed frustration at the idea that they should have to leave their extended families, friends, and community networks behind in order to escape toxic exposures.
"I just don't know if it's in the cards for us to go anywhere else," Gillian said, noting that she and Ryan both have good jobs here, that most of their friends are in the area, and that Ryan's mom lives nearby and regularly helps them with childcare. "But there are now multiple factors making me question whether this is a good area to grow up in."
The Graber children. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Ann's feelings were similar. She grew up in western Pennsylvania and her roots are here. When the pandemic hit, Ann decided to leave Protect PT because it was too much strain to have all four kids doing school at home while also juggling the stress of the job. She's one of hundreds of thousands of American women who've left the workforce to care for children amid the pandemic.
"It just wasn't working for our family," she said. "But I'm grateful for the things I accomplished in my time at Protect PT, and I'm glad Gillian is still doing that work."
Gillian said she feels burnt out sometimes, too—especially in the midst of the pandemic—but rather than making her feel hopeless, finding out the results of EHN's study has made her feel even more devoted to her work.
"If you added fracking to this area, our air would get even worse than it already is," she said. "Knowing we have these exposures makes me feel more of a sense of urgency and gives me more of a sense that I'm doing the right thing."
"We get tired," she said, "but these are people's lives. We see people who've invested everything in the home they plan to retire in, then they try to put a well pad across the street, or we see young families who've just moved here and it's crushing their dreams for raising their family somewhere healthy. We have to keep doing this work—for them and for us."
Have you been impacted by fracking? We want to hear from you. Fill out our fracking impact survey and we'll be in touch.
Read parts 1 - 3 of the series.
This story was fact-checked by Dani Leviss.
How did this series come together? Listen to EHN senior editor Brian Bienkowski speak with reporter Kristina Marusic about the science and reporting.
*Protect PT, the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project and EHN receive funding from the Heinz Endowments.
Banner photo: Environmental Health News Reporter Kristina Marusic and Environmental Health Project of Southwestern PA intern Mason Secreti collect urine samples from the LeCuyer family in Trafford, PA in 2019. (Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News)
Appalachia’s fracking boom has done little for local economies: Study
The study, published today 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 analysis concluded that about 90 percent of the wealth created from shale gas extraction leaves local communities.
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.
"This report documents that many Marcellus and Utica region fracking gas counties typically have lost both population and jobs from 2008 to 2019," John Hanger, former Pennsylvania secretary of Environmental Protection and policy director to Governor Tom Wolf, said in a statement. "This report explodes in a fireball of numbers the claims that the gas industry would bring prosperity to Pennsylvania, Ohio or West Virginia. These are stubborn facts that indicate gas drilling has done the opposite in most of the top drilling counties."
Among the three states the report looked at, Pennsylvania's showed the best prosperity measures: GDP growth in Pennsylvanian fracking counties was two and a half times as high as the national level and four times as high as the state's. Personal income growth was slightly lower than the national average, but slightly better than the state average.
But jobs growth in Pennsylvania's fracking counties was less than half the national rate and about the same as the state as a whole.
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. Tioga and Wyoming counties also exceeded the state average, but not the national average for personal income growth. But five of the other seven Pennsylvania counties either gained very few jobs or experienced a loss.
Negative cash flows and health harms
According to the Ohio River Valley Institute's analysis, only about 10 percent of the wealth created from shale gas extraction stays local. But despite 90 percent of that wealth leaving the region, oil and gas companies have also struggled to stay afloat: More than 250 oil and gas producers have filed for bankruptcy since 2015, and the industry shed more than 100,000 jobs in 2020 alone.
The process of extracting oil and natural gas from the Earth by drilling deep wells and injecting liquid at high pressure is expensive and many fracking companies go into a tremendous amount of debt getting started. Due to oversupply and consistently low prices for natural gas over the last 10 years, many have yet to pay those debts back.
"These companies are producing gas, but they still haven't figured out how to make this profitable business—they've had negative cash flows year in and year out," Kathy Kipple, a financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and instructor at Bard College, said during a recent Ohio River Valley Institute forum. "There has been no business case for fracking."
Meanwhile, evidence that fracking harms communities nearby continues to mount. As of August 2020, there were 2,015 studies indicating harm or potential harm from fracking, according to a literature review conducted by the health advocacy groups Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York. The health impacts range from headaches, nosebleeds, and asthma exacerbations to anxiety, depression and increased risk of birth defects and premature births.
Hanger said during the same forum that policymakers have had blind spots when it comes to the oil and gas industry.
"This is a story I've heard over and over in my 30 years of being involved with policy-making—it starts with good people who are desperate for economic development, very well intentioned, and looking to create jobs," he said. "But unfortunately that kind of motivated thinking often ignores stubborn facts."
The death of the petrochemical dream?
Construction of Shell's plastics cracker plant in BeaverCounty, Pennsylvania. (Credit: FracTracker Alliance/flickr)
A few years into the fracking boom, once it became clear that it would be difficult to turn a profit through natural gas extraction, companies began looking for ways to salvage their investments.
Ethane, a byproduct of fracking, is used to manufacture plastics, so many oil and gas companies looked to building plastics manufacturing plants that would create new demand for ethane.
Gas extracted from Appalachia is particularly high in ethane, so the dream of an Appalachian petrochemical hub emerged, with at least five companies proposing to build petrochemical facilities, underground storage hubs, and hundreds of miles of pipelines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Each site was estimated to create demand for ethane from 1,000 new fracked wells each year.
In 2017, a report from the American Chemistry Council projected that by 2025, this Appalachian petrochemical buildout would create over 100,000 jobs—roughly 25,000 directly employed by these and other plastic manufacturing facilities and an additional 75,000 indirect jobs like contracted delivery drivers, construction workers, and retail workers. It also projected $500 million in state and local tax revenues from the industry.
But now those plans are falling apart.
Of the proposed projects, only one is actually underway: The Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, about 33 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. That facility was supposed to be operational by 2020, but construction was slowed due to COVID-19 and is still in process. The rest of those projects are on hold indefinitely.
Two major things changed shortly after the American Chemistry Council published its 2017 report: In 2018, China stopped taking U.S. plastic to recycle, and a powerful group of companies that sell products in plastic packaging, including Nestle, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive, announced plans to drastically cut their use of virgin plastics by 2025 (a pledge that has since been formalized through the U.S. Plastics Pact).
"Those two things were a huge stop," Anne Keller, a former Wood-Mackenzie petrochemical analyst and industry consultant, said during the forum. "They challenged growth assumptions not just about the U.S. or China, but the entire market."
The price of plastics fell (down from about $1 per pound in 2012 when these petrochemical proposals were being launched to about 40 cents per pound in 2020) and some financial analysts now say it's unlikely that petrochemical development will save the fracking industry—or the local economy.
"The financials do not support the contention that petrochemical development will help," said Kathy Hipple, finance professor at Bard College and former financial analyst at the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). She noted that building petrochemical facilities costs billions of dollars and takes a long time, so companies have to gamble on what the future of the market will look like by the time such a project is complete—and at present, that future doesn't look promising.
"At this point I don't believe Shell will hit their financial targets or produce the kind of economic benefits that were initially promised to the state," she said. "I think that's why other companies have not rushed in."
Hipple added that resistance from local communities increasingly shows up in oil and gas financial reports and disclosures.
"More and more we're seeing from earnings calls and financial reports that local opposition has become a material risk factor," she said, adding that when it comes to foreign companies looking to get in on a petrochemical buildout, understanding the patchwork of local state and federal regulations is complicated enough without the addition of lawsuits from community groups challenging every step in the permitting process.
"For those in the community wondering if their efforts are bearing fruit," she said, "I believe they are."
Investor flight
Drilling rig in Washington, Ohio. (Credit: FracTracker Alliance/flickr)
Some economists remain confident that the price of oil has always been volatile, and that markets will return to normal in the long-term. But Hipple noted that investors have begun to turn away from fossil fuels and virgin plastics, pointing to coal as an example.
"Coal companies have lost 90 percent of their market value even though coal production has only declined 1.5 or 2 percent," she explained. "The market is forward looking...and investors know that industry will not continue to buy virgin plastics."
Hanger added while consumers have benefitted from the low cost of natural gas, many investors lost money in shale gas development, and are instead looking to what the European oil and gas companies are doing next.
"If you look at the majors in the European oil and gas industry like BP and Total and Equinor, they're all moving into clean tech of one sort or another, making investments in electric charging networks, offshore wind, and solar," he said.
"This is not the Sierra Club," he added, "it's oil and gas companies. To double down or triple down on the shale gas vision or oil and gas industry isn't even being done by industry at this point...Public money should be synergistic with private investment money. Legislators and economic development folks should follow their lead."
Hipple agreed. "It's difficult to sit on a natural resource and not think it's a ticket to economic development," she said, "but it's important to step back and take a cold hard look at economic facts. When you've got 11 years of negative cash flows in the fracking industry...it's not producing jobs, and benefits are not accruing to local communities, it's really time to step back, take a cold-hearted look, and see what the market is telling us."
"Simply put," she said, "the natural gas industry has not delivered the promised benefits for producers, investors—or local communities."
Banner photo: Drill rig in Beaver, Ohio. (Credit: FracTracker Alliance/flickr)
Babies born near natural gas flaring are 50 percent more likely to be premature: Study
A birth is considered preterm when a baby arrives before 37 weeks (about eight and a half months) of pregnancy. Preterm births can result in underdeveloped lungs, difficulty regulating body temperature, poor feeding, and slow weight gain in babies.
Fracking, another name for hydraulic fracturing, is a process of extracting oil and gas from the Earth by drilling deep wells and injecting liquid at high pressure. While many studies have established links between living near fracking wells and numerous health effects, including preterm births, this is the first study to specifically investigate the health impacts of flaring.
Flaring is most commonly used when the primary goal of fracking is oil extraction, so it's cheaper to burn off the natural gas as a waste byproduct than it would be to capture, transport, and sell it. Flares can burn for weeks at a time, releasing combustion-generated pollutants like benzene, fine particulate matter pollution, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and black carbon.
The study, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, looked at satellite data showing the location and duration of flares, and at hospital records from 23,487 births for parents living in the rural region of Eagle Ford, Texas between 2012 and 2015. In a previous study, the same researchers estimated that the Eagle Ford shale region, which is home to more than 7,000 fracking wells, had more than 43,000 flaring events between 2012 and 2016.
"We found that among mothers living within five kilometers (or about three miles) of a high amount of flaring activity during pregnancy, we saw 50 percent higher odds of preterm birth compared to mothers that had no exposure to flaring," Jill Johnston, one of the study's lead authors and an environmental health scientist at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, told EHN.
A high amount of flaring was defined in the study as 10 or more nightly flare events within three miles of the pregnant parent's home. The researchers adjusted for the pregnancy risk of just living near oil and gas operations in general, and for other known risk factors for preterm birth including age, smoking, insurance status and access to prenatal care, to ensure that the increased risk they were seeing was just associated with flaring.
While looking at the density of wells, the researchers found that expectant parents who lived within three miles of a high number of oil and gas wells also had higher odds of a preterm birth than parents who did not live near wells, regardless of flaring. They also observed that babies born to parents who live near a high number of wells were smaller, weighing an average of about seven ounces less than babies born to parents who didn't live near fracking wells.
Flaring in the Bakken shale in North Dakota. (Credit: Trudy E. Bell)
Environmental injustice
Johnston and colleagues found that parents in the study who identified as Latina or Hispanic were exposed to more flaring, and were more likely than White parents to see an increased risk of preterm birth.
"I think that racial disparity is an important finding, and we need more research on the reasons behind it," Johnston said, noting that prior research has shown more vulnerability of women of color to effects of air pollution when looking at adverse birth outcomes.
"It's possible that a lifetime of discrimination and social stressors are driving factors here. It could also be that Hispanic families are spending more time outside and being more exposed to pollution from flares," Johnston added.
Hispanic communities in the region are exposed to more frequent flaring than White communities, Johnston said, which could also mean that even among the "high-flare group" in their study, Hispanic parents were being exposed to a higher number of flares every night than White counterparts.
"Historically, much of the waste disposal in the U.S. is concentrated in communities of color," Johnston added. "One theory is that we're seeing the same pattern with flaring, which is essentially another type of waste disposal. Infrastructure investments can be made to capture excess natural gas rather than burning it off, and where those funds are invested to minimize flaring often seems to depend on the characteristics of the communities nearby."
Flaring on an Ohio well pad in 2016. (Credit: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance)
A lack of health-protective regulations
It's estimated that globally, more than 139 billion cubic meters, or about 4.6 percent of all natural gas production, is flared every year.
Following the fracking boom that started in the U.S. around 2006, the U.S. became responsible for the highest number of flares of any single country, burning an estimated 13.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2018.
In a previous study, Johnston and her research team estimated that about 80 percent of U.S. flaring is occurring in the Texas and in North Dakota shale plays, where much of the country's oil-extractive fracking occurs. In places like Pennsylvania, where fracking companies primarily extract natural gas, some flaring occurs, but it's less common since most of the gas is captured and sold.
Despite the high level of flaring that's occurring in the U.S. and in Texas, there are few federal or state regulations on the practice, and most of the data on flares is sporadically self-reported by the industry.
"It would have been really difficult to do this assessment if we didn't have satellite data and had to try to sort through the spotty state-level data that was available," Johnston said. She pointed to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which prompted deregulation of the oil and gas industry nationwide, as a likely cause for the lack of regulations and data on flaring. In the last four years, the Trump Administration has been working to further reduce the number of regulations on the industry.
If expectant parents notice flaring activity nearby, Johnston recommended reducing exposure to airborne pollutants as much as possible by staying indoors, keeping the windows closed to reduce the amount of outdoor air that gets into the house, and using an air filter to purify indoor air.
"Our study indicates that there are serious public health concerns associated with living near flaring," Johnston said. "I believe that regulatory efforts to reduce and eliminate the amount of flaring that's occurring would be beneficial to communities nearby."
Banner photo credit: skalekar1992/Pixabay
