PA Environment Digest Blog: 9th Compendium Of Studies On Health & Environmental Harms From Natural Gas Development Released - ‘The Rapidly Expanding Body Of Evidence Compiled Here Is Massive, Troubling And Cries Out For Decisive Action’

On October 18, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Senior Scientist with the Science and Environmental Health Network, provided an overview of findings from the newly published 9th Compendium of Scientific, Medical, Media Findings Demonstrating Risk, Harms of Natural Gas Development and Infrastructure during a briefing hosted by the Better Path Coalition.

The 9th Compendium, published by the Concerned Health Professionals of NY and Physicians for Social Responsibility on October 19, summarizes resources that describe the health and other impacts of natural gas development and infrastructure organized by topic. It also offers a review of trends in research findings.

The 9th Compendium organizes research into 17 major categories--

-- Regulations are incapable of preventing harm

-- Idle, abandoned and orphaned wells contribute to air and water pollution and are a significant source of methane leakage

-- Fracking is accelerating the climate crisis

-- Fracking contaminates and depletes drinking water supplies

-- Fracking creates air pollution at levels know to harm health

-- Public health problems associated with fracking include prenatal harm, respiratory impacts, cancer, heart disease, mental health problems and premature death

-- Health and safety risks for workers are severe and employment promises unrealized

-- Fracking and the injection of fracking waste cause earthquakes

-- Fracking waste disposal is a problem without a solution

-- Fracking infrastructure poses exposure risks to those living nearby

-- Drilling and fracking activities release radioactivity

-- Drilling and fracking activities harm wildlife

-- The Economic instabilities of fracking exacerbate public health risks

-- The social costs of fracking are severe

-- Fracking violates principles of environmental justice and human rights

-- Carbon capture and storage fails to mitigate the dangers of fracking

-- Combustion of fracked gas inside homes via kitchen stoves, hot water heaters and furnaces creates additional health and climate harms

Click Here to read a copy of the 9th Compendium.

Here is the text from the presentation by Dr. Steingraber--

Public Health Crisis

The summary conclusion of the 9th Compendium on natural gas development research is--

“The rapidly expanding body of evidence compiled here is massive, troubling and cries out for decisive action.

“Across a wide range of parameters, the data continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems that cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks.

“The risks and harms of fracking are inherent in its operation.”

Dr. Steingraber noted similar conclusions were reached in 2014 when New York State banned fracking, saying “At the time, and again, this is nine years ago in 2014, there were 400 studies and investigations in the peer-reviewed scientific literature in government reports and by journalists that showed evidence for harm.

“Now, nine years later, there are almost 2,500 such studies.”

“Once again, much of the evidence for harm comes from the state of Pennsylvania.”

“So our top line message today is that fracking is a public health crisis.

And so, I'm really just going to be focusing our few minutes today on the public health data that we have.

There are actually 17 topic areas in the Compendium, and I'm mainly going to be speaking out of just a couple of those chapters, and those are the ones that focus on public health.

So as is now documented in more than 120 studies, the public health harms now linked with drilling and fracking and associated infrastructure are well-established.

I feel very confident in saying that.

They include cancers, asthma, respiratory diseases, skin rashes, heart problems, and mental health problems.

We have very good evidence for all those things.

Harm To Mothers, Children

Multiple corroborating studies of pregnant women residing near fracking operations across the nation show harm to infant health, including birth defects, preterm birth and low birth weight.

Harm to children includes blood cancers, and it includes asthma. Old people living near fracking wells have shorter lifespans and more heart problems, and they don't live as long.

So in other words, the big picture is that fracking harms the health of people who live near it up to a few miles away.

And it's not proportional harm, it's disproportional.

Pregnant women, infants, children, and the elderly are harmed first and worst.

There are also a lot of environmental justice issues with good data showing that people of color and communities of color are also disproportionately harmed.

More recently, a trio of studies in Pennsylvania released in August 2023 show that children living near fracking wells have much worse asthma and five to seven times the risk of lymphoma, which is a type of cancer. They are also born smaller.

So these are the trio studies that, thanks to activism in Pennsylvania, you compelled your state government, together with your finest research university, into finally conducting.

That was conducted in Southwestern Pennsylvania in an intensely fracked area of your state. So activism opened the way for that, for those three studies to be done.

Findings Are Not New

But what I want to emphasize to you is that the findings are not new.

That in the Compendium we have many studies, both from Pennsylvania and from other places, that corroborate and support those findings. So these are not one-off studies.

The findings of these most recent studies corroborate a 2017 study, for example, that examined birth certificates for all 1.1 million infants born in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2013.

That study found indicators of poor infant health and significantly lower birth weights among babies born to mothers who live near fracking sites in Pennsylvania.

These most recent findings also corroborate a study that found consistent and robust evidence that drilling shale gas wells negatively impacts both drinking water and the quality of infant health.

Using exact geographic locations of mother's residences, gas wells, and public drinking water sources, as well as dates of infant births, timing of drilling and fracking activities and water measurements, so they took a lot of different kinds of data, there's a whole constellation of things they measured.

That team showed that shale gas operations near mothers' homes raised levels of contaminants in drinking water and at the same time raised their risk for preterm birth and low birth weight.

And these most recent findings also lend support to another Pennsylvania study that we've written about in years past that found a 40% increase in the risk of preterm birth among infants born to mothers who lived near active drilling and fracking sites.

And, these findings are also supported by a 2020 Pennsylvania study that found that respiratory, neurological and muscular symptoms tracked with cumulative well density around residential areas in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Cancer

Fracking has now been linked strongly to cancers in at least two states, Colorado and Pennsylvania.

In Colorado, children and young adults with leukemia were 4.3 times more likely to live in an area dense with oil and gas wells.

And in Pennsylvania, a 2022 study, this is now separate from the 2023 study showing the link of lymphoma, a 2022 study found that children living within 1.2 miles of a fracking well were 2.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia in Pennsylvania.

Also in Pennsylvania, elevated rates of bladder and thyroid cancers were found among residents in areas of fracking activity.

Increased Hospitalizations

And as shown by multiple studies in Pennsylvania as the number of gas wells increase in the community, so do rates of hospitalization, and community members experience sleep disturbance, headache, throat irritation, stress, anxiety, cough, shortness of breath, sinus problems, fatigue, wheezing, and nausea.

Seniors Disproportionately Harmed

We also feel confident in concluding that senior citizens are disproportionately harmed by fracking operations.

And once again, our best evidence for this link comes from Pennsylvania.

In 2020, a major study of more than 12,000 heart failure patients in Pennsylvania showed that those living near fracking sites were significantly more likely to become hospitalized.

The results also showed strong associations between fracking activity and two types of heart failure.

And I'm going to quote now from that study. "These associations can be attributed to the environmental impacts of fracking, including air pollution, water contamination, noise, traffic, and community impacts."

Also in Pennsylvania, hospitalization for pneumonia among the elderly are elevated in areas of fracking activity.

Comparing PA and NY

Now I want to describe in some detail one particular study that came out in March of this year in the Marcellus Shale region of Northern Pennsylvania and Southern New York, which examined trends in hospitalization for illnesses plausibly related to air pollution from drilling and fracking operations among older people over a period of time during which fracking activity rapidly increased in Pennsylvania. [Read more here]

And so what this study did was looking at 2002 to 2015 Medicare claims, the authors took advantage of a stark difference in fracking activity between Pennsylvania, where the practice started becoming widespread in 2008, and in New York, where fracking was and still is banned. So the team selected three Northern Pennsylvania counties to serve as the exposed area and two unexposed neighboring regions in New York, and those were the controls.

So this is wild, I just want to say, because in public health we don't do controlled experiments on people. It's considered unethical.

We do not take people into a laboratory and expose half to a dangerous pesticide and use another half as a control and then come back five years later and see who has cancer and who doesn't.

And yet there's a natural experiment going on with fracking because it's widespread just on the northern tier of Pennsylvania, and then you have this line across the map that represents our state border, and it's banned on the other side.

And so you can go in and take a look at what happened to people's health before fracking arrived in Pennsylvania, and then after it arrived, and then at the same time compare them to the health of people in New York, right?

So that's what this study does.

So for each region from 2002 to 2015, they identified the numbers and trends for hospitalization with heart attack, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, various kinds of bronchial problems, heart failure, ischemic heart disease, and stroke.

So these are all problems that are known to be related to exposure to toxic air pollution.

And so they looked at this for all adults living in these counties who are 65 years or older.

And the authors examine the differences in hospitalization rates for those conditions among these regions before fracking began in Pennsylvania and then follow the numbers and trends in the following year with increasing exposure to fracking activities.

So what were the findings?

Well, from 2002 to 2008, the rate of hospitalizations for these various illnesses linked to air pollution were the same between Pennsylvania and New York.

But after 2009, the trends began to diverge.

In New York the trends for heart attack and heart failure continued downward while they began to increase in Pennsylvania where fracking intensity increased.

For heart attacks, the association with hospitalization rates and fracking grew consistently larger between 2002 and 2015 in Pennsylvania.

And in 2015 alone, Pennsylvania counties had additional hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction, which is heart attack, for heart failure, and for ischemic heart disease.

And this is by looking at numbers per thousand Medicare beneficiaries.

And they were able to determine an excess number that would have been expected with... The excess above what would have been expected if there had never been fracking in New York. I hope that makes sense.

The team did not find an association between fracking and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or stroke, but for all the other air pollution outcomes, they did find a connection.

All right. That's the only study I'm going to describe in that much detail.

Gas Stoves

I'm going to say a word about gas stoves, which you've probably heard about.

Gas stoves and other kinds of gas-fired appliances including furnaces, hot water heaters, dryers, and so on, HVAC systems are a new chapter in our Compendium this year.

The way we frame it for our purposes is that the use of fracked gas appliances in our homes represents the terminus of the fracking pipeline that begins at the wellhead, and then the burner tip is actually inside our kitchen or inside our basement.

So we were really interested in taking a look at the peer-reviewed data on the health effects caused by exposure inside of our homes.

And so we took a look at all those data, which has been getting a fair amount of media attention this year, and we conclude, as have others before, that gas stoves are responsible for about 13% of childhood asthma in the United States.

Using data from the American Housing Survey on gas stove use in US homes, a research team was able to quantify the population attributable fraction for gas stove use and current childhood asthma.

So this particular epidemiological tool describes the fraction of a disease that could theoretically be prevented if exposure to a given risk factor were eliminated.

So in other words, specifically 12.7% of current childhood asthma in the United States could be prevented.

One out of every eight kids wouldn't have asthma if gas stoves were not present.

The population attributable factor varied greatly by state, depending on what percent of stoves are gas in each state, and those are really variable.

In my home state of Illinois, for example, it is one of the highest because we have a lot of gas stoves. So does California, and so does New York and Pennsylvania.

So in Pennsylvania, 13.5% of childhood asthma cases can be attributable to the use of gas stoves.

Florida, interestingly, has the lowest, only 3%, because they don't tend to use gas for gas stoves.

So in other words, these differences are entirely attributable to state level proportions of households who cook with gas.

Putting The Puzzle Together

Well, lots more to say on all of these things, but I hope this gives you a flavor of our new Compendium.

It's one thing to report on studies in isolation, it's quite another to assemble them all together and see the patterns and see how these same conclusions are reached over and over again in studies that use different statistical methods, different study designs, studies that were done in California that replicate and corroborate studies that were done in Texas and Colorado and so on.

So I always feel like I'm putting together a big jigsaw puzzle, and as we put in more puzzle pieces, with each piece representing another study, the picture that emerges becomes clearer and clearer.

And that picture is basically that there's no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability on which human health depends.

Importantly, we reached the same conclusion that we reached in other earlier editions, which is that we could find no set of rules that could fix the problems that are created by fracking.

The injection of ever-increasing volumes of fluids into an ever-increasing number of wells create significant deformations in the shale. These are translated upwards a mile or more up to the surface, and they are called pressure bulbs.

They can impact in unpredictable ways, naturally occurring faults and fissures and overlying rock layers, including the ones that intersect freshwater aquifers.

And of course, there are many, many old oil and gas wells that are unmapped, and we have no idea that they're even down there, and then they can serve as highways for fracking fluid and naturally occurring contaminants that are pressurized through fracking to come to the surface and start to be mobilized and start to move.

And there's no set of rules. You're using the geological earth itself as your factory. So there's no kind of containing that.

There's no kind of technology that you can roll out for the bedrock that would prevent these problems. And of course, regulations cannot stop air pollution.

Radioactivity

We know that regulations cannot stop radioactive emissions. The deep earth is not just full of hydrocarbon vapors, but also full of radiation.

And especially, it turns out, the Marcellus Shale is the most radioactive of the shales in North America that are being fracked.

Radioactive elements commonly found in shale formations are released during the process of drilling and fracking.

They may accumulate in tubes, pipes, and equipment at fracking sites at levels known to cause health risks.

Excess radioactivity has been detected in the soil near well pads, downstream of water facilities where fracking wastewater is treated, and in landfills where fracking waste is dumped.

And again, we have some very good evidence for this coming out of Pennsylvania.

Conclusion

I'm going to read right from the summary of our summary--

The rapidly expanding body of evidence compiled here is massive, troubling and cries out for decisive action.

Across a wide range of parameters, the data continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems that cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks.

The risks and harms of fracking are inherent in its operation.

The only method of mitigating its grave threats to public health and the climate is a complete and comprehensive ban on fracking.”

“Now, nine years later, there are almost 2,500 such studies.

“In other words, today we have six times as much evidence for harm as when our governor took his decision to ban fracking in New York State in 2014, six times more evidence today.

“Altogether, the new studies plus the old studies show that our governor made the right decision.

“Once again, much of the evidence for harm comes from the state of Pennsylvania.”

Click Here to watch a recording of Dr. Steingraber’s presentation.

Click Here to read a copy of the 9th Compendium.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Senior Scientist with the Science & Environmental Health Network, holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Michigan, is the author of a trilogy of award-winning books on environmental health and from 2003-2021 served as the Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. She has been recognized for her work as a researcher and science writer with the Rachel Carson Leadership Award, the American Ethical Union’s Elliot-Black Award, and the 2011 Heinz Award.

NewsClip:

-- Inside Climate News - Jon Hurdle: Research By Public Health Experts Shows ‘Damning’ Evidence On Harms Of Natural Gas Development; Industry Rejected The Reports As ‘Junk Science’

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