Effects on Human and Animal Health

 The history of the human race is replete with examples of environmental destruction. The burning of crops to starve the enemy is a time-honored method of warfare. Poisoning or polluting wells and other sources of water was part of that plan. As civilization grew and flourished in Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages, forests were cut for building materials, fuel, and space for farming. Iceland was heavily forested until the Vikings arrived; it now is barren of trees. The same was true of Greenland. Colonists in the New World created farms to feed themselves and to have products to sell. This required that the forests be removed. Pioneers who moved West, plowed up the natural grasses that grew in the prairies and replaced them with crops that grew well for a few years until the climate cycle returned to its normal, more arid, condition and the crops died. Cattle, which were not native to the West, grazed the vegetation to the roots so that it could not replace itself for the next season. Thereafter, the type of sagebrush that we have now began to regrow in its place. When the winds began to blow, the dust began to move across the country to Chicago, New York, and on to ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The Dustbowl lasted for about a decade, from 1930-39 when rains returned to the Southwest. More than 35 million tons of topsoil blew away. All of this because we despoiled the environment. 

 As the wood disappeared, we began to dig for coal which was a hotter burning material and provided more BTU per unit of weight. We dug mines deep into the ground, used waterpower to scour hillsides and expose the coal seams, and then made open pit mines that were easier and less expensive to operate. These, of course, scarred the ground, hillsides, and tops of mountains so that rain and snow could wash away soil that no longer was protected by overlayers that had built up over centuries. The ash and dust from coal covered cities and turned winter snows into black mounds. The lung damage to miners who dug it from the earth and ordinary citizens who lived under clouds of coal soot in cities was enormous and created an entirely new set of pulmonary diseases beginning in the 1800s and that persist today.

 In 1859, the economy of America, its standard of living, and its culture changed forever when Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, PA. Interestingly, the native Americans of western Pennsylvania knew of natural oil seeps where oil bubbled to the surface and used it as a source of fuel, as did the pioneers in places in the West. After the Titusville discovery, oil became one of the most valuable commodities in the US and oil exploration exploded across the country. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the US was the largest oil-producing country in the world. Petroleum companies, which produced kerosene at first, then oil products and natural gas, flourished and land around oil wells was despoiled thoroughly. One need only visit the Permian Basin to understand the completeness of the devastation. 

 Fracking is simply the next chapter in environmental ravage as we collectively seek less expensive energy to maintain our economy and standard of living. Unfortunately, the products of the fracking process are even more toxic than those of burning coal. Unlike coal, which leaves soot everywhere it is burned, the products of fracking are volatile organic compounds that are not visible but blow downwind into residential areas just the same. Coal produces pulmonary disease but fracking products cause cancer, birth defects, impact the reproductive system, and affect the kidneys, liver, and lungs.  Studies link fracking with childhood hematologic cancer, neurologic conditions, and respiratory diseases, particularly asthma. Children and fetuses are the most vulnerable, but adults are damaged as well. In addition, the fracking industry is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and climate crisis. For these reasons, even though fracking is just the next chapter in petroleum exploitation, it is a much different chapter in that its consequences are more dangerous.

The environmental damage by fracking is broader than the damage incurred by any of the earlier means of getting energy. It affects human health, probably animal health as well, damages plants pollutes the atmosphere with volatile toxins, pollutes ground water and probably will enter our aquifers in the not too distant future, and damages the very structure of the earth itself, as demonstrated by the enormous increase in earthquakes in areas where there were none until materials were injected into the earth’s crust under high pressure.

 The risks to humans were described in the earlier blog (Public Health and Energy Usage) but the high points bear repeating here. There now are more than 700 studies on the impacts of fracking and more than 80% document risks or actual harm. Fracking releases volatile organic compounds. All of these are deleterious and at least one of these, benzene, is carcinogenic. The EPA has stated that the cancer risk from benzene occurs at any level of exposure and the World Health Organization has stated that there is no safe exposure level for benzene. It well known to cause acute myelogenous leukemia and is statistically associated with other cancers of the bone marrow – acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Among the other noxious compounds released during fracking are toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. All four of these, including benzene, can affect the nervous system and are known to cause birth defects and damage the liver, kidneys, and lungs. The Colorado Department of Public Health in 2012 showed that persons living less than a half-mile (2680 feet) from a fracking site were at greater risk for neurological and respiratory diseases and congenital birth defects in babies than persons living farther away. These cancer and other risks increase with time of exposure. Children are at higher risk since they grow and develop over years near fracking wells. All of this has been thoroughly documented in the scientific and medical literature.

 Human and large animal biochemistry are similar, so the toxic effects of fracking on animals probably will be similar to those on humans. Unfortunately, animals cannot speak for themselves and there is little information. There is, however, information on what happens during spills or surface water contamination. An article in The Revelator, from the Center for Biological Diversity, captured much of the existing data on the negative effects of fracking on wildlife. One of the best-known spills occurred in 2015 in North Dakota when a burst pipeline sent 3 million gallons of brine waste into two creek beds. It flowed all the way to the Missouri River in concentrations high enough to kill any fish or wildlife that encountered it. This is one example, but it emphasizes the point. 

 Habitat destruction, due to removal of water for fracking or its pollution is an issue, as are the traffic, noise, and dust that accompany operations. Consider that the footprint of a single new well can be as large as 30 acres. There is the clearing for the well pad, and the use of 1.5 – 16 million gallons of water per well taken from surface streams or ground water. There is sand during the fracturing underground rock and new pipelines, compressor stations, and related infrastructure that are constructed as well. The truck traffic surges during operations and during disposal of wastewater either in streams or underground. A single fracking well can require 3,300 truck trips during its operational lifespan.

 Multiply this by the number of wells that can be put on a location and you begin to appreciate the ecological damage. One locus in West Virginia had 111 wells in 2005 and 14,022 by the end of 2015. This resulted in a 12.4% loss of core forest and a 50% increase in “edge habitat” – degraded land or water around well sites. 

 We have only begun to appreciate the damage to wildlife from this practice, and every year fracking moves closer to national park boundaries. More than one-third of the more than 400 US national parks lie either directly above or within 25 surface miles of shale basins. This will have an impact on habitats (fragmentation), water quality, water quantity, and noise and air pollution. The animals in America’s national parks include some of our country’s most iconic and treasured species. We must treat them with respect, plan carefully, and enact widely available pollution controls. We have too much at stake to get it wrong.

 Coming next: effects of fracking on the environment and structure of the earth.