Dallas doctor gets no answers on frack fluid ingredients.

(Gas Vets note:  Courts and corporations have more importance than the public health…)

After his failed attempts to fight the state’s oil and gas law in court, Alfonso Rodriguez, M.D., is ready to sign a nondisclosure form to view a full list of ingredients in hydraulic fracturing fluid. If only someone could tell him where to find it. Read more at the  Hazleton Standard Speaker…..

https://gasvets.org/2015/04/06/752/

Project studying illnesses near Minisink gas compressor

Resident says family suffering maladies

TOWN OF MINISINK – Public health toxicologist David Brown does not call his work with people living around gas compressor stations “research.”

“When people are sick, you don’t do a study. You find out what they’re sick from,” he said.

Brown is a founder of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit group begun in 2011, initially devoted to providing public health information and services related to natural gas extraction in Washington County.

Now the Environmental Health Project is studying 30 people living near the Millennium Pipeline gas compressor that was built in Minisink 18 months ago.    (READ MORE…)

https://gasvets.org/2015/03/16/747/

Tomblin Calls for Study of Increased Deaths from Gas Drilling Boom

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is calling for a study aimed at reversing the increase in workplace deaths that has accompanied the boom in natural gas drilling and production from the Marcellus Shale fields in Northern West Virginia. –

Read more at the Charleston Gazette….

Fracking sand in oilfields stirs up a serious health risk for workers

Health concerns about oil field fracking have been focused on the mixed brew of chemicals injected into wells. But it is another innocuous-sounding substance — sand — that poses a more serious danger to workers.

Government overseers of workplace safety first highlighted the problem three years ago and issued a hazard alert a year later warning that high levels of fine quartz sand around fracking operations could lead to silicosis and other lung illnesses.  (Read more….)

https://gasvets.org/2014/12/16/730/

Phenomenal work by Marcellus Outreach Butler in compiling this partial month-by-month list of Spills, Accidents, and Violations by frackers. The link takes you to reports for 2014 but MOB has plenty for before this year, too. Thank you, MOB!

http://www.marcellusoutreachbutler.org/spill-baby-spill

https://gasvets.org/2014/12/16/725/

SMITH CASE STUDY:  Blackout in the Gas Patch: Pennsylvania Residents are Left in the Dark on Health and Enforcement

From EarthWorks Action’s  study:

Our research on gas wells and facilities in the area revealed several pollution events, problems that persisted for long periods of time, and plausible reasons why the development would have compromised air and water quality. In addition, there were instances when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) gave operators the benefit of the doubt about activities and incidents. Yet it was only because residents filed complaints that DEP conducted some inspections and investigations and discovered violations. – See more at: http://www.earthworksaction.org/library/detail/blackout_case_study_4_angel_and_wayne_smith#.VEVm6PnF9MU

https://gasvets.org/2014/10/20/705/

Fracking workers exposed to dangerous amounts of benzene, study says

(NB GasVets.org:   Although this article was first published  9/11/14,  it’s received little attention.  For more on worker health and threats to it,  see  GasVets’  Timeline of Federal Regulations which includes data from  “What They Knew in 1988-89,  and  the 2011  Minority Congressional report which lists 650 fracking chemicals that are known- or potential-carcinogens,  If you are a GasVet worker or a resident of  “Gasland”  who believes you’ve suffered harm from fracking,  please participate in Damascus Citizens’  Health and Community Impacts Survey.)

“Some workers at oil and gas sites where fracking occurs are routinely exposed to high levels of benzene, a colorless gas that can cause cancer, according to a study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The agency, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommends that people limit their benzene exposure to an average of 0.1 of a part per million during their shift. But when NIOSH researchers measured the amount of airborne benzene that oil and gas workers were exposed to when they opened hatches atop tanks at well sites, 15 out of 17 samples were over that amount.

Benzene, a component of crude oil, “is of major concern because it can be acutely toxic to the nervous system, liver, and kidneys at high concentrations,” the study authors wrote. As the CDC explains, benzene interferes with the normal workings of cells.

‘It can cause bone marrow not to produce enough red blood cells, which can lead to anemia,” according to the CDC. “Also, it can damage the immune system by changing blood levels of antibodies and causing the loss of white blood cells.’”

https://gasvets.org/2014/10/08/693/

Two deaths in four days shocks south west mining community

Australia.

https://gasvets.org/2014/09/15/681/

Expert: PA Didn’t Address Fracking Health Impacts

 

Former health secretary says PA has failed to seriously study the potential health impacts of fracking
By Kevin Begos, The Associated Press, July 12, 2014.  

Pennsylvania’s former health secretary says the state has failed to seriously study the potential health impacts of one of the nation’s biggest natural gas drilling booms. Dr. Eli Avila also says the state’s current strategy is a disservice to people and even to the industry itself because health officials need to be proactive in protecting the public. “The lack of any action speaks volumes,” said Avila, who is now the public health commissioner for Orange County, New York. “Don’t BS the public. Their health comes first.”    (Read more….) 

https://gasvets.org/2014/07/14/643/

COMPENDIUM OF SCIENTIFIC, MEDICAL, AND                                             MEDIA FINDINGS 

DEMONSTRATING RISKS AND HARMS OF FRACKING
(UNCONVENTIONAL GAS AND OIL EXTRACTION)

Succinct, easily-understood breakdown  of  the risks and harms of gas extraction & production  with a call that governments and industry  heed the many alarms sounded by the medical and scientific professions.  When you post it at your website and Facebook pages and hand it out at your events, maybe say something  like,   “After you’ve read this, please ask who has your back.  Fossil fuel companies and the government?  Or, doctors and scientists who aren’t being paid by either of them?”  (And then encourage individuals, families and communities who’ve been harmed to consider taking  DCS’  Health & Community Impacts Survey.)

 

From the compendium by  Concerned Health Professionals of New York:  “With increasing urgency, groups of medical professionals and scientists are issuing calls for comprehensive, long-term study of the full range of the potential health and ecosystem effects of drilling and fracking. These appeals underscore the accumulating evidence of harm, point to the major knowledge gaps that remain, and denounce the atmosphere of secrecy and intimidation that continues to impede the progress of scientific inquiry. Health professionals and scientists in the United States and around the world have urged tighter regulation of and in some cases, suspension of unconventional gas and oil extraction activities in order to limit, mitigate or eliminate its serious, adverse public health hazards.”  

 

Read  more …:

https://gasvets.org/2014/07/14/633/

Letter of Dr. Paulson to PA-DEP on Fracking Impacts on Children

NO EVIDENCE TO INDICATE THAT UNCONVENTIONAL NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION CAN BE IMPLEMENTED WITH A MINIMUM OF RISK TO HUMAN HEALTH
 
Jerome A. Paulson, MD, FAAP, Medical Director for National & Global Affairs, Director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health & the Environment, Child Health Advocacy Institute, Children’s National Health System & Professor of Pediatrics and of Environmental & Occupational Health, George Washington University, Washington, DC. 
Original article by:   DUANE NICHOLS, FRACK CHECK WV, JULY 2, 2014

 

 

 

 

https://gasvets.org/2014/07/06/628/

Romanian Fracking worker dies on the job, as toxic frack chemicals kill or harm many more around the world.

“…they came for the [workers] and I didn’t stand up…”  Please defend the world’s workforce.  They are we and we are they.  Join us at our Gas Vets Facebook page and on Twitter.

 

https://gasvets.org/2014/06/04/575/

Physicians, Scientists & Engineers Video on Fracking and Worker Health:

Excellent video about the impacts of fracking and related activities on worker health.  This is particularly interesting in light of silicosis and all of what NIOSH and OSHA have known for years.  Please review our timeline of federal regulations, including what  the Feds knew in 1988-89.

https://gasvets.org/2014/06/04/573/

The AFL-CIO  Issues 23rd Annual  “Death on the Job Report”  and fracking in North Dakota shows alarming data.

  • The fatality rate in the mining and oil and gas extraction sector in North Dakota was an alarming 104.0 per 100,000, more than six times the national fatality rate of 15.9 per 100,000 in this industry; and the construction sector fatality rate in North Dakota was 97.4 per 100,000, almost ten times the national fatality rate of 9.9 per 100,000 for construction.  Read much, much more…..

https://gasvets.org/2014/05/17/552/