This website is dedicated to and for the use of workers in oil and gas, both current and past, their families, communities and friends.
(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…..
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…)
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. –
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….)
http://www.marcellusoutreachbutler.org/spill-baby-spill
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
(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.’”
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….)
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.”
“…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.
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.
