Colorado Doctor Uses Biomonitoring to Show Drilling Impacts

Can blood tests show the impacts of gas and oil drilling? That’s a question one Colorado doctor hopes to answer. Dr. John Hughes, of Aspen Integrative Medicine recently tested the blood of several Carbondale residents, according to a recent article in the Aspen Daily News. He tested ten people for a range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene – compounds found in air samples in many drilling areas. His preliminary results found low levels of xylene but, as reporter Nelson Harvey puts it, “no VOC concentrations above federal health thresholds”.

Hughes is looking at this as a baseline, as two gas companies intend to develop 18 gas leases in the area. He’s trying to generate some health data prior to drilling.

Hughes compared the Carbondale samples with blood samples from ten residents in Erie, where close to 17,000 gas wells have already been drilled. He found high levels of ethylbenzene – around 118 parts per billion (ppb) – in the blood of nine Erie test subjects. All of those residents  lived between 300 and 1,800 feet from gas wells, and the highest levels ethylbenzene that Hughes detected was found in people living closest to wells.

By contrast, none of the samples from Carbondale residents showed high levels of ethylbenzene.

The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for ethylbenzene notes that the chemical; “may cause adverse reproductive effects and birth defects … (and) may cause cancer…” That data is based on animal testing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control &Prevention (CDC) National Biomonitoring Program, the median ethylbenzene level in adult’s blood was 0.060 ppb, although residents in high density urban areas may have ethylbenzene levels twice that high. “Workers in the petroleum industry and those with solvent exposure can have blood ethylbenzene levels that are several hundred times higher than those in the general population,” notes the report.

At this time, finding “measurable” levels of ethylbenzene in the blood doesn’t automatically mean the chemical is causing adverse health effects. That data hasn’t been gathered yet. But  biomonitoring studies are important, as they can  provide health officials with reference values when determining whether people have been exposed to higher levels of ethylbenzene than are found in the general population.

And that is exactly what Hughes is doing: using biomonitoring to establish a baseline for Carbondale residents and, if he can continue, study the environmental exposures associated with drilling.

Frack Ban and Petition Shenanigans in Colorado

On Tuesday, February 19 the Fort Collins (Colorado) City Council voted 5 - 2 to give initial approval to an ordinance that would prohibit all oil and gas exploration activity within city limits. The final vote will take place March 5. But in the intervening days, they've got a lot to discuss.

For instance: who really signed the petition that supposedly came from business owners in favor of fracking within town limits? Because Cali Rastrelli, who used to work at Big Bill Pizza, has no idea how his name got on the petition headed "Vote NO on the Fort Collins Frack Ban". He sure didn't put it there - and the pizza joint, located an hour and a half south of Fort Collins, has no stake in the matter. And to top it off, whoever signed his name spelled it wrong.

Rastrelli's not the only one;  22 of the 55 business owners who supposedly signed onto the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) -sponsored pro-fracking petition told the local press that they were mistakenly included. Either someone signed their name, or they didn't know what the petition was for. And, in some cases, the business owners were against drilling and fracking within the city - boy, weren't they surprised to see their names on the list.

BLM Backs off some Proposed Leases in CO

Since last year, organic farmers, outdoors enthusiasts, and local businesses dependent on tourism have been trying to get the federal Bureau of Land Management to reconsider thousands of acres proposed for oil and gas leases in the North Fork Valley of Western Colorado. Yesterday the BLM removed 20,000 acres in Delta County from the Feb. 14 lease auction.

The decision follows months of sometimes raucous public meetings and more than 100 protest letters from organic farmers, vineyard owners and tourism businesses. Their argument: oil and gas drilling would jeopardize the vibrant and growing economy, and fail to protect the environment.

The BLM oversees oil, gas and mineral leasing on all federal lands. Under 90-year-old laws, companies and people can nominate public lands for drilling. BLM reviews the proposals, checking for other land uses including wildlife habitat and wilderness uses. Then, if there is no overriding conflict, the government is obliged to auction them - after some months of review and public comment.

What drew the ire of organic farmers and others in Delta County was the secrecy surrounding the nominations. Who chose those particular parcels, they wanted to know. A local activist group, Citizens for a Healthy Community, has a lawsuit pending under the federal Freedom of Information Act to find out the name of the nominator.

Residents also objected that the lease sale was being conducted using a 1989 resource management plan – a plan that ignores the dynamic growth of organic agriculture and other economic changes.

Why is NY ignoring Health Impact Study?

Back in March, when the NY legislature was haggling over the state budget, the Assembly added a $100,000 line item for a health impact study on the public health impacts of fracking. As assemblywoman Barbara Lifton explains, “A health study is supposed to be part of an environmental impact study to begin with.” Indeed, the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) lists a number of environmental factors that must be taken into account before beginning a project: land, air, water, agricultural resources, community character, and human health.

But the Senate and Governor Andrew Cuomo axed the health study because, they said, the state regulators needed to finish the environmental review. Also, eliminating the study saved taxpayers $100,000 – a whopping 0.00007 percent of the recently approved $132.6 billion budget.

     Lifton isn’t the only one asking for a health impact study  - and she’s not the first. Last October more than 250 health professionals signed on to a letter asking state officials to study health risks related to gas drilling before permitting hydraulic fracturing in the state.

     Meanwhile, information on health impacts from other drilling states piles up – much of it focusing on the impacts of air quality impaired by drilling activities. 

•  December 2011-  Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) finds that releases of volatile organic compounds from oil and gas operations increased 60 percent over five years. 
•  TCEQ found elevated benzene levels at 21 of 94 Barnett well sites tested. 
•  Baylor University reported a higher incidence of asthma in children living in the Barnett shale region: asthma rates for children in Tarrant County were more than twice the national average. 
•   In 2011 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported higher levels of methane, butane, propane and other chemicals coming out of the gas fields of northern Colorado and eastern Utah. And Wyoming’s drilling fields report ozone levels as high as 124 parts per billion (ppb) – higher than Los Angeles levels and far higher than EPA’s maximum level of 75 ppb. link; NOAA
•  March 2012 - researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health report that air pollution caused by hydraulic fracturing may contribute to acute and chronic health problems for people living near drilling sites. They identified a number of potentially toxic hydrocarbons in the air near wells: benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, heptane, octane, diethylbenzene and more.

 Oh yeah – the price tag of the Colorado study: $150,000, funded by Garfield County. That’s only half again what the NY Assembly asked for in the state budget.

The cost for such a study isn’t the problem. The real question is: why isn’t the NY Department of Environmental Conservation following State environmental law (SEQR) and conducting a health impact study as part of the SGEIS?

Fracking Up Close and Personal

The online Denver Business Journal has an excellent photo gallery that shows the fracking process "up close and personal". Nineteen photos at http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2011/09/02/photo-gallery-fracking-aids.html?s=image_gallery

Signs of the Times

Rt. 29 South Montrose, PA

On January 1, 2009 an 8-foot cement slab near Norma Fiorento's house in Dimock, PA was blown into the air. the reason: gas migrating from nearby gas wells that were being drilled.

That was 31 months ago and the people of Dimock are still waiting for their water to be fixed. At  one point the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection ordered Cabot - the company responsible for the accident - to construct a pipeline to bring water to the 14 homes that had lost their well water. The $12 million price tag shocked Cabot into making a counter offer: to pay people lots of money and install some kind of home filtration device - a strategy that had already failed in some homes.

So yesterday a group of Dimock residents, frustrated with Cabot's lack of response, installed a billboard on Route 29 in South Montrose. The reason: if you break something, you fix it. Especially, as one person said, if it says in the lease that you'll restore the water.

Apparently "restoring" water is not possible. But even if it was - according to George Stark, a Cabot spokesman, their water isn't contaminated. The billboard is a lie, he told the people - this was caught on tape by a local reporter for WBGN. He also offered to drink the water coming out of their tap - but residents later said he never did.

So, the people got together and created a sign to display so that people will not forget them. It stood for 24 hours. As of today, they say, the billboard is coming down.

Why? Because the good folks who own  PJ's Restaurant and Bar, who rent the space to the sign company, don't like the sign. They fear it will offend their gas-drilling cash-paying customers.

Rt 220, Bradford County, PA

 If they had a billboard like this one, it would probably be OK.

Gas Talk Turns Fractious

Shale isn’t the only thing that’s getting fractured in this region. Communities are too, as last night’s talk at the Vestal American Legion illustrated. Pulteney (NY) farmers-turned-filmmakers Jeff and Jodi Andrysick have been presenting a traveling roadshow in the Marcellus region - a program of stories from those living in the Colorado drill zone.

Huge pickups plastered with banners thanking drilling supporters for “being American” lined the driveway, and members of the Joint Landowners Coalition stood about holding “Friends of Natural Gas” signs. The stories of contamination are just lies and belong in tabloids alongside tales of alien encounters, they insist. Inside the Legion Hall they settled onto folding chairs behind equally passionate residents holding “no frack” signs and hand-lettered posters declaring their need for water, not gas.

Weston Wilson spoke first. He's the environmental engineer who blew the whistle on the EPA for whitewashing the 2004 hydraulic fracturing study. The problem, he says, is that the oil and gas industry enjoys a great many exemptions from regulations. Take the Safe Drinking Water Act –  Congress specifically exempted the practice of injecting fracturing fluids during drilling from the SDWA. It’s telling that the exemption doesn’t extend to cases in which they inject those same fluids into disposal wells.

Wilson listed some of the problems with wells: faulty cement casing, spills, and mismanagement of returned fluids. The National Transportation Safety Board investigates plane accidents, he said. We need something similar for the oil and gas industry.

Tara Meixsell, author of Collateral Damage said the gas boom changed her life. Colorado law allows drilling as close as 150 feet to homes, a distance that exposes families to dust and chemicals. Some of those chemicals, such as 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE), are carcinogenic. Meixsell shared stories about friends and neighbors who suffered ill health from exposure.

Drilling is about more than gas – it’s about money and people’s lives, Meixsell said. Citing a confrontation earlier that evening in the parking lot, she implored people to be civil to one another. Respect each other’s opinions, she said. “You have to remain neighbors… at the end of the day you’re all breathing the same air and drinking the same water.”

Colorado rancher Rick Roles told how drilling affected his horses and goats. He leased his land because he thought it would bring the ranch much-needed income. Now he’s got 19 "holes" on his land and another 100 wells within a mile of his home – plus three compressor stations and a water treatment plant within a mile and a half.

He listed numerous problems: mares aborting foals, studs becoming sterile, goats having stillbirths, and his own health problems.  He also spoke of how spills were covered up with dirt instead of reported, and a persistently leaking condensate tank. When Roles finally got a toxicology screen he discovered high levels of benzene, toluene, xylene and a long list of related chemicals in his blood.

“Sure, we earned a little money,” Roles said. “But our property was ruined.”

The goal of last evening’s program was to allow those suffering negative impacts of gas to share their stories. But it was clear that some people, a minority to be sure, came with no intention of listening to what the speakers had to say. When the question-and-answer session grew contentious [“frack-tious” one person called it] moderator Don Glauber reminded people to be civil.

“I don’t know how many of you came here with your minds made up, or with anger in your hearts, but that’s not why we’re here tonight,” he said. Referring to acrimonious comments Glauber said, “This is why we have had so much trouble talking openly, honestly and safely.”