I’m serious. We are being poisoned and no one is helping us! Oh, some high-up governmental types are working on rules this and rules that, but it will take several years to see any difference in a best case scenario where they have the guts to make the rules strong enough. What happens in the meanwhile? Do we stay stuck on stupid?
I was gone for a couple of days and while I was away, breathing some clean air, all hell steadily continued to break loose.
Megan Collins sent me several text messages while I was away. There is new natural gas production activity near her, and her health as deteriorated again. She has lost her balance and is having trouble standing. Since VOCs stay in the blood for only a few hours, she was desperate to find a doctor who would test her right away. She decided to go to 
the emergency room to have her blood drawn and tested for the list of chemicals I had given her. The emergency room doctor couldn’t or wouldn’t do that testing. Next she tried her primary care physician. He said testing for drilling chemicals is out of his area of expertise, but he wrote her a prescription for a four-pronged cane because he said she is at “high risk of falling.” (Logic meter buried in WTF column.)
Runner Susan picked me up at the airport and told me the latest on the Williams scorching activity that happens periodically in the middle of the night. RS had a bloody nose all the next day and intermittent nausea and dizziness. Another unfortunate neighbor to the Williams gas plant woke up with a house filled with smoky fumes. As we drove through Argyle I asked, “What’s that smell?” That, RS told me, was the Hillwood facility across the street from the intermediate school where the toxic odors sent early morning band members and their parents into a panic.
My friend, Deborah, received the results from her latest round of air testing and <-insert expletive here->!!! Chesapeake Energy is just flat out poisoning her and all her neighbors. She had a bloody nose all day after sleeping with the window open one night.
This morning I decided to check the comments on the article, Unwell water, about contaminated water, in Wise County. OMG! It’s much worse than I thought and I knew it was bad.
I could go on and on but I want to know something: what is it going to take to get some meaningful help? A while back, I was talking with a friend from a huge environmental organization. I asked her that same question: what is it going to take? Her shocking answer: a body count.
Okay. Clearly this is a sacrificial zone so casualties are expected. But, how many casualties will it take? Can we get a number? How many bloody noses will it take? How many nasal cancers? How many cases of leukemia? How many young mothers walking with a four-prong cane?
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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Massive organized civil disobedience. If you really feel like you're getting poisoned, why wouldn't you do this?
…after years of silent suffering from the effects of filthy air and dirty water, many Chinese are saying they've had enough. And in some cases, their protests are turning violent.
The latest example of anti-pollution anger erupting into protests took place in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. On Aug. 31 villagers angry about pollution from local factories took to the streets in Fengwei, a town near the city of Quanzhou. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported on Sept. 2 that more than 10,000 people clashed with some 2,000 riot police and took two government officials hostage. Inside China, the state-controlled media are reporting sparingly on the violence, with the local Quanzhou Evening News describing efforts by government officials to strengthen communication with local residents—and reporting that the two hostages had been freed.
BBess,
I will protest in a heartbeat and I have. Most here are afraid to damage their image. I'm trying to not be judgmental but I'm not succeeding.
Yesterday the TCEQ came out again and tested my air cause this sweet friggn' smell just lingers and it ain't my neighbors doin laudry. I smelled it last night blocks away at our National Night Out and I smelled it at my son's football game where the fracking is goin on across from Hutchinson Jr High. Now I sit here and type with this "catch" or film or something in my throat. The Arlington City Council will hire a consultant on how best to do baseline air testing in Arlington. But it looks like they want to overlook the first 45 days worth of diesel truck frackn' traffic and only test after the well goes on line.
I'll say it – If your "image" is more important than your health, then you're not really that concerned about your health are you? And if that's true, then please shut the hell up and let someone else who's willing to both complain AND act take the lead.
I mean what if MKL Jr had agreed with those who told him that respectable ministers just don't do that sort of thing?
Change doesn't happen without struggle.
um, I don’t know who you are anonymous, but have we seen you at protests? I bet we havn’t.
Change also does not come without risk- but as I've said many times before, when you;re backed into a corner, I don't have anything to lose by coming out swinging. As of late, I'm finding I am not as alone as we once were.
Face it we're screwed. I was slightly optimistic about the vast number of people waking up to this "soft kill" initiative of systematically poising the air and water. I must say when I learned about Pennsylvania's Department of Homeland Security hiring an Israeli intelligence gathering company to collect dossiers on Natural Gas Activists that was the last straw. Rather than putting any money into agencies that could regulate drillers they spent over 100,000 dollars to protect the drillers by giving them free intelligence on their enemy, us. Homeland Security being as centralized as it is there is no way this didnt come from on high. Civil disobedience is a start but it would have to be massive. And when that fails because of lack of interest by those who could actually create laws to stop the drilling we will all become the domestic homegrown terrorist they want us to be. But hey we could save money on explosives by just using our own ruined, produced, and highly flammable water. Its a last resort but it will be the endgame when we are all castrated and powerless to stop the poisoning of North Texas. See Yallz at a secret black site detention center in Poland!!
Right on Tad, above. We are screwed. Same here in Booger County. Lots of shenanagins and crooked cops rounding up folks for nothing!! Stay "buttoned up". That's all we can do.