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Fracking News

Bartonville discusses health risks from Barnett Shale drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing

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Dear Town of Bartonville Leaders:

I commend you for your diligence in exploring natural gas extraction issues that impact your citizens. Given the revelations made by state and federal regulators at the panel discussion you held recently, I think the Precautionary Principle should be applied immediately and made a requirement in any future decisions about allowing natural gas extraction and production processes in your town.

The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.

This principle allows policy makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm from taking a particular course or making a certain decision when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. The principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result.

In some legal systems, as in the law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement

The Denton Record Chronicle article about your recent meeting, “Officials discuss drilling studies,” clearly shows, that not only is there no scientific consensus, there are not enough scientific studies to reach a scientific conclusion upon which to seek consensus. In other words, we are truly guinea pigs!

Excerpts from the article:

Precautionary Principle needed:

Government officials still don’t know whether natural gas drilling poses a long-term threat to North Texans’ health and water supplies,

Precautionary Principle needed:

Gas production in the region has been linked to emissions of harmful chemicals including benzene, a known carcinogen. Some residents in the Argyle-Bartonville area have reported experiencing nosebleeds, dizziness, disorientation and nausea after drilling began near their homes and schools.


Precautionary Principle needed:

…more research is needed to know whether emissions from natural gas facilities pose a long-term health threat, said Tiffany Bredfeldt, a TCEQ toxicologist.


Precautionary Principle needed:

Bredfeldt said. “But in the case of long-term health effects, cancer for example, it’s usually driven by much lower concentrations. So we’re in the process right now of collecting more data so that we know how safe the environments are that people are living in.”


Precautionary Principle needed:

“The long-term impacts aren’t fully known,” she said. “There’s a lot of lack of data [on] what is the effect of long-term exposure to chemicals at extremely low levels in groups.”


Precautionary Principle needed:

She encouraged residents to press their elected officials to fund more scientific research on environmental exposures.


Precautionary Principle needed:

Michael Overbay, a groundwater expert at the EPA’s Dallas office, said it’s “very misleading” to say that chemicals make up only 2 percent of fracking fluids because it’s unclear how toxic those chemicals are. Energy companies typically have refused to disclose the exact makeup of their fracking fluids, although the EPA is expected to obtain that information as part of a comprehensive review of the practice requested by Congress.

“Without knowing what those chemicals are, I can’t tell you what level is safe,” Overbay said. “So I have a very different point of view from people in the oil industry about whether 2 percent of chemicals represents a problem. I don’t know.”


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.

Comments

  1. Mike H. says

    Ignoring the Precautionary Principle has lead to expensive (including to industry) fiascoes, like benzene, DDT, PCB, asbestos, & thalidomide.