Transport, disposal said to be greatest risks

By Krisy Gashler • This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it • February 23, 2010, 10:30 pm

DRYDEN -- Two chemists and an endocrinologist spoke Tuesday night about
the science and
potential health effects of unconventional natural gas drilling to
roughly 100 people at Tompkins
Cortland Community College.

The lecture was sponsored by Shaleshock, a citizens' group that opposes
hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale without greater study and
more regulatory oversight.

Decisions about gas drilling will be guided by the state's experience
with environmental cleanups such as Love Canal in Buffalo, but also by
an understanding of how the country's current energy sources affect our
foreign policy, said William Klepack, a Dryden physician and medical
director for the Tompkins County Health Department.

Even with no additional chemicals added by gas companies, the water
that flows back from hydro-
fracked wells has enough heavy metals -- and often radioactivity -- to
be classified as hazardous waste, said Ron Bishop, a biochemist at
SUNY Oneonta who has also worked in construction with gas drillers.

But because of state and federal exemptions granted to the natural gas
industry, the water does not have to be tested or handled as carefully
as it would be if it were created by another industry, Bishop said. In
some parts of the Marcellus Shale, radioactive materials occur
naturally at levels 250 times the level normally regulated by
environmental agencies -- but natural gas drillers aren't even required
to
test for radioactivity, he said.

"Call your legislators," he said.

The precautionary principle in science and medicine asserts that if an
action could cause severe, irreversible harm, the burden of proof is on
those who want to carry out the action, said

Thomas Shelley, a chemist and chemical safety and hazardous materials
specialist. Based on this principle, the European Union has banned use
of hundreds of chemicals that are used across the U.S., Shelley said.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation's draft regulations
on gas drilling list
257 distinct chemicals that could be used in hydraulic fracturing;
compound-specific toxicity
data on many of those chemicals and their effects on human health and
the environment are "very limited," he said.

"We're looking at a vast unknown," Shelley said. "Remember the
precautionary principle? We don't see any of it here."

Of the fluid used to fracture a natural gas well to release the gas,
99.5 percent is water and sand,
Shelley said. However, because one well can require 3 to 5 million
gallons of water, that equates to 10 to 30 tons of chemicals, Bishop
said.

The risk with chemical use is not from the actual hydrofracking process
but from transport and
disposal, Bishop said.

"Hydrofracturing is not the boogeyman under the bed; it is not going to
hurt you," Bishop said.
"You're more likely to have problems with transporting the 10 to 30
tons of chemicals to the
drilling site."

That kind of accident has occurred, Shelley said, citing an incident
last March when a tanker truck
filled with hydrofluoric acid overturned in Pennsylvania, requiring
emergency crews to close the road and evacuate 5,000 residents.

Even tiny amounts of some chemicals can act as endocrine disruptors,
said Adam Law, a physician at Cayuga Medical Center who specializes in
endocrinology.

One study on the chemical makeup of some fluids used in hydrofracking
determined that more than 40 percent of the chemicals used are
endocrine disruptors, which can cause things like birth defects,
reproductive problems and cancer, he said. Tracing a cause of endocrine
disruption is
sometimes extremely difficult -- in the case of one medication
frequently given to pregnant women a
generation ago, the negative health effect appeared in their
children, who developed extremely unusual tumors.

Companies should disclose not just what their fracking fluids are used
for, but the actual chemical composition, so state regulators can
assess risk and study future effects, Law said.

Part of the reason for non-disclosure is because the fracking formulas
are proprietary, but the other part is that gas companies "don't want
us to ask too many questions," Law said.

Most of the people he's known in the natural gas industry are careful,
professional and "don't want to contaminate anybody's well," but
accidents happen, Bishop said. Gas companies assert that there has
never been a documented case of water contamination from
hydro-fracking, and yet there are many documented cases of water
contamination related to the natural gas industry, including in nearby
Dimock, Pa., Bishop said.

"If you find contamination, they'll say, 'Oh, that was a spill' (or)
'Oh, that was a well-casing problem,'" Bishop said.