by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 24, 2012 | Toxification
By University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Recent widespread news coverage heralded the success of a United Nations’ goal of greatly improving access to safe drinking water around the world.
But while major progress has been made, a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicates that far greater challenges persist than headline statistics suggested.
Earlier this month (March 6), UNICEF and the World Health Organization issued a report stating that the world had met the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, well in advance of a deadline.
That goal aimed to boost access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and protected wells, between 1990 and 2015.
However, the new UNC study estimates that 1.8 billion people – 28 percent of the world’s population – used unsafe water in 2010.
That figure is 1 billion more than the official report’s estimate that 783 million people (11 percent of the globe) use water from what are classified as unimproved sources by WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Program.
The new study’s lead author, Jamie Bartram, Ph.D., professor of environmental sciences and engineering in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, said the WHO/UNICEF report highlighted the progress that could be achieved through concerted international action, but left outstanding the needs of millions of people who only have access to dangerous contaminated drinking water.
“If you look at the water people use and ask ‘Is this contaminated?’ instead of ‘Is this water from a protected source?’, the world would still be well short of meeting the Millennium Development Goal target,” said Bartram, also director of the Water Institute at UNC.
“In many parts of the world, water from ‘improved sources’ – like protected village wells and springs – is likely to be microbiologically or chemically contaminated, either at the source or by the time people drink it,” he said. “In developing countries, whether you live in small village or a big city, safe water can be hard to come by: pipes and taps break, clean springs and wells become contaminated or people have to carry or store water in potentially unsanitary ways.”
The study, “Global Access to Safe Water: Accounting for Water Quality and the Resulting Impact on MDG Progress,” was published March 14, 2012, in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Bartram and colleagues analyzed water quality and sanitary risk information from an earlier study of five countries, and extrapolated the data to estimate global figures. Their study suggested that of the 5.8 billion people using piped or “other improved” water sources in 2010, 1 billion probably received faecally contaminated water. Adding that tally to the nearly 800 million people who collect water from unimproved sources would mean 1.8 billion people are drinking unsafe water.
Furthermore, Bartram and colleagues estimated that another 1.2 billion people got water from sources that lack basic sanitary protection against contamination.
“All told, we estimate 3 billion people don’t have access to safe water, if you use a more stringent definition that includes both actual water quality and sanitary risks,” Bartram said.
He highlighted that the recent WHO/UNICEF announcement confirmed how much had been achieved since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, and that this progress should lead to a progressive shift towards ensuring that every home, workplace and school has reliable water supplies that are – and remain – safe.
However, he said the magnitude of the UNC study’s estimates and the health and development implications suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to better understanding and managing drinking water safety.
From PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-billion-people-unsafe.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 23, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By the Associated Press
A 93-year-old anti-nuclear activist was among more than 130 protesters arrested at the corporate headquarters of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on the first day of the plant’s operation after the expiration of its 40-year license.
Frances Crowe, of Northampton, Mass., said she wants Vermont Yankee to cease operations because she feels it’s a threat to the people who live nearby.
“As I was walking down, all I could think of was Fukushima and the suffering of all the people, and I don’t want that to happen to New England,” Crowe said, referring to the Japanese nuclear reactor damaged last year after an earthquake and tsunami.
When asked how many times she’d been arrested, she answered: “Not enough.”
A heavy police presence and ropes blocked off access to the offices in Brattleboro during Thursday’s protest. The arrests were made calmly and without any confrontation, with obvious signs that protesters and police had worked out the logistics beforehand.
Brattleboro Police Chief Gene Wrinn said in a statement that more than 130 people had been arrested for unlawful trespass. He said after being processed, they were later released.
Read more from The Huffington Post
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Christine Shearer / TruthOut
Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 3 issued a statement last week that its preliminary tests of water samples near drilling and fracking sites in the Pennsylvania town of Dimock showed no health concerns, the group Water Defense and “Gasland” director Josh Fox went to Dimock to look at the EPA summaries themselves, which they say do report high levels of explosive methane, heavy metals and hazardous chemicals. The issue is raising renewed controversy over the increasing growth of unconventional gas drilling and fracking and the uncertainty around health and safety regulations.
By the 2000s, it was starting to look like the reign of coal in providing over half of US electricity was ending. Community opposition and changing economic conditions turned the tide on most of the over 150 new coal plants proposed by the George W. Bush administration. And the EPA was being pressured to implement or update a suite of overdue coal regulations, including coal waste, mercury, water pollution and greenhouse gases, among others, making coal less commercially competitive compared to other energy alternatives.
While some looked hopefully to renewable energy to fill in the gap, industry developments in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing were ushering in what appeared to be a new era for “unconventional” natural gas. Suddenly, the race was on for shale gas and oil deep underground. Homeowners and cities across the US agreed to drilling leases on their land, spurred on by the promise of low impact and high royalties. Plus, gas releases fewer pollutants when burned than coal, including about half the carbon dioxide emissions, making it easy to portray as the ideal bridge to a clean energy future.
Although the deep drilling process was in many ways new – particularly the cocktail of chemicals, sand and water used to break up the shale and release the gas in what has become known as “fracking” – gas drillers received exemptions from seven federal regulations that apply to other industries, including the Clean Water Act; the Clean Air Act; the Superfund law; and, most notoriously, the Safe Drinking Water Act, due to the “Halliburton loophole” in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Regulation and oversight were largely left to individual states, many of which were already overburdened, underfunded and under staffed.
By 2009, there were more than 493,000 active natural gas wells across 32 states in the US, almost double the number in 1990. And around 90 percent have used fracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling industry.
Read more from TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8021-about-that-dimock-fracking-study-results-did-show-methane-and-hazardous-chemicals
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By Indigenous Environmental Network
Native Americans gathering in Cushing, OK today to protest President Obama’s words of praise for the Keystone XL pipeline were forced by local authorities to hold their event in a cage erected in Memorial Park. The protestors were stunned that their community, so long mistreated, would be insulted in such an open manner instead of being given the same freedom of speech expected by all Americans simply for taking a stance consistent with their values.
“A lot of tribal councils and Indian businesses struggle to find a balance between economic resources and our inherited responsibilities for the earth,” said Indian actor and activist Richard Ray Whitman in a statement. “How will the decisions we make now effect coming generations?”
“President Obama is an adopted member of the Crow Tribe, so his fast-tracking a project that will desecrate known sacred sites and artifacts is a real betrayal and disappointment for his Native relatives everywhere,” said Marty Cobenais of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Tar sands is devastating First Nations communities in Canada already and now they want to bring that environmental, health, and social devastation to US tribes.”
The President visited Cushing to stand with executives from TransCanada and throw his support behind a plan to build the southern half of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to move tar sands bitumen and crude oil from Cushing to the Gulf Coast refineries in Texas.
A major concern for Native Americans in Oklahoma, according to spokespeople at the event, is that Keystone XL and the Canadian tar sands mines that would supply it ignore impacts to indigenous communities and their sacred spaces.
“Natives in Canada live downstream from toxic tar sands mines,” said Earl Hatley, “and they are experiencing spikes in colon, liver, blood and rare bile-duct cancers which the Canadian government and oil companies simply ignore. And now they want to pipe these tar sands through the heart of Indian country, bulldozing grave sites and ripping out our heritage.”
The group points to a survey done by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey which found 88 archaeological sites and 34 historic structures that were threatened by Keystone XL. TransCanada was asked to reroute around only a small portion of these, leaving 71 archaeological sites and 22 historic structures at risk. The group says they have asked for a list of these sites and to oversee operations that might threaten sacred burial grounds, but neither request has been honored.
Beyond the threat to their own cultural heritage, the group voiced opposition to the pipeline’s environmental impacts.
“The Ogallala Aquifer is not the only source of water in the plains,” said RoseMary Crawford, Project Manager of the Center for Energy Matters. “Tar sands pipelines have a terrible safety record and leaks are inevitable.”
“We can’t stop global warming with more fossil fuel pipelines,” added Crawford. “The people who voted for this President did so believing he would help us address the global environmental catastrophe that our pollution is creating. He said he would free us from ‘the tyranny of oil.’ Today that campaign promise is being trampled to boost the President’s poll numbers.”
From Indigenous Environmental Network:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 20, 2012 | Toxification
By Bill McKibben
Cornell’s Global Labor Institute issued a big new report [PDF] this morning examining the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the most comprehensive look yet at its economic impact. And it makes clear just how right President Obama was to block this boondoggle: It would make money for a few politically connected oil companies, but at a potentially staggering cost to the American economy.
For once economists looked at the whole effect of the project. Unlike studies paid for by the TransCanada pipeline company that purported to show thousands of jobs created (a number since walked back to “hundreds” of permanent positions even by company spokespeople), this study asks: What happens when there’s a spill?
Not if there’s a spill. There’s going to be a spill — the smaller precursor pipeline recently built by TransCanada spilled at least 14 times in its first year of operation, once spewing a geyser of tar-sands oil 60 feet into the air. In fact, the new Cornell report estimates that we can expect 91 significant spills over the next half century from Keystone, in large part because the bitumen it would carry south from Alberta is like liquid sandpaper, scouring the steel of the pipe.
And when the spill happens? In 2010, a six-foot gash in a tar-sands pipeline let a million gallons of crude pour into the Kalamazoo River. Fifty-eight percent of people in the area reported adverse health effects from the evaporating oil; the river is still closed; clean-up costs are likely to be higher than $700 million. The pipeline’s owner had to buy out more than a hundred homes and relocate the residents. Multiply by 91.
And remember that the Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Ogallala Aquifer, source of 30 percent of the nation’s irrigation water, not to mention many of its farming jobs. The six states the pipeline would run through would together reap about 20 permanent jobs from Keystone XL; together those states employ more than half a million farmers. Do the math. And then remember something else: Renewable energy jobs are growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy. If a wind turbine topples over, that’s bad news, but it doesn’t turn the aquifer black.
From Red, Green, and Blue: http://redgreenandblue.org/2012/03/13/report-reveals-true-cost-of-keystone-xl-staggering-public-costs-vs-private-benefits/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 19, 2012 | Toxification
By University of Colorado, Denver
In a new study, researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health have shown that air pollution caused by hydraulic fracturing or fracking may contribute to acute and chronic health problems for those living near natural gas drilling sites.
“Our data show that it is important to include air pollution in the national dialogue on natural gas development that has focused largely on water exposures to hydraulic fracturing,” said Lisa McKenzie, Ph.D., MPH, lead author of the study and research associate at the Colorado School of Public Health.
The study will be published in an upcoming edition of Science of the Total Environment.
The report, based on three years of monitoring, found a number of potentially toxic petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near the wells including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene. Benzene has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a known carcinogen. Other chemicals included heptane, octane and diethylbenzene but information on their toxicity is limited.
“Our results show that the non-cancer health impacts from air emissions due to natural gas development is greater for residents living closer to wells,” the report said. “The greatest health impact corresponds to the relatively short-term, but high emission, well completion period.”
That’s due to exposure to trimethylbenzenes, aliaphatic hydrocarbons, and xylenes, all of which have neurological and/or respiratory effects, the study said. Those effects could include eye irritation, headaches, sore throat and difficulty breathing.
“We also calculated higher cancer risks for residents living nearer to the wells as compared to those residing further [away],” the report said. “Benzene is the major contributor to lifetime excess cancer risk from both scenarios.”
The report, which looked at those living about a half-mile from the wells, comes in response to the rapid expansion of natural gas development in rural Garfield County, in western Colorado.
Typically, wells are developed in stages that include drilling followed by hydraulic fracturing , the high powered injection of water and chemicals into the drilled area to release the gas. After that, there is flowback or the return of fracking and geologic fluids, hydrocarbons and natural gas to the surface. The gas is then collected and sold.
Garfield County asked the Colorado School of Public Health to assess the potential health impacts of these wells on the community of Battlement Mesa with a population of about 5,000.
McKenzie analyzed ambient air sample data collected from monitoring stations by the Garfield County Department of Public Health and Olsson Associates Inc. She used standard EPA methodology to estimate non-cancer health impacts and excess lifetime cancer risks for hydrocarbon exposure.
McKenzie noted that EPA standards are designed to be public health proactive and may overestimate risks.
“However, there wasn’t data available on all the chemicals emitted during the well development process,” she said. “If there had been, then it is entirely possible the risks would have been underestimated.”
The report concludes that health risks are greater for people living closest to wells and urges a reduction in those air emissions.
McKenzie said future studies are warranted and should include collection of area, residential and personal exposure data where wells are operating. Additional studies, she said, should also examine the toxicity of other hydrocarbons associated with natural gas development.
From PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-air-emissions-fracking-sites-impact.html
