by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 18, 2012 | Alienation & Mental Health, Mining & Drilling, Repression at Home, Toxification
By Walter Brasch / Dissident Voice
A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.
Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendouspressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.
Advocates of fracking argue not only is natural gas “greener” than coal and oil energy, with significantly fewer carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur emissions, the mining of natural gas generates significant jobs in a depressed economy, and will help the U.S. reduce its oil dependence upon foreign nations. Geologists estimate there may be as much as 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas throughout the United States. If all of it is successfully mined, it could not only replace coal and oil but serve as a transition to wind, solar, and water as primary energy sources, releasing the United States from dependency upon fossil fuel energy and allowing it to be more self-sufficient.
The Marcellus Shale—which extends beneath the Allegheny Plateau, through southern New York, much of Pennsylvania, east Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of Maryland and Virginia—is one of the nation’s largest sources for natural gas mining, containing as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Each of Pennsylvania’s 5,255 wells, as of the beginning of March 2012, with dozens being added each week, takes up about nine acres, including all access roads and pipe.
Over the expected life time of each well, companies may use as many as nine million gallons of water and 100,000 gallons of chemicals and radioactive isotopes within a four to six week period. The additives “are used to prevent pipe corrosion, kill bacteria, and assist in forcing the water and sand down-hole to fracture the targeted formation,” explains Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. However, about 650 of the 750 chemicals used in fracking operations are known carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011. Fluids used in fracking include those that are “potentially hazardous,” including volatile organic compounds, according to Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, a part of the federal Centers for Disease Control. In an email to the Associated Press in January 2012, Portier noted that waste water, in addition to bring up several elements, may be radioactive. Fracking is also believed to have been the cause of hundreds of small earthquakes in Ohio and other states.
The law, an amendment to Title 52 (Oil and Gas) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, requires that companies provide to a state-maintained registry the names of chemicals and gases used in fracking. Physicians and others who work with citizen health issues may request specific information, but the company doesn’t have to provide that information if it claims it is a trade secret or proprietary information, nor does it have to reveal how the chemicals and gases used in fracking interact with natural compounds. If a company does release information about what is used, health care professionals are bound by a non-disclosure agreement that not only forbids them from warning the community of water and air pollution that may be caused by fracking, but which also forbids them from telling their own patients what the physician believes may have led to their health problems. A strict interpretation of the law would also forbid general practitioners and family practice physicians who sign the non-disclosure agreement and learn the contents of the “trade secrets” from notifying a specialist about the chemicals or compounds, thus delaying medical treatment.
The clauses are buried on pages 98 and 99 of the 174-page bill, which was initiated and passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law in February by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
“I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice,” says Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa. She says it’s common for physicians, epidemiologists, and others in the health care field to discuss and consult with each other about the possible problems that can affect various populations. Her first priority, she says, “is to diagnose and treat, and to be proactive in preventing harm to others.” The new law, she says, not only “hinders preventative measures for our patients, it slows the treatment process by gagging free discussion.”
Psychologists are also concerned about the effects of fracking and the law’s gag order. “We won’t know the extent of patients becoming anxious or depressed because of a lack of information about the fracking process and the chemicals used,” says Kathryn Vennie of Hawley, Pa., a clinical psychologist for 30 years. She says she is already seeing patients “who are seeking support because of the disruption to their environment.” Anxiety in the absence of information, she says, “can produce both mental and physical problems.”
Read more from TruthOut
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Katy Ashe / Mongabay
On the back of a partially functioning motorcycle I fly down miles of winding footpath at high-speed through the dense Amazon rainforest, the driver never able to see more than several feet ahead. Myriads of bizarre creatures lie camouflaged amongst the dense vines and lush foliage; flocks of parrots fly overhead in rainbows of color; a moss-covered three-toed sloth dangles from an overhanging branch; a troop of red howler monkeys rumble continuously in the background; leafcutter ants form miles of crawling highways across the forest floor. Even the hot, wet air feels alive.
Suddenly, the forest stops. Bone dry, dusty air burns my nostrils. The harsh equatorial sun, no longer filtered through layers of canopy and understory vegetation, beats down with full force. We are in a vast expanse of sandy desert, the tree line barely visible on the other side. The scar of deforestation reaches miles into the horizon.
An apocalyptic scene unfolds. Enormous muddy craters pepper the sandy terrain, filled with makeshift mining rigs. Illegal gold-miners in tattered clothing stand beside deafening rickety motors sucking earthen slurry through large hoses. Their faces are covered in motor oil and dirt, and they slump wearily from eighteen-hour days. Packs of men holler from the pits as I pass, misinterpreting me as a new prostitute for the camp.
This is the scene I pass through each morning on my way into the illegal gold-mining zones of Madre de Dios, Peru. Being a Stanford University graduate student in environmental engineering, I came to this region of the upper Amazon to study the mercury levels in the human population. These illegal mines use mercury to scavenge tiny flecks and pebbles of gold dust out of the slurry.
Mercury is being released in quantities of around 40 tons each year in this region. The detrimental toxin makes its way into the food, water and air that sustains the diverse peoples and animals found here. It is touching all life in this basin; poisoning even those that have no part in the mining industry and live nowhere near a mining zone. I was intent on determining the extent of mercury poisoning caused by the dramatically increasing mining activity.
Located in the western Amazon Basin, this is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet. Home to some of the most unspoiled tracts of Amazon Rainforest remaining; it is a vibrant sanctuary of species. Unfortunately, it is rapidly disappearing as artisanal gold-mining has become a booming industry in the past several years. The global market price for gold has doubled in the past year alone, with skyrocketing prices fueled by fear during the global economy crisis.
Record high prices for gold have led to a boom in illegal gold mining in Peru; employing 100,000 people nationally and valued at $640 million a year. A poor migrant population, typically from the Peruvian highlands is flocking predominantly to this region of the Amazon Rainforest; there are approximately 300 new arrivals to the region each day, typically looking for work in gold mining. The government verifies that 2,000 square miles (over 500,000 hectares) of rainforest in Madre de Dios have been destroyed to date due to mining, but the environment groups on the ground claim the figure is actually threefold. The exact number is hard to pin down as the rate of deforestation has more than tripled in the last three years.
The mining zones are the Wild West in the worst possible way. The seemingly endless winding avenues of shanty towns sprawl out across the center of the mining zones; filled with makeshift abodes, brothels, restaurants, night clubs all constructed of black and blue tarps. Cities set up nearly overnight, and by morning the residents are hastily destroying one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet.
The immediate devastation is obvious: slash and burned forest, river channels with heaping rubble, sluiceways through which thousands of tons of Amazon soil are blasted with high-pressure water hoses.
Drunkards stumble down the main corridors at all hours of the day. Women sit out front of the brothels in plastic lawn chairs, lazily advertising their respective tents. Infants splash in the mercury-contaminated mining ponds as children throw rusted metal objects at each other. I grab a jagged, rusty, iron hoop from a toddler boy, only to be reprimanded by his mother for stealing his toy.
I come from a world where a broken mercury thermometer in my high school classroom spurred evacuation for the afternoon and extensive cleaning by people in hazmat suits. This child lives in a world where mercury is often viewed as an acceptable laxative–the incredible weight of mercury essentially pushes everything out of your digestive tract.
Mercury has been used in gold mining since the time of the Inca. But the releases that we are seeing now are devastating. Unfortunately, there is little knowledge in the mining camps about how to properly use mercury. They hold mercury in their bare hands and mix the toxic metal into buckets of dirt with their bare feet. Once they’ve recovered the mercury-gold mixture from the dirt, they heat the mercury off of the gold in a frying pan over an open flame, causing it to turn into a vapor form that is incredibly dangerous to breath. Local superstitions have led to rejection of mercury recycling technologies. The fact that mining this way is an illegal activity makes it nearly impossible to intervene with educational programs.
Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0315-ashe_goldmining_peru.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Toxification
By Oliver Milman / The Guardian
The Australian government has passed legislation that will create the country’s first nuclear waste dump, despite fierce opposition from environmental and Aboriginal groups.
The passage of the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 through the Senate paves the way for a highly controversial plan to store nuclear waste in Muckaty Station, a remote Aboriginal community in the arid central region of the Northern Territory.
The ruling Labor party received support from the conservative coalition opposition to approve the bill, despite an ongoing federal court case over the legality of using the Muckaty site to store radioactive material.
Currently, nuclear waste from the medical and mining industries is stored in more than 100 “temporary” sites in universities, hospitals, offices and laboratories across Australia.
Anti-nuclear protesters disrupted proceedings in the Senate as the legislation was debated earlier on Tuesday, with the group heckling lawmakers from the public gallery over their support for the bill.
A recent medical study warned that transporting nuclear waste over long distances to such an isolated location, which is 75 miles north of the Tennant Creek township, could endanger public health.
“The site is in an earthquake zone, it floods regularly, there are very long transport corridors, there are no jobs being applied and it’s opposed from people on the ground, on the front line from Tennant (Creek) all the way up to the NT government and people around the country,” said senator Scott Ludlam of the Greens, which successfully added an amendment to the bill that bans the importing of foreign nuclear waste to the site.
Aboriginal groups launched legal action after claiming that traditional owners of the land around Muckaty do not approve of the dump, despite the government maintaining that the local Ngapa indigenous community supports the plan.
Under Australian Native Title law, indigenous groups recognised as the traditional owners of land must be consulted and compensated for any major new infrastructure.
Although the Australian government insists that it has not decided on a site for the dump, Muckaty is the only option under consideration and the Northern Territory government has already been offered AUS$10m if it accepts the facility.
Finding a location for a national nuclear waste dump has proved a major headache for successive Australian governments, with former prime minister John Howard rebuffed in his attempt to situate the facility in South Australia in 2004.
The Northern Territory government has complained that it is being strong-armed into taking the dump due to it being a “constitutional weak link” and not having the same rights as full Australian states.
Nuclear power remains a highly contentious issue in Australia, which, despite having the largest uranium deposits in the world, has steadfastly refused to shift its largely coal-fired energy generation to nuclear.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/13/australia-nuclear-waste-aboriginal
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 9, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Toxification
By Mike Barrett / Natural Society
Monsanto’s Roundup, containing the active ingredient glyphosate, has been tied to more health and environmental problems than you could imagine. Similar to how pesticides have been contributing to the bee decline, Monsanto’s Roundup has been tied to the decrease in the population of monarch butterflies by killing the very plants that the butterflies rely on for habitat and food. What’s been shown to be an even greater threat to the population, though, is Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn and soybeans.
Roundup Ready Crops and Glyphosate Leading to Downfall of Insect Populations
A 2011 study published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity found that increasing acreage of genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans is heavily contributing to the decline in monarch butterfly populations within North America. Milkweed, a plant butterflies rely on for habitat and food, is being destroyed by the heavy use of glyphosate-based pesticides and Roundup Ready crops. Over the past 17 years, the monarch butterfly population in central Mexico has declined, reaching an all-time low in 2009-2010.
“This milkweed has disappeared from at least 100 million acres of these row crops,” said Dr. Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas and director of the research and conservation program Monarch Watch. “Your milkweed is virtually gone…this [glyphosate use on RR crops] is the one main factor that has happened…you look at parts of the Midwest where there is a tremendous use of these crops and you see monarch populations dropping. It’s hard to deny the conclusion.”
According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2011 94 percent of soybeans and 72 percent of corn grown in the United States were herbicide-tolerant. Due to this increase, the amount of Roundup used on crops in 2007 was 5 times higher than in 1997, only one year after Roundup Ready crops were available.
Another study published int he journal Crop Protection and conducted by Robert G Hartzler, an agronomist at Iowa State, found that milkweed on farms in Iowa declined 90 percent from 1999 to 2009. Additionally, his study found milkweed only on 8 percent of corn and soybean fields surveyed in 2009, which is 51 percent lower than in 1999.
Although the butterfly population may be suffering, humans are taking heat from Monsanto’s creations as well. Past research has shown that Monsanto’s Roundup ready crops are leading to mental illness and obesity, primarily by destroying the amount of good bacteria found in the gut. The corporation’s Roundup, containing glyphosate, has also been shown to cause infertility and birth defects.
Glyphosate is so present today that it has been found to be polluting the world’s drinking water through the widespread contamination of aquifers, wells, and springs. What may be most shocking is that very high concentrations of glyphosate have been found in 100 percent of urine samples tested in a recent study.
From TruthOut: http://www.truth-out.org/monsantos-roundup-shown-be-ravaging-butterfly-populations/1331303182
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 8, 2012 | Toxification
By Krishna Ramanujan
A new report has found dozens of cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, fish and other wildlife, and humans. It says these conditions could be the result of exposure to gas drilling operations.
Hydraulic fracturing, popularly called hydrofracking, is a process for extracting natural gas from shale using chemicals and water.
The paper’s authors, Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and veterinarian Michelle Bamberger, DVM ’85, interviewed animal owners in six states — Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — and cited 24 cases where animals were potentially affected by gas drilling.
According to the study, recently published online and appearing soon in print, in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, making a direct link between death and illness is not possible due to incomplete testing, proprietary secrecy from gas drilling companies regarding the chemicals used in hydrofracking, and non-disclosure agreements that seal testimony and evidence when lawsuits are settled.
“We have a number of case studies — they don’t tell us about the prevalence of problems associated with hydraulic fracturing, but they do tell us how things can happen,” said Oswald.
Some of the case studies include:
- In Louisiana, 17 cows died within an hour of direct exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid. A necropsy report listed respiratory failure with circulatory collapse as the most likely cause of death.
- A farmer separated his herd of cows into two groups: 60 were in a pasture with a creek where hydrofracking wastewater was allegedly dumped; 36 were in separate fields without creek access. Of the 60 cows exposed to the creek water, 21 died and 16 failed to produce calves the following spring. None of the 36 cows in separated fields had health problems, though one cow failed to breed in the spring.
- Another farmer reported that 140 of his cows were exposed to hydrofracking fluid when wastewater impoundment was allegedly slit, and the fluid drained into a pasture and a pond. “These farmers saw workers slitting the liner to decrease the amount of liquid in the impoundment in order to refill it,” said Bamberger. “We have heard it now on several occasions.” Of the 140 cows, about 70 died, and there were high incidences of stillborn and stunted calves.
The authors note that the “most striking finding” of their study was how difficult it was to get solid information on the link between hydrofracking and health effects.
To provide better assessments of health impacts, the researchers recommend:
- prohibiting nondisclosure agreements when public health is at stake;
- increasing food safety testing and research, as the study documented that animals exposed to chemicals were not tested prior to slaughter, and little is known about the effects of hydrofracking chemicals on meat and dairy products;
- improving the monitoring of routes of exposure, including in water, soil and air; and, most importantly,
- fully testing the air, water, soil and animals prior to drilling and at regular intervals after drilling is completed, and disclosing fully the chemicals used when hydrofracking.
“Without knowledge of all the chemicals being used, you can’t test before drilling,” said Bamberger. “And if we don’t have predrilling tests then if you find a chemical postdrilling, how can you prove that” it came from hydrofracking, she added.
From Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-reproductive-problems-death-animals-exposed.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 8, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Isabell Zipfel
In Jharia, in the federal state of Jharkhand, around 600,000 people live in the middle of one of India’s biggest coal mining areas. There’s nothing in it for most of them. Quite the opposite: the soil, the water and the air are now contaminated, of all things in an area that was previously rich in woodland.
The story of Jharia is the story of how the greed for profit, vested interests and the thirst for power have prevailed and led to one of the areas richest in minerals in India remaining so economically backward. For the mining marginalises the poor and deepens social inequality in the name of economic development, from which mostly only metropolises like Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai profit.
Shortly after 1971, the coal mines were nationalized. Since then, their operator is the BCCL (Bharat Coking Coal Limited) which thus controls one of the biggest coal deposits in India and one of the biggest in the whole of Asia. BCCL conducts mainly opencast mining. Mostly illegally, since in 97 percent of the cases no license has been granted. Opencast mining is more profitable than deep mining. The productivity and extracted quantities are significantly higher than in deep mining and cost less. In Jharia, coal is mined in the villages, next to the houses, in short, on people’s doorsteps. Even on the streets, on railway lines, in the station itself, which is not a station any more, coal is mined.
Really, the mined area should be filled with sand and water afterwards, so it can be cultivated again. For cost reasons, however, this never happens, which leads to the coal seams coming into contact with oxygen and catching fire. India has the most coal blazes worldwide. BCCL representatives estimate there are 67 fires in Jharia alone.
The opencast mining areas are densely populated. Forty percent of Jharia’s inhabitants live in the burning, fire spewing countryside. The ground is subsiding, houses are collapsing. In addition, the smoke and vapours contain poisons, amongst others carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, but also soot, methane and arsenic. The damage to health is enormous. Lung and skin diseases, cancer and stomach disorders are only some of the illnesses with which the people in Jharia have to fight with.
The blazes are in fact controllable, contrary to the BCCL representatives’ opinion. They could be extinguished with the application of water, clay and sand. But nothing happens. Because there is no political interest in extinguishing these blazes at all. Rather, it is in the operator’s interest that even more land catches fire – and thus becomes uninhabitable. BCCL needs still more land on which coal can be mined in order to achieve the extracted quantities planned for the current and coming business years. And underneath Jharia lie more than 1,000 million tons of coal.
The interests and influence of the operator are too strong, so the mines stay and the mining will still be carried on. In addition, the Mafia has the area around Jharia firmly in its hands and makes a not inconsiderable profit through blackmail, bribery and other criminal activities.
Instead of doing something against the fires, one of the biggest resettlement plans worldwide is to be carried out: Jharia Action Plan (JAP). The inhabitants of the areas on fire are supposed to be resettled in Belgaria, a new town in the middle of the jungle. There is no school there, no medical care, no shops, and, worst of all, no jobs at all. So many decide to stay in Jharia. On the fire. In spite of the blazes. In spite of the perpetual grey veil that lies over the town. In spite of the air pollution, which makes breathing almost impossible on a bad day. And in spite of the coal dust, which settles like a second skin on the body.
From EcoWatch
