The Real Cost of Fracking (17 page)

With crops raised for human or animal consumption, if the effects do not kill the plants or significantly stunt their growth, then we may never know the impact on our food supply. Currently, you’re unlikely to find grocery-store vegetables that have been significantly contaminated due to gas drilling, if for no other reason than the vast areas of production relative to the current footprint of gas drilling in most regions of the nation. But we have visited parts of Bradford and Washington Counties in Pennsylvania that are being intensively drilled; in some cases, the footprint of drilling approaches that of farmland. Consequently, the possible effects on farmland can only grow because the number of wells drilled as of 2013 was only a small fraction of the wells planned, even in areas that are in the middle of the shale gas boom like the one in Pennsylvania. By some estimates, up to 10 percent of US land is leased for drilling, exceeding the land mass used for growing corn and wheat.
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But we may never know the effects of drilling on vegetable crops, since these foods are almost never tested for chemical contaminants. In fact it is not generally in the farmer’s interest to test for chemical contamination. For example, since arsenic was detected in rice products in California, some producers have been admirably open and honest about the contamination and their attempts to solve the problems. Lundberg Farms, for instance, has tested for, and published the levels of, arsenic in its rice.
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However, the full extent of the problem is not clear. As industrial processes such as oil and gas drilling begin to take up more and more land adjacent to acres in production, more consideration must be given to the testing of these crops.

If we consider food animals, the picture changes, but not by much. Cattle can be exposed through surface spills of fracturing and drilling fluids, and wastewater, and also by contaminated water, soil, and feed. But air exposure can also be a problem, especially in farms located downwind of wastewater impoundments, condensate tanks, compressor stations, and processing plants. Air exposure may even be the leading pathway in areas such as North Dakota, where oil is being extracted unconventionally and where the gas, uncollected, is either flared or vented.
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A particularly well-documented case of the death of two baby goats and six baby chicks on an organic goat farm illustrates the acute problems that may occur.
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In this case, extensive air testing demonstrated elevated levels of a range of volatile organic compounds. In the case of beef herds, the animals typically go to slaughter with no chemical testing. Even testing for
E. coli
in ground meat is typically done after meat from many sources is mixed, making it impossible to track the source of contamination.
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In dairy herds, the milk is collected and mixed with milk from many other farms—also a practice that confounds the ability to isolate the source of a potential problem.

We do know a bit more about the fate of herds with documented exposure to the products of the gas drilling industry. The most dramatic case was the death of seventeen cows in Louisiana after hydraulic fracturing fluid leaked into the pasture.
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These previously healthy cows died within an hour, and the lesions found on necropsy suggested exposure to toxicants. Interestingly, quaternary ammonium compounds, found in the hydraulic fracturing in this case, have been described as producing similar lesions. Fortunately, these cows never made it to market; nor was their flesh rendered and sold as feed for other animals.

There are other cases, particularly wastewater impoundments that have leaked onto the pasture or into adjacent ponds used to provide drinking water for the herd. In these instances, death was not immediate, but reproductive problems were almost uniformly seen. Both beef and dairy cows typically produce one offspring per year, and the loss of production is a significant hit to a farmer’s income. We have seen herds fail to produce offspring after exposure to drilling fluids and wastewater.
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While this is not proof that the drilling fluids or the wastewater is the cause of reproductive failure, carefully controlled laboratory studies on a herd of beef cattle are not particularly easy. But farmers inadvertently set up experiments by splitting the herd into different pastures. We have several cases where part of the herd that was exposed to drilling wastewater experienced reproductive and other health problems while the unexposed part of the herd with a different source of drinking water had no changes in health. These cases provide stronger evidence that the wastewater could have caused the problem.
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We are, however, left with many of the same problems that we discussed in the previous section, that is, it was difficult to draw a direct link between water contamination and the health of humans and companion animals. But when dealing with farm animals, we sometimes have an exposure pathway—for example, documentation that cattle drank water contaminated by drilling wastes. The chemicals involved are far more of a problem than in contaminated well water, because the animals may be directly exposed to wastewater or hydraulic fracturing fluid whereas the contaminants in well water are diluted when such fluids leak into a freshwater aquifer. Even if all of the components of hydraulic fracturing fluid were known, the culprit or culprits may be chemicals or even bacteria extracted from the shale layers themselves or chemicals in hydraulic fracturing fluid that have undergone chemical reactions deep below the ground. Furthermore, it is notoriously difficult to trace the origin of a reproductive problem. Chemicals that work on hormonal systems can do so at very low concentrations, lower than the concentrations considered safe in drinking water (MCLs) and lower than detection levels in chemical tests.
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Without knowing what to search for and knowing that these chemicals may be present at low levels make the problem enormously difficult and expensive to solve—certainly beyond the resources of a typical farmer. So sometimes the best we can do is study the split-herd incidents described above.

For all these reasons, we know of few cases (other than the aforementioned incident when cows were exposed to hydraulic fracturing fluid) where careful testing has been done on cattle that have been exposed to drilling contaminants. But consider the motivation for testing. No farmer wants her farm to be thought of as the one that is raising cattle using contaminated water—an understandable attitude. Perhaps it is better just to move on and hope the problem goes away next year. This approach may sound somewhat lackadaisical, and it does not help those of us studying these problems, but it may actually be a reasonable strategy for the farmer. For the most part, chemical toxicants have a measurable lifetime in the cow’s body, and if you wait long enough, they will all be excreted, with the possible exception of the metals strontium
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and radium-226,
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both having a long half-life in bone tissue. So if the cows are not sent to the slaughterhouse or the renderer and do reproduce the next year, perhaps all is well. With any luck, the problem will go away and subsequent generations will not be exposed to any toxic chemicals.

Maybe, maybe not. Not only do we have very little knowledge about what toxicants may be in these cows’ bodies, but even if we did know, we still know little about how long an individual chemical remains in the body. Nor do we know if any of these compounds have epigenetic effects (heritable changes in DNA, for example, methylation). Most research to date has focused on antibiotics and pesticides. Knowing how long an antibiotic stays in the body can provide an indication of a safe interval to allow between administering the antibiotic and sending the cow to slaughter. With drilling chemicals, the best that can be done is to make educated guesses. We are currently aware of only one instance when beef cattle were quarantined following exposure to drilling wastewater.
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The length of the quarantine was not predicated on hard science, but was a guess based on the herd’s exposure to only some of the chemicals in the wastewater (volatile and semivolatile organic compounds were not included in the analysis of the wastewater) and how similar compounds are excreted. Nevertheless, the quarantine might actually be considered a success of the regulatory system because something was done. In other cases, cattle have moved on to slaughter and rendering without further testing.

As things stand, there are no incentives to report or study food safety issues associated with gas drilling. A farmer who has leased his land wants to continue farming and reap the profits from the gas well. If a spill occurs or if water is contaminated, the farmer can suffer, but he may suffer even more if word gets out that his animals may have been exposed to toxic chemicals.

Although the issue is now a gray area, the ramifications can be even greater for an organic farmer, who may lose organic certification because of possible contamination. Organic standards are set by the National Organic Program of the US Department of Agriculture and include setbacks and buffers from industrial activity.
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Individual certifiers control the actual enforcement, and what constitutes an adequate buffer zone is determined on a case-by-case basis, adding a layer of ambiguity to the organic certification.

So in both organic farms and the more conventional farms, the financial incentives are all stacked toward keeping quiet about any possible contamination. Putting it in this context is a bit sterile, since we can only assume that most farmers want to produce products that are fresh and healthy. The problem, however, is more complicated and confusing. The farmers to whom we have spoken and who have had instances of water contamination on their farm have been told by either the drilling companies or state regulators that there was no problem: the wastewater leaked into the pond from which the cows drink, but nothing in the wastewater can cause a problem. While the authority figure pronouncing the water safe may in fact be correct, without complete testing it is impossible to know for sure. Under these circumstances, it is easy to send animals on to slaughter without a second thought.

We do not know the extent of the problem of land, water, and air contamination from unconventional drilling operations, but it can only grow as drilling expands. What we do know is that drilling fluids, fracturing fluids, wastewater, and air contaminants released during drilling operations contain chemicals that are human carcinogens or are suspected human carcinogens and that consequently, crops from exposed fields; milk, meat, and eggs from exposed animals; and fish from exposed waterways should not be made available for human consumption.

The cows that were exposed to hydraulic fracturing fluid in Louisiana and died within an hour were buried shortly afterward. This is not the usual fate of cows that die or are too sick to be sent to slaughter; these animals are usually sent to a renderer. Animals exposed to drilling fluids, wastewater, or contaminated drinking water can be sent to rendering plants without further testing. But as discussed, for crops grown on farms shared with drilling operations and cattle exposed to drilling contaminants and sent to slaughter, we don’t know the extent of the problem. Simply stating over and over that no problem exists does not make it so.

Perhaps if cows could swim, the FDA would be monitoring our milk and meat to be sure these foods were safe for human consumption. Currently, the FDA monitors seafood after major oil spills by using specific protocols to determine food safety.
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As with onshore unconventional fossil fuel extraction, we don’t know the identities of all the chemicals used for offshore drilling (and may never know). Yet, one of the groups of compounds that the FDA, EPA, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) have chosen for analysis is the PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), perhaps the most studied and most persistent compounds found in petroleum mixtures.
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PAHs are a human health concern because of their potential carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic effects
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and because exposure during pregnancy is associated with adverse effects on birth and early childhood development.
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As PAHs are components of drilling and fracturing fluid
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and are also found in wastewater,
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they could be similarly used to monitor our crops, meat, eggs, and dairy products following contamination events on land.

In addition to PAHs, it would be prudent to monitor our food supply for radium-226, which is found in both drilling waste and wastewater. The presence of radium-226 in these wastes is of great concern for a number of reasons. Besides having a very long half-life, radium-226 can be absorbed by both plants and animals and bioaccumulates in some fish and aquatic plants; people who eat contaminated food products may then be exposed to radium-226.
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In particular, this element replaces calcium in the bones of animals, including humans, and can cause cancer.
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The vast volumes of wastewater are disposed of in a number of ways (see the appendix, “A Primer on Gas Drilling”), including treatment at wastewater-treatment facilities, which discharge into streams and public drinking-water supplies. A recent study reported levels of radium-226 in stream sediments near an oil and gas wastewater-treatment facility that were approximately two hundred times higher than background levels
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and more than two times above US regulatory levels.
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Currently, little information is available on what this means for the drinking water and food of people and animals living near such facilities, and for people and animals living in areas where
untreated
wastewater has been spilled on farmlands, dumped into streams, and spread on roads. But we believe that no harm can come of tracking and monitoring our food and water sourced from intensively drilled areas for PAHs and radium-226. If, indeed, all is well, then the public will be reassured. If, however, exposure pathways and specific chemicals are identified, then it may be possible to find ways to mitigate the problem.