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Race, Poverty, And Chemical Toxic Trespass - The Critical Distance Of Vulnerability
“The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) screened news media reports of 1,275 high consequence incidents over a recent five-year period, 2009–2013. High consequence incidents result in injury, fatality, acute environmental damage, evacuation or shelter-in-place of 500 or more members of the public, onsite property damage greater than $500,000, or offsite property damage. The CSB data do not represent the universe of all chemical incidents.” At the other end of the spectrum, toxic emissions capture technology, as used in China for coal plants, will often create a product for market that binds the chemical pollutants into a form, however only temporary, but the sales of which cover the costs of capture technology and aid carbon credit offsets trading. These products usually wind up as discarded waste at some point over their lifetime. New construction generates enormous waste that ends up at landfills.
Race, Poverty, And Chemical Toxic Trespass - The Critical Distance Of Vulnerability
On May 5, 2014, headlines across the country focused on a critical look at pollution and demographics in a new report titled “Who's In Danger: Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters”
From the African American Environmentalist Association
http://aaenvironment.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos-in-danger-race-poverty-and.html
“The AAEA is an environmental organization founded in 1985 that is dedicated to protecting the environment, enhancing human, animal and plant ecologies, promoting the efficient use of natural resources, increasing African American participation in the environmental movement and promoting ownership of energy infrastructure and resources. We resolve environmental problems through the application of practical environmental solutions.”
“More than 134 million Americans live in the danger zones around 3,433 facilities in several common industries that store or use highly hazardous chemicals. Millions more people work, play, shop, and worship in these areas. But who are the people that live daily with the ever present danger of a chemical disaster?”
The report is the first public accounting of the demographic characteristics of populations within the “vulnerability zones” of entire industry sectors that manufacture chemicals, treat water or wastewater, produce bleach, generate electric power, refined petroleum, produce pulp and paper, or otherwise have large numbers of people living in the path of a potential worst-case chemical release. It also shares the stories of some of these communities.
Download the report “Who's In Danger: Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters” by the Environmental Justice And Health Alliance For Chemical Policy Reform here:
http://www.comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/Who%27s%20in%20Danger%20Report%20and%20Table%20FINAL.pdf
Who's In Danger?
“Behind the petitions and beyond the statistics are the stories that news outlets rarely report, including how local agencies are made aware of hazards at nearby industrial operations and yet do not respond until after disasters happen. News accounts often ignore the lies communities are told about how safe facilities are or how many jobs will come to residents when polluting industries move or expand near their homes and schools. We don’t often hear about the lack of existing infrastructure (sewer, water, drainage, and fire hydrants) to support safe operations, or the absence of knowledge, protocols and trained staff and community members in the event of a chemical release or explosion.”
The report, “Who’s In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters” published May 2014, sheds light on who lives within the chemical disaster zones and tells some of the stories of people in America who live daily in the shadow of extremely dangerous chemical facilities; more than 134 million as documented by this report. Histories of toxics campaigns and coalitions are also listed in the report.
Communities in fenceline zones bear a greater risk to their safety and security from the large quantities of extremely hazardous chemicals transported to and from, or used in production, distribution, and storage facilities.
Crises Events Timeline
“A toxic gas cloud or blast wave could engulf a large area and enter homes, schools, businesses, elder care facilities, places of worship, sports arenas, hospitals, and automobiles long before people could evacuate or shelter in place.”
“For those who do shelter in place, which means to go inside, close doors, windows, and vents, and wait for toxic fumes to blow away, toxic gases can filter into the building before the company can stop a major chemical release; if it can be stopped. A simple analysis shows that shelter in place cannot possibly protect people in the fenceline zones. Shelter in place is a desperation strategy, not a plan for public safety or for preventing a chemical disaster, yet shelter in place is the “safety” measure encouraged by many facilities.”
Shelter In Place Is A Desperation Strategy And Not A Plan For Public Safety
“The chemical disaster vulnerability zone distances described in the report (which represent a radius or circle around the facility) were calculated by the companies themselves as part of worst-case chemical release scenario analysis required under EPA’s Risk Management Program.”
“The new research presented in “Who’s In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters” finds that residents of chemical facility vulnerability zones are disproportionately Black (African American) or Latino, have higher rates of poverty than the U.S. as a whole, and have lower housing values, incomes, and education levels than the national average. The disproportionate or unequal danger is sharply magnified in the fenceline areas nearest the facilities.”
“Policy failures have led to the needless persistence of catastrophic chemical hazards in communities. The U.S. experiences several serious toxic chemical releases every week, including the August, 2012 explosion at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA that sent 15,000 people to hospitals seeking treatment, and the April, 2013 fertilizer storage facility explosion in West, TX that killed 15 people and leveled an entire neighborhood. In a typical year, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board screens more than 250 high consequence chemical incidents involving death, injury, evacuation, or serious environmental or property damage.”
Human Rights And Chemical Safety In The US – a brief history
In 1994, there was little movement in Congress toward reforms that would protect disproportionately impacted communities. “President Bill Clinton responded to the outcry for action and issued Executive Order 12898 to address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations. Under this Order, government agencies are required to consider and assess potential disproportionate impacts of activities on low-income and minority communities before the activity takes place. Community environmental justice and advocacy groups were also able to use the Executive Order as a tool to expose the ongoing human rights violations of people of color and low-income people living in environments contaminated with toxic chemicals.”
Toxic Wastes And Race In The United States
“Once data began to be collected proving the connection between where these facilities were located and the demographics of the surrounding communities (including the 1987 report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States) groups concerned about these environmental health hazards began creating a more coordinated, grassroots movement to prevent harm to disenfranchised areas. The First National People of Color Leadership Summit, held in 1991, helped advance this process.”
“Subsequent research has confirmed the core findings from 1987. Two decades later the report Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty 1987–2007 replicated the 1987 study using newer data and analytical methods, and found that people of color and poor people are even more heavily concentrated around hazardous waste facilities than the 1987 and other earlier studies found.”
“In 1987, a landmark national study, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, helped document a national pattern that many people knew anecdotally from daily life: industrial and environmental hazards are concentrated in poorer areas and areas with more people of color. Toxic Wastes and Race helped catalyze a national movement known as the environmental justice movement by making visible the adverse environmental and health impacts to workers
and vulnerable communities living near the fencelines of chemical facilities.”
“Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007 (United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, March 2007). This study found that over half (56%) of all people living within 3.0 km of a hazardous waste facility in the U.S. are people of color, and where such facilities are clustered people of color make up over two-thirds (69%). Poverty rates are also much higher in the areas within 3.0 km of such facilities than nationally (18% vs. 12%).”
“In March 2012, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) recommended that the EPA use its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce or eliminate catastrophic chemical hazards wherever feasible. On August 1, 2013, in response to the devastating fertilizer plant explosion at West, TX, as well as to years of organizing, President Obama signed Executive Order 13650, Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. Tis
Executive Order sets forth a process with deadlines for improving and modernizing chemical safety and security regulations.”
“The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require industrial facilities that make, distribute, or use large amounts of certain extremely hazardous chemicals to prepare Risk Management Plans (RMP) and submit the plans to the U.S. EPA. 12 Te plans are intended to save lives, protect property, and prevent pollution. Some 12,600 facilities currently submit RMPs. The EPA’s Risk Management Program Risk Management Plans must include a companies’ own assessments of a worst-case chemical emergency, including the distance from the facility where toxic or flammable chemicals could cause serious harm if released. Areas within these distances are called vulnerability zones and extend from 0.01 to 25 miles from the facility depending on the amount and characteristics of the chemical stored or used at the facility that poses the greatest danger to the surrounding community.”
Communities that daily cope with constant toxic emissions and hazards from nearby industries are sometimes referred to as fenceline communities because homes, schools, businesses, parks, and other places where people live and work are located at or near the boundary, or fenceline, of industrial facilities.
“The largest number of facilities (1,172 or 34%) have vulnerability zones that range in distance from 1.01 to 2.50 miles around the chemical facilities, and a large majority of facilities (82% or 2,813) have vulnerability zones within five miles of their respective chemical facilities. Some 18% of facilities, or 620, have vulnerability zones greater than five miles. Only 5% of facilities, or 168, have RMP vulnerability zone distances that are greater than 20 miles in radius.”
A Demographic Analysis Of Chemical Disaster Vulnerability Zones
“Behind the petitions and beyond the statistics are the stories that news outlets rarely report, including how local agencies are made aware of hazards at nearby industrial operations and yet do not respond until after disasters happen. News accounts often ignore the lies communities are told about how safe facilities are or how many jobs will come to residents when polluting industries move or expand near their homes and schools.”
“Alaska Native peoples experience fenceline impacts from hundreds of contaminated former military and industrial sites in their own backyards, and are also connected to communities in states in the “lower 48” working for chemical security. On Alaska’s small St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Yupik communities are suffering health hazards linked to chemical releases both from contaminated sites on the island and from thousands of miles away.”
“Indigenous Arctic peoples are among the most highly exposed people on earth to toxic chemicals, because these chemicals, DDT, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds (to name a few that are persistent), and drift hundreds and thousands of miles north on wind and ocean currents from more southern latitudes where they are manufactured, stored, and used,” stated Vi Waghiyi, a Yupik mother and grandmother, Native Village of Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, and Environmental Health and Justice Program Director, Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT).”
“These chemicals contaminate our traditional foods and affect our health and the health of our children.” Tifany Immingan, a 20-year-old Yupik woman from the village of Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island said: “As a result of these daily exposures to toxic chemicals, those of us who live in remote places like Alaska and the Arctic have some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals in our own bodies.”
Download the May 2014 (60 pages) report: Who's In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters - A Demographic Analysis Of Chemical Disaster Vulnerability Zones, compiled by the Environmental Justice And Health Alliance For Chemical Policy Reform released May 2014.
http://www.comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/Who%27s%20in%20Danger%20Report%20and%20Table%20FINAL.pdf
The report is packed with data and includes a facilities listings in an addendum. There are personal, family, and neighborhood worksheets, such as the “Shelter In Place Timeline Worksheet”. The End Notes (2 pages, 2 columns each) read like a summary of details on living in these hazardous times. Two small segments follow:
1,275 High Consequence Incidents Over A Recent Five-Year Period, 2009–2013
“The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) screened news media reports of 1,275 high consequence incidents over a recent five-year period, 2009–2013. High consequence incidents result in injury, fatality, acute environmental damage, evacuation or shelter-in-place of 500 or more members of the public, onsite property damage greater than $500,000, or offsite property damage. The CSB data do not represent the universe of all chemical incidents.”
Facilities That Produce, Handle, Process, Distribute, Or Store Extremely Hazardous Substances
“Facilities in the table appear in order by State, then County, then City. Most information in the table; including Facility Name, State, County, City, and Facility Type, is self-explanatory.”
The complete 143-page table, listing facilities by State is available online at:
http://www.EJ4All.org/whos-in-danger-report
At the other end of the spectrum, toxic emissions capture technology, as for coal plants, will often create a product for market that binds the chemical pollutants into a form, however only temporary, but the sales of which offset the costs of capture technology. These products usually wind up as discarded waste at some point over their lifetime. New construction generates enormous waste that ends up at landfills.
Construction and Demolition (C&D) Landfills: Emerging Public and Occupational Health Issues
Monofill, Alaska - Hydrogen Sulfide Concerns In An Alaskan Community
http://www.stopthedumpchugiakalaska.com/index.html
“This land that they want to convert into a dump is directly above a wetlands that is the headwaters of Mink Creek.Those waters flow under the New Glenn Hwy. into the Mink Lake (one entity prior to the New Glenn being built), and then join with Parks Cr. and then into Fire Cr. (from Fire Lk.) and then into the inlet. These waters have all been well documented by Ak. Fish and Game as having salmon, trout, dollies and more. It is unknown if any of the fish or their fry make it up to the waters just below the proposed dump, but certainly those waters and whatever is in it will flow all the way to the inlet.”
“The watershed here is also not just a beginning for the Birchwood Community watershed, it is part of the flow of water that starts in the Chugach Mountains and flows under and thru the proposed dump and into the ground water and wells of a large part of the community. As a matter of fact, the ADEC has identified the area directly at the proposed site as an Alaska DEC Drinking Water Protection Area.”
http://www.dec.state.ak.us/eh/dw/dwp/protection_areas_map.html
These areas were created to comply with the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act. The argument from Eklutna and Central Recycling Services is that it doesn’t matter because they are only planning to dump construction and demolition waste into the ground and that is made up of “inert” materials.
The Federal Agency known as ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry) has issued: “Construction and Demolition (C&D) Landfills: Emerging Public and Occupational Health Issues.” In it they confirmed the hydrogen sulfide from sheetrock in C & D sites (Monofill is a term that sounds better than Construction and Demolition) has caused several deaths in some sites and significant health problems in communities.
http://www.neha.org/pdf/jeh/columns/jeh_0908_atsdr.pdf
They go on to state that the EPA does not currently regulate C&D sites and that the regulations are up the individual states and communities and that there is little consistency from state to state. The hydrogen sulfide can be airborne and waterborne and has dissolved into water and into wells.
The Public Hearing keeps being set back and has now been changed to March 24th, 2015.
PUBLIC HEARING for the proposed monofill site located in Chugiak, Alaska near Loretta French Park. The hearing is scheduled for 6:00 pm at the Loussac Library in Anchorage.
Hydrogen Sulfide Concerns In An Alaskan Community
Virtually ubiquitous in our buildings, gypsum board is widely seen as an innocuous building material. However, in the last decade, Chinese drywall has been linked with indoor air quality problems, while concerns have cropped up around waste from coal power plants and its links to drywall.
http://greenspec.buildinggreen.com/blogs/gypsum-board-are-our-walls-leaching-toxins#sthash.x5qjvoBn.dpuf
Domestic manufacturers are quick to point out that gypsum board manufactured in the U.S. has not been linked to indoor air quality problems, but potential leaching of heavy metals and biocides included for mold resistance are among the issues that need to be addressed more thoroughly by the gypsum board industry.
Synthetic Gypsum And Mercury
Synthetic gypsum is created from a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD), a process coal-fired power plants use to limit emissions. Although the chemical process that captures FGD gypsum is different from the physical collection of fly ash and bottom ash, which is more likely to pick up heavy metals as a matter of course, mercury and other heavy metals are showing up in synthetic gypsum, and, as a result, in our buildings.
In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a study of total content and leaching values of heavy metals in synthetic gypsum, which found that these chemicals could have leaching values of up to 550 times the level for safe drinking water.
Chemical Facilities And Natural Gas Extraction
When President Obama speaks of growth in the manufacturing sector, this includes new chemical plant facilities that use natural gas (LNG) as feedstock. From the wellhead to end use, there are fugitive emissions, permitted controlled releases (regularly exceeding otherwise allowable amounts set by law) and uncontrolled releases of toxic emissions.
Carcinogenic Levels Of Chemicals In Air Pollution At Unconventional Natural Gas Wells
An October 30, 2014 news story covered a report recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health, air pollution is examined around gas production sites in Pennsylvania, where hydrofracking has boomed for seven years, as well as Wyoming, Arkansas, Colorado and Ohio. Tests of air around homes near natural gas drilling wells and other production equipment in five states found potentially carcinogenic levels of chemicals.
“Unsafe benzene levels ranged from 35 times to more than 777,000 times normal levels, according to the study. it would take a resident nearly nine months in Beijing to breath in that much benzene. Formaldehyde levels were between 30 and 240 times normal levels. Both chemicals can cause cancers that take years to develop. Test results show that buffer zones around natural gas wells, distances between gas equipment and places where people live, as well as drinking water sources, need to be expanded" David Carpenter, who led the study has said.
David Carpenter, is lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Health & The Environment at the University at Albany. Carpenter is a former dean of the School of Public Health and director of the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research of the state Health Department. He has been a health researcher in the Capital Region for more than three decades and has more than 350 publications in environmental journals.
The investigation is the result of collaboration between Global Community Monitor, an anti-fracking organization that trains community members to monitor pollution levels, and Coming Clean, an advocacy group that campaigns on issues of health and the environment. The results have been published in two parts, one for a general readership:
http://comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/cc-rpt-fracking%2010.14.pdf
And another, in the journal Environmental Health, for a technical audience:
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/13/1/82/abstract
Organizers say the latter constitutes the first peer-reviewed multi-state investigation into airborne toxics near oil and gas facilities. “Our study clearly demonstrates that there are extremely elevated concentrations of known human carcinogens being released into the air from unconventional oil and gas facilities in five states.” David O. Carpenter
Trained community monitors were directed to take samples whenever they smelled strange odors or experienced health problems they thought may have been connected to nearby oil and gas operations. Those samples were tested at independent laboratories, organizers say, using federally approved methods.
Of these samples, some 38 percent were found to contain compounds exceeding standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. This includes notably toxic compounds such as formaldehyde, benzene and hexane, among others.
Buffer Zones Around Natural Gas Wells Need To Be Expanded
Called setbacks, such zones are currently established by states, not by the federal government, because of 2005 exemptions from federal pollution rules adopted by Congress.
“In the five states studied, setbacks from gas wells to homes and other occupied buildings range from 150 to 500 feet. The study found unsafe concentrations of formaldehyde at distances as great as 2,591 feet and of benzene up to 885 feet.”
“The study focuses on complex mixtures of chemicals that can persist at ground level in air that residents routinely breathe. This includes spots that are a considerable distance from well pads, and beyond prevailing setback requirements," said study co-author Gregg Macey, an associate law professor at the Brooklyn Law School.
“The samples were collected by trained, local grass-roots citizens groups during times of heavy industrial activity or when experiencing headaches, nausea or dizziness. Seven samples were taken in Susquehanna and Washington counties in Pennsylvania, in the heart of the state's fracking region. The area contains hundreds of gas wells, and compressor stations that pressurize gas so it can travel through pipelines. Six of the samples were taken near compressor stations and all contained formaldehyde levels with increased lifetime cancer risks, according to the study.”
"We explored air quality at a previously neglected scale: near a range of unconventional oil and gas development and production sites that are the focus of community concern, and relied on 35 air samples taken from 11 sites at homes and farms near fracking sites in the five states. Sixteen of the samples found unsafe levels of two carcinogenic chemicals benzene and formaldehyde, as well as hydrogen sulfide.”
In addition, 41 stations were set up near well sites to test for formaldehyde, and 14 of the 41 tests exceeded safety standards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Hydrogen Sulfide Is The Predominant Impurity In Natural Gas
Methane (CH4) is the predominant component of natural gas, comprising 70 to 90
percent, while other gaseous hydrocarbons, butane (C4H10), propane (C3H8), and ethane (C2H6), account for up to 20 percent. Contaminants present in natural gas, which have to be removed at natural gas processing facilities, include water vapor, sand, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, rare gases such as helium and neon, and hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is the predominant impurity in natural gas.
People living near oil and gas development sites may be chronically exposed to low, yet dangerous ambient H 2S levels, as well as to accidental high-concentration releases. A 1993 EPA report to congress on the emissions of hydrogen sulfide from oil and gas extraction acknowledges that because of the proximity of oil and gas wells to areas where people live, the affected population may be large. (1)
OSHA reports show that over 10 years, 22 oil/gas workers died in the U.S. as a result of H2S. One oil and gas employee died from exposure on a site in Guernsey, Ohio in 2009. (2)
A study in the Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association stated that the hazard zone for sublethal effects around sour gas wells encompasses from less than 400 meters up to 6500 meters, while lethal exposure to hydrogen sulfide could occur as far as 2000 meters from the source. (3)
According to the research by Lana Skrtic: “The literature on human health and hydrogen sulfide reveals serious and lasting physiological and neurological effects associated with acute exposure. The health effects of chronic exposure to lower levels of H2S, as documented in several studies, also include persistent physiological and neurological disturbances. Oil and gas facilities can be expected to accidentally and routinely emit hydrogen sulfide in concentrations that span a wide range and are associated with a variety of health effects. (4)
Where Have We Heard This Before?
“The company told them that they were smelling sour gas and that they had nothing to worry about. In addition to the smell, they were disturbed by the noise from the well. On many occasions, they would leave for the weekend to escape the noise and the odors.”
“The literature on human health and hydrogen sulfide reveals serious and lasting physiological and neurological effects associated with acute exposure. The health effects of chronic exposure to lower levels of H2S, as documented in several studies, also include persistent physiological and neurological disturbances. Oil and gas facilities can be expected to accidentally and routinely emit hydrogen sulfide in concentrations that span a wide range and are associated with a variety of health effects. Academic studies, my conversations with health department staff, and available data from monitoring projects help establish that hydrogen sulfide is indeed present near oil and gas facilities.”
“Because people live near oil and gas sites, emissions of H2S may be routinely compromising human health. The interviews I conducted with people who live close to oil and gas facilities, as well as some research reported in the Literature Review section, provide evidence of health impacts from exposure to H2S emitted by oil and gas development. Although the anecdotal evidence from my interviews is vulnerable to criticism that other pollutants or individual health factors may be responsible for the symptoms, the reported health effects are consistent with hydrogen sulfide exposure. The fact that concentrations of H2S to which people are exposed are often not known does not imply that hydrogen sulfide is not the cause of the observed health effects. The lack of precise exposure data is, however, one area that future research should address.”
(1) EPA, “Report to Congress on Hydrogen Sulfide Emissions,” p.III-65.
(2) http://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/fatcat_weekly_rpt_09112009.html
(3) Layton, David W. and Richard T. Cederwall. 1987. “Predicting and Managing the Health Risks of Sour-Gas Wells.” Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association. 37: 1185-1190
(4) Hydrogen Sulfide, Oil & Gas, and People’s Health 2006, Lana Skrtic, Master’s Thesis for University of California, Berkeley
“People’s health needs to be protected. The proximity of oil and gas wells to people’s residences is only one route of exposure to hydrogen sulfide, and to other pollutants associated with oil and gas extraction.” Lana Skrtic
What Does It Take?
November 6, 2014
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Justice announcement!
In a settlement with the United States, three subsidiaries of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS), the world’s largest fertilizer producer, will take steps to reduce harmful air emissions at eight U.S. production plants, including three in Aurora, N.C.
“The settlement is part of EPA’s national enforcement initiative to control harmful emissions from large sources of pollution, which includes acid production plants, under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration requirements. It is the 10th settlement reached under EPA’s National Acid Manufacturing Plant Initiative and the 7th settlement addressing pollution from sulfuric acid plants. Today’s settlement covers more sulfuric acid production capacity roughly 24,000 tons per day or approximately 14 percent of total U.S. Capacity than all previous sulfuric acid settlements under this initiative combined.”
http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/pcs-nitrogen-fertilizer-clean-air-act-settlement
PCS was formed by the Saskatchewan government in 1975 and has grown through acquisitions to become the world's largest potash company, second-biggest nitrogen producer and third-biggest producer of phosphates. PSC, the world’s largest fertilizer producer by market value, is considering a production capacity increase on signs demand in the $20 billion market for the crop nutrient may rise in 2015.
The company, is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and is projected to increase its annual operational capacity to as much as 11 million metric tons of potash in 2015, up from an estimated 9.2 million tons this year (2014) which has seen an increase from slightly less than 8 million tons produced in 2013.
$20 Billion Global Market For The Crop Nutrient Potash
The settlement resolves claims that these PCS subsidiaries violated the Clean Air Act when they modified facilities in ways that released excess sulfur dioxide into surrounding communities. The three companies will spend an estimated $50 million on these measures, and will pay a $1.3 million civil penalty.
“This agreement, the largest so far in our ongoing Clean Air Act enforcement efforts against sulfuric-acid producers, will ensure cleaner air for citizens across the Southeast and will send a strong signal to the industry that noncompliance has serious consequences,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Sam Hirsch for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
“EPA expects the actions that the companies have agreed to take will reduce harmful emissions by over 13,090 tons per year, which includes approximately 12,600 tons per year of sulfur dioxide, 430 tons per year of ammonia and 60 tons per year of nitrogen oxide.”
The settlement also includes a “supplemental environmental project,” estimated to cost between $2.5 and $4 million, to protect the community around a PCS Nitrogen nitric acid plant in Geismar, Louisiana, and requires PCS Nitrogen to install and operate equipment to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia.
Check in with the USEPA’s commitment to advancing environmental justice by reducing the disproportionate environmental impacts on communities near industrial facilities, in this instance, by reducing fine particulates that can aggravate respiratory disease.
Sulfur dioxide, the predominant pollutant emitted from sulfuric acid plants, has numerous adverse effects on human health and is a significant contributor to acid rain, smog and haze. Sulfur dioxide, along with nitrogen oxide, is converted in the air to particulate matter that can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular impacts, and premature death.
8 Subsidiaries Of World’s Largest Fertilizer Producer to Reduce Harmful Air Emissions at Eight Acid Manufacturing Plants In The US: 4 in Florida, 3 in North Carolina, and 1 in Louisiana
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/d84e294721bc1f9185257d88006c3813!OpenDocument
Support The USEPA’s Commitment To Advancing Environmental Justice
The settlement was lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana and is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval. http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/pcs-nitrogen-fertilizer-clean-air-act-settlement
Connect with EPA Region 4 on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/eparegion4
Wells and pipelines have industrialized the landscape between factories, mines, power generation facilities, disposal sites, and our centers of population. The cumulative impacts of that overlap, present a new unforeseen danger to the future.
Pacific Northwest Nuclear Waste Repository – And Nearby Natural Gas Plant Explosion
On March 31, 2014, the 'interim' nuclear waste depository at the Hanford site in Washington was rocked by an explosion at a LNG plant on the Columbia River that supplies natural gas to Seattle which ruptured a huge storge tank. “The Williams Northwest Pipeline Plant” 54 miles south of Hanford rerouted natural gas to Seattle and there was no interruption to city life.
Blast Rocks Washington Gas Plant 54 Miles South of Hanford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypihBmunEc
Blast Rocks Washington Gas Plant Near Town Of Plymouth; 5 Workers Hurt
A large explosion rocked a natural gas processing plant on the Washington-Oregon border Monday, March 31, 2014, injuring five workers, causing about 400 people to evacuate from nearby farms and homes, and emitting a mushroom cloud of black smoke that was visible for more than a mile.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2023269247_apxnaturalgasexplosion.html?syndication=rss
The Williams site is known as a natural gas peak-shaving facility, which stores gas in super-cooled liquefied form to augment pipeline gas deliveries in times of peak demand. Residents in the nearby town of Plymouth were evacuated. The storage facility, which has been a long-time part of Williams' Northwest Pipeline Co.'s 4,000-mile transmission operations in the Pacific Northwest, includes two 1.2 Bcf storage tanks.
By April 2, it was determined ”All clear at Washington State LNG plant after unexplained blast”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-williamspartners-natgaspipe-fire-idUSBREA311LB20140402
The town of Plymouth, on the Columbia River near the Washington-Oregon border, has around 400 residents. Emergency responders had evacuated residents and workers within a 2-mile radius of the LNG storage facility. Those large tanks can store a combined 2.4 billion cubic feet of gas, or enough to meet up to 3.4 percent of daily U.S. natural gas demand. The evacuation stemmed from concerns that ongoing leaks from one of two 134-foot tall tanks at the site, whose walls were breached by shrapnel from Monday's blast, could prompt a second, stronger explosion.
The facility is the only one of its kind in Washington that is manufacturing LNG. Oregon has a similar facility along the Columbia river west of Portland. The Washington facility provides supplemental gas during times of high demand for a 6,400-kilometre pipeline stretching from the Canadian border to southern Utah. Gas is drawn off from the pipeline during the summer, cooled and stored until it is needed in the winter.
The spring 2014 LNG Refinery fire and explosion in Washington State, was near Hanford, the nation's interim nuclear waste facility. Toxic leakage from the holding tanks still occurs, and there have been no penalties or fines. Published March 8, 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkNIbVSFHZM
At the Hanford site, billions of gallons of radioactive waste were dumped on the ground in the 50s & 60s; and this 9 minute presentation is quite the documentary.... radioactive dumping went into unlined landfills until 2004.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srP-oYuKVA
There's a highly toxic radioactive plume heading toward the Columbia River. Entire natural ecosystems have been sacrificed for the sake of profit and progress. There's really no where left to go to escape these toxic legacies. Cleanup and remediation can't keep up. We're all fracked.
STEAM INJECTION IS LITERALLY GLOBAL WARMING
constant comments, and informative research links;
http://banslickwaterfracking.blogspot.com/
By invoking the 'Copyright Disclaimer' Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."
Tomas DiFiore
On May 5, 2014, headlines across the country focused on a critical look at pollution and demographics in a new report titled “Who's In Danger: Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters”
From the African American Environmentalist Association
http://aaenvironment.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos-in-danger-race-poverty-and.html
“The AAEA is an environmental organization founded in 1985 that is dedicated to protecting the environment, enhancing human, animal and plant ecologies, promoting the efficient use of natural resources, increasing African American participation in the environmental movement and promoting ownership of energy infrastructure and resources. We resolve environmental problems through the application of practical environmental solutions.”
“More than 134 million Americans live in the danger zones around 3,433 facilities in several common industries that store or use highly hazardous chemicals. Millions more people work, play, shop, and worship in these areas. But who are the people that live daily with the ever present danger of a chemical disaster?”
The report is the first public accounting of the demographic characteristics of populations within the “vulnerability zones” of entire industry sectors that manufacture chemicals, treat water or wastewater, produce bleach, generate electric power, refined petroleum, produce pulp and paper, or otherwise have large numbers of people living in the path of a potential worst-case chemical release. It also shares the stories of some of these communities.
Download the report “Who's In Danger: Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters” by the Environmental Justice And Health Alliance For Chemical Policy Reform here:
http://www.comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/Who%27s%20in%20Danger%20Report%20and%20Table%20FINAL.pdf
Who's In Danger?
“Behind the petitions and beyond the statistics are the stories that news outlets rarely report, including how local agencies are made aware of hazards at nearby industrial operations and yet do not respond until after disasters happen. News accounts often ignore the lies communities are told about how safe facilities are or how many jobs will come to residents when polluting industries move or expand near their homes and schools. We don’t often hear about the lack of existing infrastructure (sewer, water, drainage, and fire hydrants) to support safe operations, or the absence of knowledge, protocols and trained staff and community members in the event of a chemical release or explosion.”
The report, “Who’s In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters” published May 2014, sheds light on who lives within the chemical disaster zones and tells some of the stories of people in America who live daily in the shadow of extremely dangerous chemical facilities; more than 134 million as documented by this report. Histories of toxics campaigns and coalitions are also listed in the report.
Communities in fenceline zones bear a greater risk to their safety and security from the large quantities of extremely hazardous chemicals transported to and from, or used in production, distribution, and storage facilities.
Crises Events Timeline
“A toxic gas cloud or blast wave could engulf a large area and enter homes, schools, businesses, elder care facilities, places of worship, sports arenas, hospitals, and automobiles long before people could evacuate or shelter in place.”
“For those who do shelter in place, which means to go inside, close doors, windows, and vents, and wait for toxic fumes to blow away, toxic gases can filter into the building before the company can stop a major chemical release; if it can be stopped. A simple analysis shows that shelter in place cannot possibly protect people in the fenceline zones. Shelter in place is a desperation strategy, not a plan for public safety or for preventing a chemical disaster, yet shelter in place is the “safety” measure encouraged by many facilities.”
Shelter In Place Is A Desperation Strategy And Not A Plan For Public Safety
“The chemical disaster vulnerability zone distances described in the report (which represent a radius or circle around the facility) were calculated by the companies themselves as part of worst-case chemical release scenario analysis required under EPA’s Risk Management Program.”
“The new research presented in “Who’s In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters” finds that residents of chemical facility vulnerability zones are disproportionately Black (African American) or Latino, have higher rates of poverty than the U.S. as a whole, and have lower housing values, incomes, and education levels than the national average. The disproportionate or unequal danger is sharply magnified in the fenceline areas nearest the facilities.”
“Policy failures have led to the needless persistence of catastrophic chemical hazards in communities. The U.S. experiences several serious toxic chemical releases every week, including the August, 2012 explosion at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA that sent 15,000 people to hospitals seeking treatment, and the April, 2013 fertilizer storage facility explosion in West, TX that killed 15 people and leveled an entire neighborhood. In a typical year, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board screens more than 250 high consequence chemical incidents involving death, injury, evacuation, or serious environmental or property damage.”
Human Rights And Chemical Safety In The US – a brief history
In 1994, there was little movement in Congress toward reforms that would protect disproportionately impacted communities. “President Bill Clinton responded to the outcry for action and issued Executive Order 12898 to address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations. Under this Order, government agencies are required to consider and assess potential disproportionate impacts of activities on low-income and minority communities before the activity takes place. Community environmental justice and advocacy groups were also able to use the Executive Order as a tool to expose the ongoing human rights violations of people of color and low-income people living in environments contaminated with toxic chemicals.”
Toxic Wastes And Race In The United States
“Once data began to be collected proving the connection between where these facilities were located and the demographics of the surrounding communities (including the 1987 report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States) groups concerned about these environmental health hazards began creating a more coordinated, grassroots movement to prevent harm to disenfranchised areas. The First National People of Color Leadership Summit, held in 1991, helped advance this process.”
“Subsequent research has confirmed the core findings from 1987. Two decades later the report Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty 1987–2007 replicated the 1987 study using newer data and analytical methods, and found that people of color and poor people are even more heavily concentrated around hazardous waste facilities than the 1987 and other earlier studies found.”
“In 1987, a landmark national study, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, helped document a national pattern that many people knew anecdotally from daily life: industrial and environmental hazards are concentrated in poorer areas and areas with more people of color. Toxic Wastes and Race helped catalyze a national movement known as the environmental justice movement by making visible the adverse environmental and health impacts to workers
and vulnerable communities living near the fencelines of chemical facilities.”
“Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007 (United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, March 2007). This study found that over half (56%) of all people living within 3.0 km of a hazardous waste facility in the U.S. are people of color, and where such facilities are clustered people of color make up over two-thirds (69%). Poverty rates are also much higher in the areas within 3.0 km of such facilities than nationally (18% vs. 12%).”
“In March 2012, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) recommended that the EPA use its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce or eliminate catastrophic chemical hazards wherever feasible. On August 1, 2013, in response to the devastating fertilizer plant explosion at West, TX, as well as to years of organizing, President Obama signed Executive Order 13650, Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. Tis
Executive Order sets forth a process with deadlines for improving and modernizing chemical safety and security regulations.”
“The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require industrial facilities that make, distribute, or use large amounts of certain extremely hazardous chemicals to prepare Risk Management Plans (RMP) and submit the plans to the U.S. EPA. 12 Te plans are intended to save lives, protect property, and prevent pollution. Some 12,600 facilities currently submit RMPs. The EPA’s Risk Management Program Risk Management Plans must include a companies’ own assessments of a worst-case chemical emergency, including the distance from the facility where toxic or flammable chemicals could cause serious harm if released. Areas within these distances are called vulnerability zones and extend from 0.01 to 25 miles from the facility depending on the amount and characteristics of the chemical stored or used at the facility that poses the greatest danger to the surrounding community.”
Communities that daily cope with constant toxic emissions and hazards from nearby industries are sometimes referred to as fenceline communities because homes, schools, businesses, parks, and other places where people live and work are located at or near the boundary, or fenceline, of industrial facilities.
“The largest number of facilities (1,172 or 34%) have vulnerability zones that range in distance from 1.01 to 2.50 miles around the chemical facilities, and a large majority of facilities (82% or 2,813) have vulnerability zones within five miles of their respective chemical facilities. Some 18% of facilities, or 620, have vulnerability zones greater than five miles. Only 5% of facilities, or 168, have RMP vulnerability zone distances that are greater than 20 miles in radius.”
A Demographic Analysis Of Chemical Disaster Vulnerability Zones
“Behind the petitions and beyond the statistics are the stories that news outlets rarely report, including how local agencies are made aware of hazards at nearby industrial operations and yet do not respond until after disasters happen. News accounts often ignore the lies communities are told about how safe facilities are or how many jobs will come to residents when polluting industries move or expand near their homes and schools.”
“Alaska Native peoples experience fenceline impacts from hundreds of contaminated former military and industrial sites in their own backyards, and are also connected to communities in states in the “lower 48” working for chemical security. On Alaska’s small St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Yupik communities are suffering health hazards linked to chemical releases both from contaminated sites on the island and from thousands of miles away.”
“Indigenous Arctic peoples are among the most highly exposed people on earth to toxic chemicals, because these chemicals, DDT, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds (to name a few that are persistent), and drift hundreds and thousands of miles north on wind and ocean currents from more southern latitudes where they are manufactured, stored, and used,” stated Vi Waghiyi, a Yupik mother and grandmother, Native Village of Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, and Environmental Health and Justice Program Director, Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT).”
“These chemicals contaminate our traditional foods and affect our health and the health of our children.” Tifany Immingan, a 20-year-old Yupik woman from the village of Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island said: “As a result of these daily exposures to toxic chemicals, those of us who live in remote places like Alaska and the Arctic have some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals in our own bodies.”
Download the May 2014 (60 pages) report: Who's In Danger? Race, Poverty, And Chemical Disasters - A Demographic Analysis Of Chemical Disaster Vulnerability Zones, compiled by the Environmental Justice And Health Alliance For Chemical Policy Reform released May 2014.
http://www.comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/Who%27s%20in%20Danger%20Report%20and%20Table%20FINAL.pdf
The report is packed with data and includes a facilities listings in an addendum. There are personal, family, and neighborhood worksheets, such as the “Shelter In Place Timeline Worksheet”. The End Notes (2 pages, 2 columns each) read like a summary of details on living in these hazardous times. Two small segments follow:
1,275 High Consequence Incidents Over A Recent Five-Year Period, 2009–2013
“The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) screened news media reports of 1,275 high consequence incidents over a recent five-year period, 2009–2013. High consequence incidents result in injury, fatality, acute environmental damage, evacuation or shelter-in-place of 500 or more members of the public, onsite property damage greater than $500,000, or offsite property damage. The CSB data do not represent the universe of all chemical incidents.”
Facilities That Produce, Handle, Process, Distribute, Or Store Extremely Hazardous Substances
“Facilities in the table appear in order by State, then County, then City. Most information in the table; including Facility Name, State, County, City, and Facility Type, is self-explanatory.”
The complete 143-page table, listing facilities by State is available online at:
http://www.EJ4All.org/whos-in-danger-report
At the other end of the spectrum, toxic emissions capture technology, as for coal plants, will often create a product for market that binds the chemical pollutants into a form, however only temporary, but the sales of which offset the costs of capture technology. These products usually wind up as discarded waste at some point over their lifetime. New construction generates enormous waste that ends up at landfills.
Construction and Demolition (C&D) Landfills: Emerging Public and Occupational Health Issues
Monofill, Alaska - Hydrogen Sulfide Concerns In An Alaskan Community
http://www.stopthedumpchugiakalaska.com/index.html
“This land that they want to convert into a dump is directly above a wetlands that is the headwaters of Mink Creek.Those waters flow under the New Glenn Hwy. into the Mink Lake (one entity prior to the New Glenn being built), and then join with Parks Cr. and then into Fire Cr. (from Fire Lk.) and then into the inlet. These waters have all been well documented by Ak. Fish and Game as having salmon, trout, dollies and more. It is unknown if any of the fish or their fry make it up to the waters just below the proposed dump, but certainly those waters and whatever is in it will flow all the way to the inlet.”
“The watershed here is also not just a beginning for the Birchwood Community watershed, it is part of the flow of water that starts in the Chugach Mountains and flows under and thru the proposed dump and into the ground water and wells of a large part of the community. As a matter of fact, the ADEC has identified the area directly at the proposed site as an Alaska DEC Drinking Water Protection Area.”
http://www.dec.state.ak.us/eh/dw/dwp/protection_areas_map.html
These areas were created to comply with the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act. The argument from Eklutna and Central Recycling Services is that it doesn’t matter because they are only planning to dump construction and demolition waste into the ground and that is made up of “inert” materials.
The Federal Agency known as ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry) has issued: “Construction and Demolition (C&D) Landfills: Emerging Public and Occupational Health Issues.” In it they confirmed the hydrogen sulfide from sheetrock in C & D sites (Monofill is a term that sounds better than Construction and Demolition) has caused several deaths in some sites and significant health problems in communities.
http://www.neha.org/pdf/jeh/columns/jeh_0908_atsdr.pdf
They go on to state that the EPA does not currently regulate C&D sites and that the regulations are up the individual states and communities and that there is little consistency from state to state. The hydrogen sulfide can be airborne and waterborne and has dissolved into water and into wells.
The Public Hearing keeps being set back and has now been changed to March 24th, 2015.
PUBLIC HEARING for the proposed monofill site located in Chugiak, Alaska near Loretta French Park. The hearing is scheduled for 6:00 pm at the Loussac Library in Anchorage.
Hydrogen Sulfide Concerns In An Alaskan Community
Virtually ubiquitous in our buildings, gypsum board is widely seen as an innocuous building material. However, in the last decade, Chinese drywall has been linked with indoor air quality problems, while concerns have cropped up around waste from coal power plants and its links to drywall.
http://greenspec.buildinggreen.com/blogs/gypsum-board-are-our-walls-leaching-toxins#sthash.x5qjvoBn.dpuf
Domestic manufacturers are quick to point out that gypsum board manufactured in the U.S. has not been linked to indoor air quality problems, but potential leaching of heavy metals and biocides included for mold resistance are among the issues that need to be addressed more thoroughly by the gypsum board industry.
Synthetic Gypsum And Mercury
Synthetic gypsum is created from a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD), a process coal-fired power plants use to limit emissions. Although the chemical process that captures FGD gypsum is different from the physical collection of fly ash and bottom ash, which is more likely to pick up heavy metals as a matter of course, mercury and other heavy metals are showing up in synthetic gypsum, and, as a result, in our buildings.
In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a study of total content and leaching values of heavy metals in synthetic gypsum, which found that these chemicals could have leaching values of up to 550 times the level for safe drinking water.
Chemical Facilities And Natural Gas Extraction
When President Obama speaks of growth in the manufacturing sector, this includes new chemical plant facilities that use natural gas (LNG) as feedstock. From the wellhead to end use, there are fugitive emissions, permitted controlled releases (regularly exceeding otherwise allowable amounts set by law) and uncontrolled releases of toxic emissions.
Carcinogenic Levels Of Chemicals In Air Pollution At Unconventional Natural Gas Wells
An October 30, 2014 news story covered a report recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health, air pollution is examined around gas production sites in Pennsylvania, where hydrofracking has boomed for seven years, as well as Wyoming, Arkansas, Colorado and Ohio. Tests of air around homes near natural gas drilling wells and other production equipment in five states found potentially carcinogenic levels of chemicals.
“Unsafe benzene levels ranged from 35 times to more than 777,000 times normal levels, according to the study. it would take a resident nearly nine months in Beijing to breath in that much benzene. Formaldehyde levels were between 30 and 240 times normal levels. Both chemicals can cause cancers that take years to develop. Test results show that buffer zones around natural gas wells, distances between gas equipment and places where people live, as well as drinking water sources, need to be expanded" David Carpenter, who led the study has said.
David Carpenter, is lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Health & The Environment at the University at Albany. Carpenter is a former dean of the School of Public Health and director of the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research of the state Health Department. He has been a health researcher in the Capital Region for more than three decades and has more than 350 publications in environmental journals.
The investigation is the result of collaboration between Global Community Monitor, an anti-fracking organization that trains community members to monitor pollution levels, and Coming Clean, an advocacy group that campaigns on issues of health and the environment. The results have been published in two parts, one for a general readership:
http://comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/cc-rpt-fracking%2010.14.pdf
And another, in the journal Environmental Health, for a technical audience:
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/13/1/82/abstract
Organizers say the latter constitutes the first peer-reviewed multi-state investigation into airborne toxics near oil and gas facilities. “Our study clearly demonstrates that there are extremely elevated concentrations of known human carcinogens being released into the air from unconventional oil and gas facilities in five states.” David O. Carpenter
Trained community monitors were directed to take samples whenever they smelled strange odors or experienced health problems they thought may have been connected to nearby oil and gas operations. Those samples were tested at independent laboratories, organizers say, using federally approved methods.
Of these samples, some 38 percent were found to contain compounds exceeding standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. This includes notably toxic compounds such as formaldehyde, benzene and hexane, among others.
Buffer Zones Around Natural Gas Wells Need To Be Expanded
Called setbacks, such zones are currently established by states, not by the federal government, because of 2005 exemptions from federal pollution rules adopted by Congress.
“In the five states studied, setbacks from gas wells to homes and other occupied buildings range from 150 to 500 feet. The study found unsafe concentrations of formaldehyde at distances as great as 2,591 feet and of benzene up to 885 feet.”
“The study focuses on complex mixtures of chemicals that can persist at ground level in air that residents routinely breathe. This includes spots that are a considerable distance from well pads, and beyond prevailing setback requirements," said study co-author Gregg Macey, an associate law professor at the Brooklyn Law School.
“The samples were collected by trained, local grass-roots citizens groups during times of heavy industrial activity or when experiencing headaches, nausea or dizziness. Seven samples were taken in Susquehanna and Washington counties in Pennsylvania, in the heart of the state's fracking region. The area contains hundreds of gas wells, and compressor stations that pressurize gas so it can travel through pipelines. Six of the samples were taken near compressor stations and all contained formaldehyde levels with increased lifetime cancer risks, according to the study.”
"We explored air quality at a previously neglected scale: near a range of unconventional oil and gas development and production sites that are the focus of community concern, and relied on 35 air samples taken from 11 sites at homes and farms near fracking sites in the five states. Sixteen of the samples found unsafe levels of two carcinogenic chemicals benzene and formaldehyde, as well as hydrogen sulfide.”
In addition, 41 stations were set up near well sites to test for formaldehyde, and 14 of the 41 tests exceeded safety standards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Hydrogen Sulfide Is The Predominant Impurity In Natural Gas
Methane (CH4) is the predominant component of natural gas, comprising 70 to 90
percent, while other gaseous hydrocarbons, butane (C4H10), propane (C3H8), and ethane (C2H6), account for up to 20 percent. Contaminants present in natural gas, which have to be removed at natural gas processing facilities, include water vapor, sand, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, rare gases such as helium and neon, and hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is the predominant impurity in natural gas.
People living near oil and gas development sites may be chronically exposed to low, yet dangerous ambient H 2S levels, as well as to accidental high-concentration releases. A 1993 EPA report to congress on the emissions of hydrogen sulfide from oil and gas extraction acknowledges that because of the proximity of oil and gas wells to areas where people live, the affected population may be large. (1)
OSHA reports show that over 10 years, 22 oil/gas workers died in the U.S. as a result of H2S. One oil and gas employee died from exposure on a site in Guernsey, Ohio in 2009. (2)
A study in the Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association stated that the hazard zone for sublethal effects around sour gas wells encompasses from less than 400 meters up to 6500 meters, while lethal exposure to hydrogen sulfide could occur as far as 2000 meters from the source. (3)
According to the research by Lana Skrtic: “The literature on human health and hydrogen sulfide reveals serious and lasting physiological and neurological effects associated with acute exposure. The health effects of chronic exposure to lower levels of H2S, as documented in several studies, also include persistent physiological and neurological disturbances. Oil and gas facilities can be expected to accidentally and routinely emit hydrogen sulfide in concentrations that span a wide range and are associated with a variety of health effects. (4)
Where Have We Heard This Before?
“The company told them that they were smelling sour gas and that they had nothing to worry about. In addition to the smell, they were disturbed by the noise from the well. On many occasions, they would leave for the weekend to escape the noise and the odors.”
“The literature on human health and hydrogen sulfide reveals serious and lasting physiological and neurological effects associated with acute exposure. The health effects of chronic exposure to lower levels of H2S, as documented in several studies, also include persistent physiological and neurological disturbances. Oil and gas facilities can be expected to accidentally and routinely emit hydrogen sulfide in concentrations that span a wide range and are associated with a variety of health effects. Academic studies, my conversations with health department staff, and available data from monitoring projects help establish that hydrogen sulfide is indeed present near oil and gas facilities.”
“Because people live near oil and gas sites, emissions of H2S may be routinely compromising human health. The interviews I conducted with people who live close to oil and gas facilities, as well as some research reported in the Literature Review section, provide evidence of health impacts from exposure to H2S emitted by oil and gas development. Although the anecdotal evidence from my interviews is vulnerable to criticism that other pollutants or individual health factors may be responsible for the symptoms, the reported health effects are consistent with hydrogen sulfide exposure. The fact that concentrations of H2S to which people are exposed are often not known does not imply that hydrogen sulfide is not the cause of the observed health effects. The lack of precise exposure data is, however, one area that future research should address.”
(1) EPA, “Report to Congress on Hydrogen Sulfide Emissions,” p.III-65.
(2) http://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/fatcat_weekly_rpt_09112009.html
(3) Layton, David W. and Richard T. Cederwall. 1987. “Predicting and Managing the Health Risks of Sour-Gas Wells.” Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association. 37: 1185-1190
(4) Hydrogen Sulfide, Oil & Gas, and People’s Health 2006, Lana Skrtic, Master’s Thesis for University of California, Berkeley
“People’s health needs to be protected. The proximity of oil and gas wells to people’s residences is only one route of exposure to hydrogen sulfide, and to other pollutants associated with oil and gas extraction.” Lana Skrtic
What Does It Take?
November 6, 2014
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Justice announcement!
In a settlement with the United States, three subsidiaries of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS), the world’s largest fertilizer producer, will take steps to reduce harmful air emissions at eight U.S. production plants, including three in Aurora, N.C.
“The settlement is part of EPA’s national enforcement initiative to control harmful emissions from large sources of pollution, which includes acid production plants, under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration requirements. It is the 10th settlement reached under EPA’s National Acid Manufacturing Plant Initiative and the 7th settlement addressing pollution from sulfuric acid plants. Today’s settlement covers more sulfuric acid production capacity roughly 24,000 tons per day or approximately 14 percent of total U.S. Capacity than all previous sulfuric acid settlements under this initiative combined.”
http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/pcs-nitrogen-fertilizer-clean-air-act-settlement
PCS was formed by the Saskatchewan government in 1975 and has grown through acquisitions to become the world's largest potash company, second-biggest nitrogen producer and third-biggest producer of phosphates. PSC, the world’s largest fertilizer producer by market value, is considering a production capacity increase on signs demand in the $20 billion market for the crop nutrient may rise in 2015.
The company, is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and is projected to increase its annual operational capacity to as much as 11 million metric tons of potash in 2015, up from an estimated 9.2 million tons this year (2014) which has seen an increase from slightly less than 8 million tons produced in 2013.
$20 Billion Global Market For The Crop Nutrient Potash
The settlement resolves claims that these PCS subsidiaries violated the Clean Air Act when they modified facilities in ways that released excess sulfur dioxide into surrounding communities. The three companies will spend an estimated $50 million on these measures, and will pay a $1.3 million civil penalty.
“This agreement, the largest so far in our ongoing Clean Air Act enforcement efforts against sulfuric-acid producers, will ensure cleaner air for citizens across the Southeast and will send a strong signal to the industry that noncompliance has serious consequences,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Sam Hirsch for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
“EPA expects the actions that the companies have agreed to take will reduce harmful emissions by over 13,090 tons per year, which includes approximately 12,600 tons per year of sulfur dioxide, 430 tons per year of ammonia and 60 tons per year of nitrogen oxide.”
The settlement also includes a “supplemental environmental project,” estimated to cost between $2.5 and $4 million, to protect the community around a PCS Nitrogen nitric acid plant in Geismar, Louisiana, and requires PCS Nitrogen to install and operate equipment to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia.
Check in with the USEPA’s commitment to advancing environmental justice by reducing the disproportionate environmental impacts on communities near industrial facilities, in this instance, by reducing fine particulates that can aggravate respiratory disease.
Sulfur dioxide, the predominant pollutant emitted from sulfuric acid plants, has numerous adverse effects on human health and is a significant contributor to acid rain, smog and haze. Sulfur dioxide, along with nitrogen oxide, is converted in the air to particulate matter that can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular impacts, and premature death.
8 Subsidiaries Of World’s Largest Fertilizer Producer to Reduce Harmful Air Emissions at Eight Acid Manufacturing Plants In The US: 4 in Florida, 3 in North Carolina, and 1 in Louisiana
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/d84e294721bc1f9185257d88006c3813!OpenDocument
Support The USEPA’s Commitment To Advancing Environmental Justice
The settlement was lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana and is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval. http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/pcs-nitrogen-fertilizer-clean-air-act-settlement
Connect with EPA Region 4 on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/eparegion4
Wells and pipelines have industrialized the landscape between factories, mines, power generation facilities, disposal sites, and our centers of population. The cumulative impacts of that overlap, present a new unforeseen danger to the future.
Pacific Northwest Nuclear Waste Repository – And Nearby Natural Gas Plant Explosion
On March 31, 2014, the 'interim' nuclear waste depository at the Hanford site in Washington was rocked by an explosion at a LNG plant on the Columbia River that supplies natural gas to Seattle which ruptured a huge storge tank. “The Williams Northwest Pipeline Plant” 54 miles south of Hanford rerouted natural gas to Seattle and there was no interruption to city life.
Blast Rocks Washington Gas Plant 54 Miles South of Hanford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypihBmunEc
Blast Rocks Washington Gas Plant Near Town Of Plymouth; 5 Workers Hurt
A large explosion rocked a natural gas processing plant on the Washington-Oregon border Monday, March 31, 2014, injuring five workers, causing about 400 people to evacuate from nearby farms and homes, and emitting a mushroom cloud of black smoke that was visible for more than a mile.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2023269247_apxnaturalgasexplosion.html?syndication=rss
The Williams site is known as a natural gas peak-shaving facility, which stores gas in super-cooled liquefied form to augment pipeline gas deliveries in times of peak demand. Residents in the nearby town of Plymouth were evacuated. The storage facility, which has been a long-time part of Williams' Northwest Pipeline Co.'s 4,000-mile transmission operations in the Pacific Northwest, includes two 1.2 Bcf storage tanks.
By April 2, it was determined ”All clear at Washington State LNG plant after unexplained blast”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-williamspartners-natgaspipe-fire-idUSBREA311LB20140402
The town of Plymouth, on the Columbia River near the Washington-Oregon border, has around 400 residents. Emergency responders had evacuated residents and workers within a 2-mile radius of the LNG storage facility. Those large tanks can store a combined 2.4 billion cubic feet of gas, or enough to meet up to 3.4 percent of daily U.S. natural gas demand. The evacuation stemmed from concerns that ongoing leaks from one of two 134-foot tall tanks at the site, whose walls were breached by shrapnel from Monday's blast, could prompt a second, stronger explosion.
The facility is the only one of its kind in Washington that is manufacturing LNG. Oregon has a similar facility along the Columbia river west of Portland. The Washington facility provides supplemental gas during times of high demand for a 6,400-kilometre pipeline stretching from the Canadian border to southern Utah. Gas is drawn off from the pipeline during the summer, cooled and stored until it is needed in the winter.
The spring 2014 LNG Refinery fire and explosion in Washington State, was near Hanford, the nation's interim nuclear waste facility. Toxic leakage from the holding tanks still occurs, and there have been no penalties or fines. Published March 8, 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkNIbVSFHZM
At the Hanford site, billions of gallons of radioactive waste were dumped on the ground in the 50s & 60s; and this 9 minute presentation is quite the documentary.... radioactive dumping went into unlined landfills until 2004.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srP-oYuKVA
There's a highly toxic radioactive plume heading toward the Columbia River. Entire natural ecosystems have been sacrificed for the sake of profit and progress. There's really no where left to go to escape these toxic legacies. Cleanup and remediation can't keep up. We're all fracked.
STEAM INJECTION IS LITERALLY GLOBAL WARMING
constant comments, and informative research links;
http://banslickwaterfracking.blogspot.com/
By invoking the 'Copyright Disclaimer' Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."
Tomas DiFiore
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