Fwd: FOLLOW-UP: Shale & Public Health Conference impressions

[JBL]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Bob Donnan <donnanl...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 8:10 AM
Subject: FOLLOW-UP: Shale & Public Health Conference impressions
To:

Yesterday was the 11th Shale and Public Health Conference hosted by the Pa League of Women Voters. Attendance was very light, perhaps even short of the 70 who registered for in-person, instead of Zoom. 

Fear of Covid? Perhaps. Conflicting events? Maybe. The ability of people to watch it on Zoom instead? Could be. People have given up, or don’t really give a frack anymore? Quite likely. 

It was a beautiful, sunny day, but traffic in and out of Pittsburgh was the worst ever! Free lunch. $12 for parking. 

For those who missed it, the entire conference will be posted online in a few weeks, and I’ll try to follow-up with those video links. Thanks again to The Heinz Endowments for funding this event.

I was disappointed at the very outset, when the Emcee delivered her remarks about “more studies are needed” and especially “we don’t know” about the health impacts of drilling and fracking. Meantime, I could only think of two good friends who lived near Hickory in the early days of fracking, with it right next to their homes. Gas wells close-in, spills, gas processing air pollution, a leaky impoundment, contaminated water well, industry shortcuts, lies, deceit. The full M.O. 

One friend is undergoing chemo while another has finally had enough, following 14 months of intense AML (leukemia) treatments that included a bone marrow transplant and mega chemo. Final Hospice before Christmas appears likely. The health studies have been done (peer-reviewed and directly on human beings) and the sad results are in folks! Are we going to wait until everyone in the shale gas patch is either sick or dead?

I stayed outside the room for the Goldstein spiel, having heard him soft-pedal the health research too many times in the past, as well as skipping the Fabisiak presentation, having already recorded a video of the full report during its initial release at Cal U. months ago, a health study that was both suspiciously late and grossly incomplete, done by Pitt’s school of public health.

Did you know the CEO of CNX, the one Pa Gov Shapiro just consummated a deal with, is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute? He promotes himself online as “a dissident living in truth, policy provocateur, and media and environmental group fact checker.” Maybe his workers on frac sites could be the first to wear radiation exposure badges, as further mentioned below.

As is often the case, there were some speakers you wished had a full hour to present their findings, and investigative reporter Justin Nobel was that presenter, on the “Radiation and Waste” panel with Daniel Bain. The data they presented on all the radiation in shale waste was beyond alarming, and I even asked Justin what it would finally take for people to actually hear that message.

Bottom line, you cannot properly “treat” or “remove” the radiation from these massive volumes of shale gas waste, you can only condense it. Workers are ill-prepared and ill-equipped to protect themselves, and at a bare minimum, as Dan Bain pointed out, they should wear radiation badges to let them know, and their bosses (if any really care or will admit the risk) know when they’ve reached their exposure limit.

Justin Nobel’s book will be out soon, and it should be every bit as alarming as Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” 

“Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It” will be published in April 2024 and can be pre-ordered here: https://petroleum-238.blogspot.com/

Barnes & Noble pre-order

[ I pre-ordered 3 copies for donations to local libraries ] 

ATTACHED: Audio recording of the Bain / Nobel presentation (33-minutes).

On birth impacts, Mary Willis speculated that thallium in shale waste may have a role. Sandra Steingraber did a quick run through of the 9th Compendium on fracking, hitting all the high (read: low) points. 

There were updates from Dusty Horwitt of PSR on widespread use of PFAS in fracking… did you know ‘Teflon’ was used to frac at least one well site in SW Pennsylvania? The abandoned well presentation was quite interesting and alarming.

Two PhD’s from Penn State made up the panel “Fracking and Water Contaminates” and presented some interesting results on the drastic effects fracking spills have had on groundwater. I've always said, "If they're drillin they're spillin!"

They are looking for help in doing more research around impoundments and spill sites, having shown my aerial photo of the Yeager impoundment during their presentation, as well as mentioning the infamous Carter impoundment near McDonald, PA.