Fracking for gas not only uses toxic chemicals that can contaminate
drinking and groundwater -- it also releases substantial quantities of
radioactive poison from the ground that will remain hot and deadly for
thousands of years.
Issuing a report yesterday exposing major radioactive
impacts of hydraulic fracturingknown as fracking -- was Grassroots
Environmental Education, an organization in New York, where extensive
fracking is proposed.
The Marcellus Shale region which covers much of upstate
New York is seen as loaded with gas that can be released through the
fracking process. It involves injecting fluid and chemicals under high
pressure to fracture shale formations and release the gas captured in
them.
But also released, notes the report, is radioactive
material in the shaleincluding Radium-226 with a half-life of 1,600
years. A half-life is how long it takes for a radioactive substance to
lose half its radiation. It is multiplied by between 10 and 20 to
determine the “hazardous lifetime” of a radioactive material, how long
it takes for it to lose its radioactivity. Thus Radium-226 remains
radioactive for between 16,000 and 32,000 years.
“Horizontal hydrofracking for natural gas in the Marcellus
Shale region of New York State has the potential to result in the
production of large amounts of waste materials containing Radium-226 and
Radium-228 in both solid and liquid mediums,” states the report by E.
Ivan White. For 30 years he was a staff scientist for the
Congressionally-chartered National Council on Radiation Protection.
“Importantly, the type of radioactive material found in
the Marcellus Shale and brought to the surface by horizontal
hydrofracking is the type that is particularly long-lived, and could
easily bio-accumulate over time and deliver a dangerous radiation dose
to potentially millions of people long after the drilling is over,” the
report goes on.
“Radioactivity in the environment, especially the presence
of the known carcinogen radium, poses a potentially significant threat
to human health,” it says. “Therefore, any activity that has the
potential to increase that exposure must be carefully analyzed prior to
its commencement so that the risks can be fully understood.”
The report lays out “potential pathways of the radiation” through
the air, water and soil. Through soil it would get into crops and
animals eaten by people.
Examined in the report are a 1999 study done by the New
York State Department of Environmental Conservation “assisted by
representatives from 16 oil and gas companies” on hydrofracking and
radioactivity and a 2011 Environmental Impact Statement the agency did
on the issue. It says both present a “cavalier attitude toward human
exposure to radioactive material.”
Radium causes cancer in people largely because it is
treated as calcium by the body and becomes deposited in bones. It can
mutate bones cells causing cancer and also impact on bone marrow. It can
cause aplastic anemiaan inability of bone marrow to produce sufficient
new cells to replenish blood cells. Marie Curie, who discovered radium
in 1893 and felt comfortable physically handling it, died of aplastic
anemia.
Once radium was used in self-luminous paint for watch dials
and even as an additive in products such as toothpaste and hair creams
for purported “curative powers.”
There are “no specific treatments for radium poisoning,”
advises the Delaware Health and Social Services Division of Public
Health in its information sheet on radium. When first discovered, “no
one knew that it was dangerous,” it mentions.
White’s report, entitled “Consideration of Radiation in
Hazardous Waste Produced from Horizontal Hydrofracking,” notes that
“radioactive materials and chemical wastes do not just go away when they
are released into the environment. They remain active and potentially
lethal, and can show up years later in unexpected places. They
bio-accumulate in the food chain, eventually reaching humans.”
Under the fracking plan for New York State, “there are
insufficient precautions for monitoring potential pathways or to even
know what is being released into the environment,” it states.
The Department of Environmental Conservation “has not
proposed sufficient regulations for tracking radioactive waste from
horizontal hydrofracking,” it says. “Neither New York State nor the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission would permit a nuclear power plant to
handle radioactive material in this manner.”
Doug Wood, associate director of Grassroots Environmental
Education, which is based in Port Washington, New York, and also editor
of the report, commented as it was issued: “Once radioactive material
comes out of the ground along with the gas, the problem is what to do
with it. The radioactivity lasts for thousands of years, and it is
virtually impossible to eliminate or mitigate. Sooner or later, it’s
going to end up in our environment and eventually our food chain. It’s a
problem with no good solution - and the DEC is unequipped to handle
it.”
As for “various disposal methods…contemplated” by the
agency “for the thousands of tons of radioactive waste expected to be
produced by fracking,” Wood said that “none…adequately protect New
Yorkers from eventual exposure to this radioactive material. Spread it
on the ground and it will become airborne with dust or wash off into
surface waters; dilute it before discharge into rivers and it will raise
radiation levels in those rivers for everyone downstream; bury it
underground and it will eventually find its way into someone’s drinking
water. No matter how hard you try, you can’t put the radioactive genie
back into the bottle.”
Furthermore, said Wood in an interview, in releasing
radioactive radium from the ground, “a terrible burden would be placed
on everybody that comes after us. As a moral issue, we must not burden
future generations with this. We must say no to fracking -- and
implement the use of sustainable forms of energy that don’t kill.”
The prospects of unleashing, through fracking, radium, a
silvery-white metal, has a parallel in the mining of uranium on the
Navajo Nation.
The mining began on the Navajo Nation, which encompasses
parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, during World War II as the
Manhattan Project, the American crash program to build atomic weapons,
sought uranium to fuel them. The Navajos weren’t told that mining the
uranium, yellow in color, could lead to lung cancer. And lung cancer
became epidemic among the miners and then spread across the Navajo
Nation from piles of contaminated uranium tailings and other remnants of
the mining.
The Navajos gave the uranium a name: Leetso or yellow monster.
Left in the ground, it would do no harm. But taken from
the earth, it has caused disease. That is why the Navajo Nation outlawed
uranium mining in 2005. “This legislation just chopped the legs off the
uranium monster,” said Norman Brown, a Navajo leader.
Similarly, radium, a silvery-white monster, must be left
in the earth, not unleashed, with fracking, to inflict disease on people
today and many, many generations into the future.
