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Following the mysterious death of seven cattle near an oil field in Kansas, public health authorities are investigating whether oil drilling could be the cause.

In late December, seven dead cattle were found near an oil field in the Cimarron National Grassland, Kansas, and authorities believe that cows inhaled something toxic, prompting them to deny public access to the 2,500-acre Cimarron National Grassland until at least May.

Six of the cattle were discovered together in a low-lying area, while a seventh was found a short distance away, with local veterinarians identifying the ingestion or inhalation of something toxic leading to pulmonary edema or fluid in the lungs as a possible cause, though the cause of death has not been officially declared.

More specifically, they suspect the cattle may have inhaled hydrogen sulfide—a toxic gas that can be released in the oil and gas drilling process. They haven’t pinpointed the cause officially, but it was enough to implement an emergency order to halt public access to the area for a prolonged period.

While the general public is denied access to the grassland, oil and gas companies operating in the Stirrup Oil Field area here are still operational, including Anadarko Petroleum, Merit Energy and Argent Energy.

“It is kind of a unique situation we’re dealing with and I’m honestly afraid we’ll never find the answer,” local veterinarian Tera Barnhardt told media.

It would not be the first mysterious cattle deaths tentatively linked to oil and gas drilling.

In 2012, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater in northcentral Pennsylvania when an impoundment was breached. Approximately 70 cows died, and the remainder produced only 11 calves, of which three survived. Another 17 cows died in Louisiana that same year after being exposed to spilled fracking fluid, according to Cornell University.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

January 29, 2016

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

(ANTIMEDIA) As the nation rightly focuses on Flint’s ongoing water crisis, other cities in the state of Michigan face even higher levels of lead contamination. The alarming pervasiveness of potentially toxic drinking water extends across the United States.

The Detroit News reports that “Elevated blood-lead levels are seen in a higher percentage of children in parts of Grand Rapids, Jackson, Detroit, Saginaw, Muskegon, Holland and several other cities, proof that the scourge of lead has not been eradicated despite decades of public health campaigns and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to find and eliminate it.”

Of over 7,000 children tested in the Highland Park and Hamtramck areas of Detroit in 2014, 13.5 percent tested positive for lead. Among four zip codes in Grand Rapids, one in ten children had lead in their blood. In Adrian and south-central Michigan, more than 12 percent of 640 children tested had positive results.

These overall numbers are higher than Flint’s, where Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha found lead in up to 6.3 percent of children in the highest-risk areas; while The Guardianreported Dr. Hanna-Attisha has also said the rate is as high at 15 percent in certain “hot spots,” the size of those samples was not listed. Even so, the overall figures across Michigan are lower than in previous years. In 2012, children tested across Michigan had lead in their blood at a rate of 4.5 percent, about five times less than the rate ten years prior, which reached an alarming 25 percent. In spite of the decrease in recent years, however, thousands of children in Michigan are still affected.

“In 2013, that level sank to 3.9 percent and fell again to 3.5 percent in 2014. But that is still 5,053 children under age 6 who tested positive in 2014,” the Detroit News explained. “Each had lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Haunting Legacy of South Africa’s Gold Mines

November 13, 2015

The Haunting Legacy of South Africa’s Gold Mines

Thousands of abandoned gold mines are scattered across South Africa, polluting the water with toxics and filling the air with noxious dust. For the millions of people who live around these derelict sites, the health impacts can be severe.

The name is derived from “happy prospect” in Afrikaans, and once upon a time, life and the gold haul were both good at the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine, 50 miles west of Johannesburg. But two years after the mine’s owners abandoned it because it was unprofitable, sewage runs in the streets of the old mining village, tailings impoundments cover nearby towns in dust, and illegal miners rule the abandoned shafts.

“I’m just going to take one or two potshots at them to keep them at a distance,” says Louis Nel, head of security at the now-abandoned Blyvooruitzicht.

Dean Hutton/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Mining waste piles from the closed Blyvooruitzicht gold mine line a roadside in South Africa.

He raises his shotgun and shatters the afternoon calm with several blasts. A few zama zamas — illegal miners whose title means “We try! We try!” in Zulu — run for cover.

Blyvooruitzicht is but one of thousands of abandoned mines scattered across South Africa, many from the gold industry. With recently shuttered mines adding to the massive impact of those left derelict years ago, the country faces a growing environmental, health, and social crisis created by a withering gold industry and inadequate oversight.

South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources, or DMR, holds a list of 6,000 “derelict and ownerless” mines, which became the government’s problem over the years when the former owners disappeared. While the DMR slowly rehabilitates those mines— at a rate of about 10 per year — companies continue to walk away from operations such as Blyvooruitzicht, and both mining companies and the government are slow to accept responsibility.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Teflon Toxin: How Dupont Slipped Past the EPA

August 21, 2015

The Teflon Toxin: How Dupont Slipped Past the EPA

IKE ROMINE GREW UP in Blennerhasset, West Virginia, not far from DuPont’s Parkersburg plant. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood, Romine was probably exposed through his drinking water to C8, a slippery, soap-like chemical used to make Teflon pans and Stainmaster carpet and hundreds of other products. His home was served by the Lubeck water district, one of six districts near the plant later found to be severely contaminated with the chemical, but his greatest exposure to C8 almost certainly came from working at the DuPont plant, where he was a welding inspector.

Romine spent some of his time in the company’s Teflon division, and he particularly remembers taking part in the “Teflon shut down,” a spring-time ritual. For a few days each year, the company would shut down operations in the plant to prepare for the coming year. Romine helped install new piping. He didn’t know what C8 was at the time, but there was a white powdery substance dusting many of the surfaces in the plant. “It’s on the pipe, on the inside of it,” said Romine. “You don’t all the time have on gloves. It’s on your coveralls.”

Twelve years ago, when Romine was 58, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. No one in his family had ever suffered from this rare disease. Surgeons removed the cancerous organ, leaving Romine with reduced kidney function. Now he has to urinate frequently and his doctors have suggested that he change his diet and refrain from running, an activity that had been a regular part of his life before the surgery. Every six months he must return to the doctor to have his remaining kidney checked.

Today, Romine has mixed feelings about DuPont. He worked for the company full-time as a contractor for eight years, and his best friend was employed in one of DuPont’s labs. “In my heart, I felt I was DuPont,” said Romine, who has enduring respect for the company. “DuPont has really good safety rules, good people, good personnel,” he said. “I enjoyed working down there.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Did The EPA Intentionally Poison Animas River To Secure SuperFund Money?

August 13, 2015

Did The EPA Intentionally Poison Animas River To Secure SuperFund Money?

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money…

“But make no mistake, within seven days, all of the 500gpm flow will return to Cememnt Creek. Contamination may actually increase… The “grand experiment” in my opinion will fail.

And guess what [EPA’s] Mr. Hestmark will say then?

Gee, “Plan A” didn’t work so I guess we will have to build a treat¬ment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).

Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA’s plan all along”

Sound like something a government entity would do? Just ask Lois Lerner…

As we concluded previously,

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Teflon Toxin: Dupont and the Chemistry of Deception

August 12, 2015

The Teflon Toxin: Dupont and the Chemistry of Deception

KEN WAMSLEY SOMETIMES DREAMS that he’s playing softball again. He’ll be at center field, just like when he played slow pitch back in his teens, or pounding the ball over the fence as the crowd goes wild. Other times, he’s somehow inexplicably back at work in the lab. Wamsley calls them nightmares, these stories that play out in his sleep, but really the only scary part is the end, when “I wake up and I have no rectum anymore.”

Wamsley is 73. After developing rectal cancer and having surgery to treat it in 2002, he walks slowly and gets up from the bench in his small backyard slowly. His voice, which has a gentle Appalachian lilt, is still animated, though, especially when he talks about his happier days. There were many. While Wamsley knew plenty of people in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who struggled to stay employed, he made an enviable wage for almost four decades at the DuPont plant here. The company was generous, helping him pay for college courses and training him to become a lab analyst in the Teflon division.

He enjoyed the work, particularly the precision and care it required. For years, he measured levels of a chemical called C8 in various products. The chemical “was everywhere,” as Wamsley remembers it, bubbling out of the glass flasks he used to transport it, wafting into a smelly vapor that formed when he heated it. A fine powder, possibly C8, dusted the laboratory drawers and floated in the hazy lab air.

At the time, Wamsley and his coworkers weren’t particularly concerned about the strange stuff. “We never thought about it, never worried about it,” he said recently. His believed it was harmless, “like a soap. Wash your hands [with it], your face, take a bath.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Toxic Waste Sullies Solar’s Squeaky Clean Image

July 23, 2015

Toxic Waste Sullies Solar’s Squeaky Clean Image

Toxic sludge and filthy air – byproducts of the oil and coal industries – are a constant irritant for opponents and even proponents of fossil fuels, while renewables like wind and solar are often seen as bastions of rectitude for their relative cleanliness.

However, before the proponents of solar energy can claim the moral high ground, they may need to deal with an inconvenient truth of their own: mountains of hazardous waste being created by the production of solar panels.

Sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid are among the caustic chemicals required in the manufacturing process, along with water and electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. Metals that go into solar panels are often mined in jurisdictions with low environmental standards and even poorer safety records.

The biggest problem, though, is waste. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a San Francisco-based non-profit, has been tracking the waste created by solar panel manufacturers since 1982, and reports a disturbing upward trend in the amounts being generated annually.

“We need to take action now to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in [photovoltaic production], develop responsible recycling systems and protect workers throughout the global PV supply chain,” the coalition said in its latest report.

The SVTC produces an annual scorecard rating solar companies for their commitment to, among other things, the environment, transparency and workers’ rights. Last year Trina occupied the “sunniest” position on the list, while the “cloudiest” ranking went to JA Solar.

In a sense, the problem is a byproduct of the industry’s success; fueled by government incentives, production of solar panels has skyrocketed in recent years, and in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and contaminated water have also been produced.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mercury levels still rising near Grassy Narrows First Nation, report says

June 15, 2015

Mercury levels still rising near Grassy Narrows First Nation, report says

50-year-old contamination that was never cleaned up still polluting water and fish, report says

Fifty years after a Dryden pulp mill dumped its effluent into a northern Ontario watershed, mercury continues to rise in some lakes, according to a study commissioned by the provincial government and the Grassy Narrows First Nation.

The report released Monday also reveals how little is known about the environmental and health consequences of the mercury that flowed freely into the English-Wabigoon water system between 1962 and 1970.

The research review of human and ecological health in Grassy Narrows was conducted by fresh water scientist Patricia Sellers. It takes a wide-ranging look at all published research into the contamination and mercury poisoning of people at Grassy Narrows.

“We have bits and pieces, small amounts of data here and there throughout the years of the human health in Grassy Narrows and various health issues and an assessment of initiatives to address those health issues,” Sellers said. “But there hasn’t been anything very comprehensive.”

Fish remains a staple in the diet for the people of Grassy Narrows, despite the contamination. A new report says information about how much is safe to eat must be better communicated and supports put in place for people who can’t afford any other food. (CBC)

People in Grassy Narrows continue to suffer the effects of mercury poisoning, exhibiting symptoms such as loss of motor function, tingling and weakness in limbs, difficulty speaking and swallowing.

“We know little about the effects of low-dose exposure [to mercury] over the long-term,” Sellers wrote in the report.

Residents believe developmental delays and physical abnormalities in children are also related to the contamination, but Sellers says no studies have been conducted in Grassy Narrows on the effects of pre-natal exposure to mercury.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC

May 31, 2015

Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC

Proposed northern BC mines ‘source of great angst in Juneau.’

Earlier this month, Heather Hardcastle, a commercial fisherwoman from Juneau, Alaska met in Williams Lake, B.C. with members of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation. They shared a meal of wild Alaskan salmon that Hardcastle brought as a symbolic gesture: This fish was a reminder of all there was to lose.

After lunch, Hardcastle and her team of Alaska visitors boarded a helicopter and flew 25 minutes away to the site of the Mount Polley accident, the scene of a massive breach last August of its mine waste dam near the town of Likely, B.C.

The breach released millions of cubic metres of contaminated water into Quesnel Lake, which feeds into the Fraser River.

Nine months later, Jacinda Mack, a Xatsull woman from the Soda Creek reserve and one of many residents living near the path of the spill, invited the Alaskans to Williams Lake to see firsthand the main effect of that accident.

On the Fraser River, contamination from the mine breachthreatened the run of Sockeye salmon that spawns in Quesnel Lake.

“We saw where [Mack] was raised, and where they used to fish on the Fraser where people fished for thousands of years, and they’re not fishing there anymore. It’s heartbreaking,” Hardcastle said. “It’s a stunning and gorgeous area but it was just so sad. It feels selfish to be thinking about us and our water, but it lit a fire under me. We have to do something.”

It was an eye-opening sight to Hardcastle, who lives and works in southeast Alaska, downstream from a number of open-pit mines located in northwest B.C., with more under construction and opening soon.

Hardcastle grew up in the 1970s, during which time her parents fought the B.C. Tulsequah Chief mine, located 65 kilometres north of Juneau, Alaska, which leaked acid mine drainage in 1957 and still hasn’t been cleaned up. The polluted Tulsequah River empties into the salmon-rich Taku River.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Unprecedented Mass Die Offs as Pacific Ocean “Turning Into a Desert” Off California Coast

May 24, 2015

Unprecedented Mass Die Offs as Pacific Ocean “Turning Into a Desert” Off California Coast

“Ocean’s dying, plankton’s dying… it’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!”

It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future.

The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.

Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.

A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:

The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.

[…]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection

May 18, 2015

Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection

Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a preliminary injunction today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state.

Last week, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in Alameda County Superior Court that challenges California regulators’ emergency rules meant to rein in the state’s disastrous Underground Injection Control (UIC) program.

Officials with the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) have admitted that their agencyimproperly permitted more than 2,500 wells to pump oil industry wastewater and fluids from enhanced oil recovery techniques like acidization and steam flooding into groundwater aquifers that should be protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Instead of shutting down the offending wells, however, DOGGR issued emergency rules last February that would allow many of them to continue operating until 2017, according to the complaint filed by Earthjustice, which seeks to have the new rules thrown out and the wells operating in protected aquifers shut down while new regulations are being developed.

“Both the emergency regulations and the status quo fail to protect California’s underground drinking water sources from harm,” the complaint states. “Since DOGGR continues to fail in implementing its regulatory duties, this Court must vacate the emergency regulations and ensure that DOGGR complies with the law by ordering DOGGR to take all immediate action necessary and available to it to meet its obligations to prohibit illegal injection of wastewater into protected aquifers.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dimock, PA Lawsuit Trial-Bound as Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination in Neighboring County

May 9, 2015

Dimock, PA Lawsuit Trial-Bound as Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination in Neighboring County

A recent peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed what many fracking critics have argued for years: hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas can contaminate groundwater.

The study’s release comes as a major class action lawsuit filed in the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2009 winds its way to a jury trial later this year. The lawsuit over fracking groundwater contamination pits plaintiffs based in Dimock, PA against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation.

For the study, researchers examined groundwater contamination incidents at three homes in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale basin in Bradford County. As The New York Times explained, the water samples showed “traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids.”

It’s not the first time fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination in northeastern Pennsylvania. And that brings us back to Dimock, , located in neighboring Susquehanna County.

As DeSmogBlog revealed in August 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had in its possession an unpublished PowerPoint presentation summarizing an Agency-contracted study that linked fracking to groundwater contamination in Dimock, a study the Agency later abandoned and censored.

That presentation was subsequently leaked and published here for the first time.

Image Credit: DeSmogBlog

In its official July 2012 Dimock desk statement, EPA said “there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency.” As Greenpeace USA researcher Jesse Coleman recently pointed out, EPA has done thebidding of the oil and gas industry on multiple instances during high profile fracking studies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Analysis: What Bill C-22 Means For Oil Spill Cleanup in Canada

March 11, 2015

Analysis: What Bill C-22 Means For Oil Spill Cleanup in Canada

After BP’s Deepwater Horizon well blowout in April 2010, responders dumped approximately 1.84 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to stop the oil slick from fouling fragile coastal environments. The use of such a massive quantity of dispersants, coupled with serious gaps in knowledge about the possible environment impacts of dispersant use, prompted a public outcry and led the United States Environmental Protection Agency to publicly rebuke the company and order them to use fewer (and less toxic) dispersants.

By contrast, in Canada, it has traditionally been unclear whether the use of STAs to clean up marine oil spills is even legal. Because of the toxic ingredients of some STAs, their use could violate several federal laws (such as the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, and the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, among others) without special permission that could be sought on a case-by-case basis.

A chemical dispersant is a kind of “spill-treating agent” (or “STA”) that is designed to break up an oil slick and dilute the oil by mixing it into the water. A chemical dispersant isn’t truly a clean-up tool — it doesn’t take any spilled oil out of the environment, and by the time a dispersant is applied, it’s already too late to save most life forms in the vicinity of the spill.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New—and Worrisome—Contaminants Emerge From Oil and Gas Wells

January 18, 2015

New—and Worrisome—Contaminants Emerge From Oil and Gas Wells

Researchers find alarming levels of ammonium and iodide in fracking wastewater released into Pennsylvania and West Virginia streams.

Two hazardous chemicals never before known as oil and gas industry pollutants – ammonium and iodide – are being released into Pennsylvania and West Virginia waterways from the booming energy operations of the Marcellus shale, a new study shows.

The toxic substances, which can have a devastating impact on fish, ecosystems, and potentially, human health, are extracted from geological formations along with natural gas and oil during both hydraulic fracturing and conventional drilling operations, said Duke University scientists in a study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

$Unexpected toxics are surfacing with fracking fluid at drilling sites in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, researchers say. Treatment plants, never designed to handle the mess, are sending the pollutants straight to the region's waterways. Above, fracking waste storage tanks in Colorado. (William Ellsworth/USGS)$

The chemicals then are making their way into streams and rivers, both accidentally and through deliberate release from treatment plants that were never designed to handle these contaminants, the researchers said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chemicals from fracking, acidizing, and gravel packing make us sick – Faces of Fracking

December 15, 2014

Chemicals from fracking, acidizing, and gravel packing make us sick – Faces of Fracking.

It is well-known that many of the chemicals used in fracking, acidizing, and gravel packing are harmful to our bodies. Just look at the above graphic. What hasn’t been so clear is the evidence that highlights incidences where these chemicals have actually made people sick.

There are two main factors why we still don’t have a comprehensive overview of the health impacts of fracking: industry secrecy (there are laws that protect companies from disclosing the chemicals they use) and government inaction (for example, the EPA has backed off several studies to investigate the health impacts of fracking). Additional factors compound the problem: non-disclosure agreements, sealed court records, and legal settlements (all which prevent families and their doctors from talking about how they got sick).

Nevertheless, the stack of evidence that tells us that fracking and similar techniques does make us ill is piling up. Based on peer-reviewed studies, accident reports, and investigative articles, we know now that fracking can not be practiced without endangering human health. Chemicals can and do leak from well casings and get into the water supply. Chemicals released into the atmosphere worsen our air quality. Chemical spills from pipelines get in the soil we use to grow food.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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