E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSCritics say that "fracking" – pumping water and chemicals into the ground to release oil and gas – is a risky business that can cause water contamination. But cash-strapped cities like Youngstown, Ohio, are contemplating selling mineral rights to allow energy companies to drill and frack. NBC's Phil LeBeau reports.
An Open Channel post last week from the Food & Environment Reporting Network drew the attention of Steve Everley, a spokesman for Energy In Depth, a research and public education program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Here is his rebuttal to the article, which appeared in a longer form in The Nation.
A recent article in The Nation magazine, in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), made a series of declarations and assertions about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, specifically with respect to agriculture and America’s food supplies. It was a frightening tale, but the facts that were left out were just as notable (if not more so) than what was selectively chosen to be included.
The central thesis of the article is that shale development, including hydraulic fracturing, is contaminating the food we eat. As the author states early on, “there’s growing evidence that these two impulses, toward energy and food independence, may be at odds with each other.”
From there, the story advances as one would imagine. Using the fatally flawed Bamberger-Oswald “study” on hydraulic fracturing as the focal point, the author weaves a carefully constructed narrative that does everything from repeating common (and debunked) activist talking points to claiming America’s cows are being poisoned to death by oil and natural gas development.
Of course, the story would have been much different had the author included (instead of deliberately omitting) scientific assessments that weren’t tailor-made for an anti-natural gas crowd.
How do we know they were deliberately omitted? Well, to her credit, Elizabeth Royte (the author of the piece) reached out to Energy In Depth several weeks ago about this article. She acknowledged having read EID’s work on the subject, and then asked me some pointed (but fair) questions about potential impacts on livestock and crops from hydraulic fracturing. I sent her a detailed response, including links to studies (more on that below) that demonstrate little if any negative impact on health as a result of nearby shale development. I also emphasized that concerns about public health should always be taken seriously, and the industry naturally does exactly that. But I also cautioned that simply blaming impacts on the most convenient thing (i.e. hydraulic fracturing) without scientific evidence does not solve problems, nor does it encourage the proper kind of public dialogue to address concerns.
Unfortunately, Ms. Royte did not see fit to print any of that, choosing only to include a brief mention of the lack of scientific pedigree in the Bamberger-Oswald paper – which was promptly bracketed by ascribing fault to the natural gas industry for a supposed lack of disclosure.
So, what else didn’t make it into the report?
First of all, the flaws in the Bamberger-Oswald study have been publicly documented. Dr. Ian Rae, for example, a Co-Chair of the Chemicals Technical Options Committee for the U.N. Environment Programme, called the study “an advocacy piece” written by individuals who “cannot be regarded as experts” in the subject about which they were writing. “It certainly does not qualify as a scientific paper,” Rae added. Rae also critiqued the journal that published the study – New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health – by saying “the refereeing process evidently was not very stringent.”
Spencer Platt / Getty Images file
Cabot Oil and Gas workers examine a natural gas valve at a hydraulic fracturing site in South Montrose, Penn.
I shared all of this information with Ms. Royte, but Dr. Rae’s commentary on the Bamberger-Oswald paper was omitted entirely from the story.
Secondly, although the article purports to be part of an “investigative reporting” effort, there was clearly a lack of interest in discussing anything that deviated from the Bamberger-Oswald paper’s conclusions. Here are just a few items relating to health impacts from development that I shared with the author, who nonetheless did not see fit to print:
- Denton County, Texas: An analysis by two public health experts found that, “even as natural gas development expanded significantly in the area over the past several years, key indicators of health improved across every major category during those times.” Denton County is situated atop the massive Barnett Shale, one of the largest natural gas fields in the United States.
- Fort Worth, Texas: An air quality study conducted for the City of Fort Worth – the largest and most comprehensive of its kind to date – determined there were “no significant health risks” from shale development in the area. Fort Worth, located in Tarrant County, also sits atop the Barnett Shale.
- Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, in two separate reports of air monitoring in Pennsylvania – one each for the northeastern and southwestern portions of the state – “did not identify concentrations of any compound that would likely trigger air-related health issues associated with Marcellus Shale drilling activities.”
There are, of course, many more examples, including hard data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that undermine the suggestion that hydraulic fracturing is a grave threat to occupational or community health. Most of us also know about the AP investigation earlier this year, which found that activists’ claims about hydraulic fracturing causing cancer and other health problems had little or no basis in fact, much less scientific evidence.
So again, why were these examples omitted from the report? It’s really anyone’s guess. The one common denominator, however, is that none of them conforms to the notion that hydraulic fracturing is somehow a “tornado on the horizon” – as Sandra Steingraber, the lead-in voice to the Bamberger-Oswald paper, once put it. In fact, a sober review of these materials – and a proper weighting of the credibility of those who released the information – might even lead people to realize that claims about impending doom are hyperbolic and, in many cases, flat out untrue.
Read the original piece: Livestock falling ill in fracking regions
Here’s the bottom line: Landowners, farmers, and any other individuals can and should ask questions about the impacts of natural gas development. Those who ask questions should demand answers based on facts, and communities weighing the costs and benefits should, by definition, seek input on both sides and make decisions based on a careful review of that information.
The problem with Ms. Royte’s report, though, is that it did not seek to be a part of that good faith dialogue. By relying on anecdotes and a single, fundamentally flawed research paper – and refusing to even discuss findings that contradict the singular message that those sources conveyed – the story that was presented to readers was not only one-sided, but actually harmful to the broader public discussion about developing oil and natural gas from shale.
Despite that, the story has been reprinted in news outlets and other media as if it carefully weighed competing viewpoints and came to a frightening conclusion. But the truly scary part is that the author, in more than 4,000 words, flat out refused to include even a few sentences about the scientific findings that fell outside what was apparently a pre-determined conclusion.
Maybe the next investigative report will examine the reasoning behind such a glaring omission, though we won’t be holding our breath.
Click here to read Food & Environment Reporting Network's Elizabeth Royte response.
More from Open Channel:
Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
Leave a Comment:
Fracking might go well in one place BUT NOT IN ANOTHER. Geologically sound practices might be OK in some locations but not in others. Look at the leaky pipelines, which do not always leak, but when NEGLECTED OR CARRYING SOUR CRUDE, will in fact corrode and cause massive leaks and even destroy pipelines.
Lawyerly condemning of a writer who witnesses environmental damage from leaking benzene and other aromatic hydrocarbons at a particular location is meaningless--- if that location is compared to another location where fracking with NO LEAKS was conducted properly.
Benzene and other aromatics do not magically form and massively leak without help, since they have been safely contained underground for millions of years. But when Pandora comes along and opens the box.........
Ah, Ms. Royte was selective in her deliberately slim presentation of facts, like many folks searching for a cause to win acclaim. She's no journalistic Poirot! Truth be dam*ed !
Why is NBC trying so hard itself to selectively report facts, and guilty of trying so hard to discredit one single fracking-negative research piece, when there are many hundreds of similar academic studies which mostly come to the same conclusions, that fracking is very dangerous and can cause death and serious birth defects in both exposed animals and humans?
We are rapidly coming to a point where the target of the fracking industry will be drilling under suburban and city neighborhoods, as an awful lot of farmland and other rural areas has already been drilled and fracked. This argument will come down to subsurface mineral rights laws, and whether those laws can be changed given the problem of high population density immediately above and exposed to fracking contaminates.
Here in Colorado many of our local rural rural communities have been exposed to methane levels at 10 times the safe level due to fracking, which have caused several local cities and towns to vote to ban fracking within their corporate limits. Unfortunately, it appears that the drilling industry, flush with huge profits, is poised to file suit against the communities that have chosen to ban fracking, in what would appear to be a pattern of intimidation of voters.
Why does NBC fail once in this 4-part "story", or pep rally for the drilling industry, to discuss climate change issues attributable to burning fossil fuels, as there is overwhelming evidence that continuing to burn fossil fuels of any kind, whether oil, coal, or natural gas, will fairly rapidly cause large areas of our planet to become unlivable due to greatly increased surface temperatures, greatly reduced amounts of rainfall, and huge rises in sea levels due to Arctic and Antarctic melting.
Why not try to debunk that November, 2012 report on the climate change impacts from continuing to burn fossil fuels from the International Energy Agency, which is calling for a global average temperature rise of 9 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (or 5-6 degrees Celsius), if all of global energy demand through 2050, just 37 years from now, is obtained through burning fossil fuels. The IEA is also calling for a sea-level rise of between 3 and 5 meters if we continue to burn fossil fuels too, an additional depth which would inundate much of the State of Florida, New Orleans, and Houston, TX, along with hundreds of millions of acres of productive farmland worldwide too.
Perhaps your so-called expert from Australia would like to argue with the the scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Institute in Sweden, Rockstrum, et. al, and their Planetary Boundaries study, or perhaps argue against the Post-PHD-level scientists at the Post-Carbon Institute, all of whom say the same thing about fracking, our remaining natural gas reserves, global climate change, and the continuing ability for the human race to live on the only planet that we have?
Fracking has been around for almost 50 years now. Remember Project Gasbuggy, the Rulison Project, or Project Rio Blanco, where the Energy Department set off atomic bombs trying to frack back in the 1960s? Considering that the Rulison Project was done within two miles of the Colorado River we were very lucky that it didn't contaminate the river with radioactivity, as the trapped gas was highly radioactive when it was released. Today the drilling industry wants relief from a legally imposed drilling clear zone around the underground blast site, showing how desperate that things are getting.
Why does the drilling industry need to drill closer than a 43 year old legally-imposed minimum distance from the Rulison Project well, and why does it need to drill underneath large urban areas too? Isn't the risk of a major accident that could poison hundreds of thousands of residents or the drinking and agricultural-use water of tens of millions of Americans too great to take that kind of chance with?
What happens if industry supporters are wrong? It is a pretty simple answer really. Remember what happened to the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon blowout or the Fukushima disaster? We all got lied-to, repeatedly, for months on-end, and we very well may still be getting lied to. The fact is that a major blowout in an urban area or a radioactive leak into the Colorado River could easily kill lots of people, and in the case of the Colorado River I would hate to be the fracking company executive that would have to tell 20 million Americans that their primary source of drinking, agricultural, and recreational source of water is too radioactive to go anywhere near, wouldn't you?
There is overwhelming peer reviewed scientific evidence from all over the world that fracking is dangerous and that it can kill exposed animals and even humans, as well as inflict serious health damage including birth defects, as well as inflict serious climate damage due to the involved methane emissions too. These are not negotiable points.
Why is NBC so overwhelming on the side of the fracking industry while failing to report thousands of peer-reviewed and published studies worldwide that all say that fracking is dangerous to human and animal health as well as to planetary climate change and to the possibility or exceeding boundaries beyond where life will certainly become far more difficult if not unlivable for billions of people?
Let's suppose that the US does have 60 years of natural gas remaining only if we allow fracking under every city in America, but let's also assume that the entire rest of our world only has 30 years left. What is the average? It is less than 32 years of supply left. Perhaps that's why we need the world's most-expensive military by far, to keep billions of climate change and/or energy-poor and hence hungry refugees out?
Sorry NBC, I'm not buying your obviously slanted "study" as there is far too much very solid scientific evidence to the contrary. Why don't we talk about long-term sustainability instead, after lots of critical metals, fuels, lubricants, and chemical fertilizers are depleted, all of which will happen before the end of our current century? Just without phosphate crop yields will fall by more than half, and without copper and silver, both predicted to be depleted this century, electrical voltages below 440 become problematic too.
Perhaps you would like to try to argue with Gordon. et al, Metal Stocks and Sustainability instead?
We had better get to serious work on alternative energy and sustainability before it is way too late to save billions of people!
There are literally billions of dollars at stake in this industry. It affects not just gas companies, but farmers who sell land, when resources are found, water resources, environmental impacts, and every level of city to federal government getting involved with huge fines and even criminal stakes possible if evidence ever came to light that people knew about the dangers.
So, it is to the best interests of those in the industry to actually hide any evident of harm to man, animals or the planet. As we all know, profit is always, and will be the bottom line.One of the major problems is energy companies are excluded from having to provide the actual information on chemicals used to get their products. There is no way, therefore of knowing exactly what is being used.So, no tests can be done on animals, which get sent for processing for food.How can scientists find out, if they don't even know what combinations of chemicals are being used together? Think about that for a second, who else could use the most horrible, cancer causing stuff, and we the American people would have no clue, and legally so.
The "article" being refuted had pointed out, and obviously so, there is much to risk for anyone who makes their living on producing organic food sources close to where fracking is happening. As consumers are starting to ask where products are from.
If locations are near such sites, products don't get bought. Many such producers are being surrounded by fracking as energy resources are being discovered below rich farmlands and farmers are selling their lands for millions of dollars. Far more then they could ever dream of making in their lifetimes as farmers. Should fracking prove to be a health risk, this could be devastating in the long run.
Without concrete scientific data to backup the true effects, it is still unknown.Science hasn't done the work as funding isn't there. Companies are not going to give us the truth, we can expect that. It will take much more obvious evidence, impacting humans finally with obviously paying the final cost over a period of time, and suing to get anyone to listen.
So far, when whole communities are getting fire water, where none ever existed before, and some are becoming sicker, and animals are unable to reproduce healthy babies, it is becoming clearer,something is very wrong in these places. These are the canary in the cave cases it seems.
I know I don't want this in my county.
@windancersong, and other folks, please educate yourself.: http://www.truthlandmovie.com/
There IS no "firewater" from hydraulic fracturing. It's a myth, like the 2012 Mayan calendar.
Some just do not give a damn about clean air and water. The essentials for life. The almighty dollar comes first. When the water burns then we can assume that something is wrong? Something is horribly wrong with fracking. Please do not listen to the deniers. Do the research.
Why would anyone believe "the industry?" Anyone who thinks "the industry" is responsible need only look into how Exxon treated their victims in Valdez AK. The above article only serves to muddy the water so a few more billion can be made before it all comes crashing down. The future is green, obviously.
I'm sorry, you make many good points. But quoting any Texas environmental agency is like asking thief how much he stole.
Everley states that the “central thesis of the article is that shale development, including hydraulic fracturing, is contaminating the food we eat.” That is an inaccurate summary. The story says that animals in areas where drilling and fracking operations have taken place have fallen ill and/or died after exposure to chemicals linked with those operations. Did the animals die from fracking? No one knows because studies have not been conducted. But it’s certainly worth looking into, considering the pace of oil and gas development in this country, the lack of enforcement of environmental regulations, the prevalence of these operations in regions where animals and plants are grown for human consumption, and the accumulation of circumstantial evidence presented by ranchers who have lost scores of animals in these areas.
Everley did provide material on air emissions studies in Texas and Pennsylvania, but these studies didn’t address the health of livestock and food safety, the subject of this story.
Everley cites the comments of Dr. Ian Rae, who criticized Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald, whose analysis of veterinary cases was cited in the story, for lacking a track record in environmental investigations. Oswald is a professor of pharmacology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, has received both Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and has published scores of articles in numerous peer-reviewed journals. Bamberger is a practicing veterinarian who received her degree from Cornell. Neither has previously published scientific papers on the impact of oil and gas development on animals. Nor has anyone else. This is a new field; the work has to start somewhere. Everley and Rae criticize Bamberger and Oswald for not revealing the names of livestock owners or the dates and places their animals fell ill or died. This is not an unusual practice: the subjects of case studies are routinely kept anonymous in the biomedical literature. The Bamberger Oswald paper received a strict, double-blind peer review; reviewers requested additional information, which was then added to the manuscript.
Everley writes that “activists’ claims about hydraulic fracturing causing cancer and other health problems had little or no basis in fact, much less scientific evidence.” The story does not claim that fracking causes cancer.
Everley writes “claims about impending doom are hyperbolic and, in many cases, flat out untrue.” The story makes no claims about impending doom. It says that scientists and academics are concerned and they are calling for more study. No one can claim food produced near shale-gas operations is either safe or unsafe without asking questions, collecting and examining evidence, testing hypotheses, and analyzing data. As the article makes clear, these studies aren’t being conducted because a) they aren’t funded; b) industry doesn’t reveal all the chemicals used in drilling and fracking; c) complete pre-drilling information on water, air, and soil quality is rarely available; and d) livestock owners are reticent, or outright forbidden by nondisclosure agreements, to speak to investigators.
Frightening tales about fracking draws "rebuttal" from "industry groups"? Duh!