141
influenced by a media circus built around the premise that greedy oil companies are
willing to heedlessly poison innocent citizens just to make a profit. This is a
Hollywood fantasy; despite episodes like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater
Horizon, large, multinational oil companies are shareholder-owned corporations
that seek to limit their financial liabilities from irresponsible or reckless behavior.
Examples like Dish and Pavillion illustrate just how difficult it can be to link
health risks to fracking. Monitoring is difficult and expensive, and must be run over
long time periods to establish exposure baselines. Concentrations of contaminants
can vary across time and space, even across the width of a drill pad, and between
different locations. A well-designed monitoring study must be able to account for
both acute, short-term exposures and chronic, longer term exposures.
Given these challenges, a number of researchers have turned to numerical modeling studies in an attempt to predict the risk of exposure under various conditions
(i.e. Benedict et al. 2018). These are not done in a vacuum, but include monitoring
data when available. Some of the models are quite elaborate, incorporating location,
activity patterns over time, and protective measures taken for local populations
when assessing air quality data and quantifying exposures to VOCs (Bloomdahl
et al. 2014). Many of the modeling studies have attempted to include and delineate
the various components that led to elevated concentrations of pollutants in the air.
For example, models of ozone generation from VOCs released during fracking
operations attempted to account for meteorological conditions, because the creation
of ground level ozone requires not only VOCs, but also sunlight, light winds, and
temperature inversions (Bien and Helmig 2018; Nsanzineza et al. 2019). Other
models investigated the different types of chemical exposures that might occur during specific wellsite operations and activities (Bean et al. 2018).
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a workshop in 2012 called the
Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine to explore
impacts of shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing on public health issues
in communities and on workers employed in the industry (Institute of Medicine
2014). The workshop produced a report that summarized the state of the science on
shale gas development in 2012, and detailed what was known about both the direct
and indirect environmental health risks (Institute of Medicine 2014). They were
unable to identify any direct health risk from the fracking process that was more
severe than conventional oil and gas well drilling.
The IOM workshop was organized in part because the government public health
system had not been active in discussions about shale gas extraction, and many
public health physicians were worried that the potential environmental health
impacts of these technologies were not being addressed or regulated. In fact, it
wasn’t until an Executive Order was issued by President Obama in April 2012 that
the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey and the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began to pool resources and knowledge to
assess the environmental risks of shale development (USDOE 2015). The EPA was
charged with investigating the environmental receptors of fracking chemicals, and
realized that humans are of course one of these receptors. The Department of Health
and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health were engaged to assist
with the public health aspects of the assessment.
8.1 Human Health
influenced by a media circus built around the premise that greedy oil companies are
willing to heedlessly poison innocent citizens just to make a profit. This is a
Hollywood fantasy; despite episodes like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater
Horizon, large, multinational oil companies are shareholder-owned corporations
that seek to limit their financial liabilities from irresponsible or reckless behavior.
Examples like Dish and Pavillion illustrate just how difficult it can be to link
health risks to fracking. Monitoring is difficult and expensive, and must be run over
long time periods to establish exposure baselines. Concentrations of contaminants
can vary across time and space, even across the width of a drill pad, and between
different locations. A well-designed monitoring study must be able to account for
both acute, short-term exposures and chronic, longer term exposures.
Given these challenges, a number of researchers have turned to numerical modeling studies in an attempt to predict the risk of exposure under various conditions
(i.e. Benedict et al. 2018). These are not done in a vacuum, but include monitoring
data when available. Some of the models are quite elaborate, incorporating location,
activity patterns over time, and protective measures taken for local populations
when assessing air quality data and quantifying exposures to VOCs (Bloomdahl
et al. 2014). Many of the modeling studies have attempted to include and delineate
the various components that led to elevated concentrations of pollutants in the air.
For example, models of ozone generation from VOCs released during fracking
operations attempted to account for meteorological conditions, because the creation
of ground level ozone requires not only VOCs, but also sunlight, light winds, and
temperature inversions (Bien and Helmig 2018; Nsanzineza et al. 2019). Other
models investigated the different types of chemical exposures that might occur during specific wellsite operations and activities (Bean et al. 2018).
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a workshop in 2012 called the
Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine to explore
impacts of shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing on public health issues
in communities and on workers employed in the industry (Institute of Medicine
2014). The workshop produced a report that summarized the state of the science on
shale gas development in 2012, and detailed what was known about both the direct
and indirect environmental health risks (Institute of Medicine 2014). They were
unable to identify any direct health risk from the fracking process that was more
severe than conventional oil and gas well drilling.
The IOM workshop was organized in part because the government public health
system had not been active in discussions about shale gas extraction, and many
public health physicians were worried that the potential environmental health
impacts of these technologies were not being addressed or regulated. In fact, it
wasn’t until an Executive Order was issued by President Obama in April 2012 that
the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey and the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began to pool resources and knowledge to
assess the environmental risks of shale development (USDOE 2015). The EPA was
charged with investigating the environmental receptors of fracking chemicals, and
realized that humans are of course one of these receptors. The Department of Health
and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health were engaged to assist
with the public health aspects of the assessment.
8.1 Human Health