Fracking and Health Studies: Claims of Bias and Scientific Dishonesty Among Researchers and Media Outlets

Fracking and Health Studies: Claims of Bias and Scientific Dishonesty Among Researchers and Media Outlets

There seem to be quite a few environmental organizations and groups committed to putting out condemning reports against the oil and gas industry without proper peer review and with quite questionable scientific conclusions. Even if their conclusions do not find any causation that fracking or oil and gas activity is responsible for health problems in the body of the reports there are still strong suggestions that it is in the headlines that follow. It is headlines and soundbites that are passed around for citizens to see. There has also been at least one report, this one on fracking’s effects on groundwater led by University of Cincinnati researchers, that found no effects at all and was subsequently defunded and not published in a timely manner. This suggests significant bias of funders, academic institutions, and/or individual researchers.

The modes of exposure to any potential contamination from fracking are through air, water, and to a lesser extent soil. Air pollution exposure depends on weather conditions and prevailing weather patterns relative to people and water pollution depends mainly on proximity to drinking water sources but also on the potential of a contaminant to get into a groundwater aquifer in significant concentrations. This is negligible risk of exposure through soil contamination. 

 

Air Emissions Assessments

One of the biggest factors in evaluating health effects of fracking has to be obtaining an accurate assessment of exposure. Degree of exposure is one of the biggest and most important variables in risk assessment. This would require an accurate assessment of the avg. VOC and methane leakage rates from oil and gas facilities.  EPA has requested company-wide assessments as they moved toward finalization and adoption of the new Federal mandates for methane emissions. This rule has been rolled back by the Trump administration but is not likely to go away. The rules call for a 45% industry-wide reduction in emissions from new wells and facilities by 2025. Canada is attempting to adopt similar rules. Thus regular assessments will likely be implemented by all companies in the form of periodic measurements. Air quality evaluation can also be measured continuously to note any fluctuations in air quality though time. Top-down air emissions assessments such as those using infra-red camera methods have been done by academic and government institutions such as the NOAA. These have proved useful in identifying leaks, especially large ones, but not in quantifying them. There have also been more local air tests done by ill-trained “citizen scientists,” recruited with knowledge of their openly promulgated goal of banning and shutting down fracking. While the idea of going out and doing some science does sound great, the first attitude rule of science is to be unbiased. No one can be totally unbiased since we are influenced by what we experience but we can do much better. To be biased is to be unfair. In science, one also needs to treat the data fairly, to reduce bias in data interpretation. Collecting air samples and analyzing them, as in any sampling and analysis, can be subject to several types of errors, false results, and experimental biases. Thus there also needs to be sufficient training of those doing the sampling. The infrared optical imaging cameras can be quite expensive but lower cost versions should be possible in the future as the assessment effort broadens. Various gas ratios and presence of certain gases and/or VOCs can pinpoint oil and gas sources such as compressors/motors and condensate tanks. When interpreting air quality data it is also important to accurately assess background concentrations as well as local concentrations that may be coming from other sources. All internal combustion engines emit VOCs. It is important to note also that the same technologies that detect and fix methane leaks and those that redesign systems to reduce leakage rates, often work in the same way for VOCs. In that sense, addressing methane emissions is a two-for-one deal that also addresses VOC emissions. Combustion also produces NOx emissions which react to help form ground-level ozone, or photo-chemical smog. Conversion of vehicles and other engines to run on natural gas rather than diesel or gasoline can reduce NOx emissions by 95-99.5 %. Of course, other pollutants are also reduced quite significantly in such conversions.  

Water Contamination Assessments

Several studies of potential water contamination due to fracking have been done. Early in the process was the first Duke study which mostly measured the presence of methane in groundwater near Marcellus wells in Northeast Pennsylvania. This study was flawed simply due to the well-documented fact that methane was known to be present in area groundwater in significant concentrations long before any gas drilling operations occurred. Another study was done by the Duke researchers right around wells known to have had methane migration into aquifers so slightly higher than typical concentrations of methane were found there, which was no surprise. Those researchers attempted to link the methane that migrated from just below the aquifers (as it does in water wells drilled too deep) to gas from Marcellus shale thousands of feet deeper. Better studies were later done in the same general area that better explained the mechanisms behind gas migration and thoroughly disproved through isotope analysis that any of the migrating methane came from deeper than the known zones just below the area aquifers. Several other studies were done, some with large data sets of baseline water samples, such as the Syracuse study with data from Chesapeake Energy that showed zero contamination from deeper sources and very little methane migration. Still more studies were done such as the University of Cincinnati which showed that the methane migration from eastern Ohio was very small and derived from coal-bed gas near aquifers, identified isotopically, and not from deeper sources. One study from Yale that was conducted very near a known spill of fracking fluids did show small amounts of analytes associated with oil & gas, but in small amounts below EPA standards for those constituents. The conclusion of all these studies is simply that spills are by far the major, if not the only source of contamination. Methane is not really considered a contaminant unless found in high enough amounts to pose an explosion risk. 

Health Effect Studies

Several studies were done, funded in part by anti-drilling interests, to try and link fracking to health problems. These were mostly statistical studies tabulating things like birth defects or emergency room visits due to asthma. Despite misleading headlines, no real links were made, at all. In fact, in some studies just the reverse – that areas around the wells showed less health problems – was found, although irresponsible media often put an opposite spin on it. Other studies merely studied chemicals used in fracking and what risks significant exposure to those chemicals could have. However, the concentrations of such chemicals used in frack fluids are very small and possibly even smaller in frack flowback water, since most of the original frack fluid stays in the reservoir. While such chemicals may have significant health effects there is no reasonable path to exposure of them to warrant caution, unless there was to be a significant spill near a drinking water source. Even then, the water would be quite diluted and after flow into the ground to an underground aquifer would dilute it further as would mixing with a significant surface water source. Even so, there is of course, some risk of water contamination with spills. A few cases early in shale fracking plays involved leaking open pits which would be a potential avenue for contamination. There are now much better regulations on such pits including better liners, secondary containment, and even further containment measures. Tanks and water pipelines are used in closed-loop systems for drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Leachate from landfills used to bury drill cuttings and solids removed from treated water also pose some risk. They have been studied and found to be fairly safe to dispose in isolated landfill areas. Radioactivity from such disposal is also thought to be fairly safe. Exposure through spills would also be generally concentrated in specific areas compared to something “applied” directly over wide areas like pesticides on food crops.

A recent case-in-point of the biased use of reports involves the EPA water contamination study where the EPA’s science advisory board made some re-statements regarding the implications of the study. One of the most commonly reported conclusions of the pre-revised report was the statement: ‘fracking has not led to “widespread, systematic impacts” on drinking water.’ The revised statement merely says “The SAB finds that the EPA did not support quantitatively its conclusion about the lack of evidence for widespread systemic impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.” That does not mean at all that the previous statement is not true but only that they think there is inadequate quantitative support for the conclusion. I find it interesting that they make an official statement, indeed “the” official statement, utilizing a definition of hydraulic fracturing that includes all aspects of the drilling and production process, as it was defined basically by environmentalists opposed to the practice. In other places they used the phrase “the hydraulic fracturing water cycle,” which more accurately depicts what they mean. The reasons for the change seem to be that the advisory board thinks that the study was not vast enough to make general conclusions about it. What I think they are saying is that they think the study is inconclusive simply because it is not big enough. Many different media outlets put out stories on this change and the headlines are wildly variable. Here are some examples: Grist –“The EPA Found That Fracking Can Impact Water Quality” (a fair headline – but any fool knows that spilling enough wastewater near surface water or groundwater resources used for drinking could potentially contaminate it); Sierra Club & EcoWatch: “Final EPA Study Confirms Fracking Contaminates Drinking Water” (this is a misleading headline and one to be expected by radical anti-fracking groups). By the same logic one can say that ‘gasoline or sewage or pesticides contaminates drinking water’ (if spilled near a water source that it can migrate into). There is nothing new in such statements. 

Epidemiological studies are often extremely limited as to specific conclusions that can be drawn. Often they serve as initial assessments to see if the data suggests links between a potential contaminant and health effects. They are quite vague for other reasons: multiple causes, other causes, large margins of error and other statistical uncertainties, uncharted possible paths of exposure, etc. Unfortunately, such studies are often interpreted in far different ways by biased groups. Some later exploit those interpretations. Such are headlines like "Fracking Kills Babies” or “Gasping for Breath.” Also unfortunate are calls for banning fracking, one by a group of doctors, based on such studies with ambiguous and inconclusive results. Without clearly defined potential routes of exposure at significant concentrations there is little scientific support for such over-caution. Ground-level ozone pollution has been one concern but that is often very localized and some studies have failed to separate oil & gas sources from the very common source of highways. On another level hydrocarbons such as natural gas have the potential to replace diesel in lots of areas prone to smog and the replacement of coal by natural gas in power plants has led to much better air quality. In fact, in the natural gas hub of Appalachia it is most economic to replace coal with gas and so regional air quality is much improved as well as local air quality around the shut-down or less-used coal plants even if there are some localized air quality issues due to oil & gas activity – probably more from pipeline compressor stations and processing facilities than from well pads. Spill prevention and containment best practices and in-place regs, mostly at the state level remain the best means for addressing water contamination potential from fracking.

Recently, the federal government under the current administration has cancelled health studies including a major one concerning potential health effects of mountaintop removal mining, particularly from airborne dust. Others including effects of heavy metals from coal ash piles on surface and groundwater have been halted which potentially involve health effects. While the results of health studies are often inconclusive, they are still potentially important as means leading to verification or nullification of potential effects. 

As an addendum to this article please see the following EnergyInDepth report debunking NPR's recent Marketplace report about fracking and health. The conclusion is that these studies are often strongly biased, encouraged to find links by strongly biased funders, in nearly all cases did not find links that suggest any causation, and unfortunately continue to be portrayed as incriminating and as valid. Poor science is an issue in some studies but mostly it is biased headlines that attempt to show relationships based on conclusions that do not show relationships at all. See link below:


http://eidhealth.org/npr-uses-debunked-studies-support-claims-fracking-harms-health/?platform=hootsuite



References:

Johns Hopkins University’s Dismaying, Fact-Challenged Attack on Fracturing – by Michael Krancer, in Forbes, Aug. 30, 2016

Anti-Fracking Group Denies the Science in Latest Fracking and Ozone Report – by 

Report: Illinois Kids Sidelined by Oil and Gas Air Pollution – by Mary Kuhlman, in Public News Service, Illinois

Gasping for Breath: An Analysis of the Health Effects from Ozone Pollution from the Oil and Gas Industry – by Lesley Fleischman, David McCabe, and John Graham – Clean Air Task Force, August 2016

Advanced Analytics for Air Emissions Measurement at Oil and Gas Operations – by Dr. Susan Stuver, presented at RPSEA Onshore Technology Workshop, Appalachian Basin Technology, July 20, 2016

Exposure to Chemicals Released During Fracking May Harm Fertility – by University of Missouri-Columbia, Public Release, Aug. 26, 2016

Doctors Call for State Ban on Drilling and Fracking – by Don Hopey, in Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Oct. 28, 2016

Fracking Linked to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, New YSPH Study Finds – by Denise L. Meyer, in Yale School of Public Health, Oct. 24, 2016

The EPA Found that Fracking Can Impact Water Quality – by Rebecca Leber, in Grist, Dec. 13, 2016