In a 2016 report, the EPA identified more than 1,600 chemicals used in drilling and fracking, or found in fracking wastewater, including close to 200 that were deemed carcinogens or toxic to human health. Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly." Hauter added that "this says nothing of the dreadful impact fossil fuel extraction and burning is having on our runaway climate crisis.
toxicologist and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. "The potential that these chemicals are being used in oil and gas operations should prompt regulators to take swift action to investigate the extent of this use, pathways of exposure, and whether people are being harmed," said Linda Birnbaum, board-certified Ph.D. Negative health effects linked to PFAS include low infant birth weights, disruptions of the immune and reproductive systems, and cancer. In a statement released Monday, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, called the PSR report "alarming," and said it "confirms what hundreds of scientific studies and thousands of pages of data have already shown over the last decade: fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it, and it should be banned entirely."Īs PSR notes, PFAS-highly potent toxins that accumulate in the body and persist in the environment-pose a threat to human and environmental well-being. "The EPA identified serious health risks associated with chemicals proposed for use in oil and gas extraction, and yet allowed those chemicals to be used commercially with very lax regulation," Dusty Horwitt, a researcher at PSR, told the newspaper. Those tests were not mandatory and there is no indication that they were carried out. 26, 2011, EPA scientists pointed to preliminary evidence that, under some conditions, the chemicals could "degrade in the environment" into substances akin to PFOA, a kind of PFAS chemical, and could "persist in the environment" and "be toxic to people, wild mammals, and birds." The EPA scientists recommended additional testing. In a consent order issued for the three chemicals on Oct.
"It's very disturbing to see the extent to which critical information about these chemicals is shielded from public view," Barbara Gottlieb, PSR's Environment & Health Program director, said Monday in a press release. "The lack of transparency about fracking chemicals puts human health at risk."
#Toxic chemicals fracking decade new files full
While the Times noted that the newly released documents constitute some of the earliest evidence of the possible presence of PFAS in fracking fluids, PSR's report warns that "the lack of full disclosure of chemicals used in oil and gas operations raises the potential that PFAS could have been used even more extensively than records indicate, both geographically and in other stages of the oil and gas extraction process, such as drilling, that precede the underground injections known as fracking." The EPA's approval in 2011 of three new compounds for use in oil and gas drilling or fracking that can eventually break down into PFAS, also called "forever chemicals," was not publicized until Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) obtained internal records from the agency through a Freedom of Information Act request, the New York Times reported Monday after reviewing the files.Īccording to PSR's new report, Fracking with "Forever Chemicals, " oil and gas companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others engaged in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have since 2012 pumped toxic chemicals that can form PFAS into more than 1,200 wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming. "The Obama-Biden administration approved the use of toxic PFAS chemicals for fracking a decade ago, and all these years later, Biden's practices haven't seemed to change a bit."
Between 20, fossil fuel corporations injected potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas, after former President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists' concerns about toxicity.
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