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Submission to the New Brunswick Commission on Hydraulic Fracturing by Paula Tippett
To the Commissioners:
Your report and advice will mean the difference between health and illness, life and death, for many New Brunswickers. The serious adverse consequences of shale gas development to public health 1 in the United States are only now becoming evident.
On a larger scale, decisions to proceed with unconventional energy projects like shale gas and
Canadian oil sands development mean the end of the world as we know it, runaway climate change, with death and destruction on a massive scale, loss of fisheries and agriculture, much of the world uninhabitable, and wholesale extinctions, according to recent reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2 who have determined that 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the world need to remain in the ground to avoid runaway climate change. Buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is CUMULATIVE, which means we must stop CO2 emissions (from burning coal, oil and natural gas) and CH4 releases 3 (from accessing, processing and distributing shale gas 4 and conventional natural gas) TODAY to avoid disaster tomorrow. Based on the IPCC work and a paper by Christopher
McGlade and Paul Ekins in Nature published Jan. 7, 2015 all tar sands oil and Arctic oil and 82% of shale gas resources must be left in the ground.
An informed public has recently acted to stop Arctic drilling projects and western and Keystone
XL tar sands pipelines, as well as obtained commitments from individuals and organizations to divest a total of $2.6 trillion in assets from fossil fuel companies .
5 Canadian governments have lagged behind the informed public, and seem to be headed for the climate change talks in Paris unprepared to play the part Canada needs to play to avert world climate disaster.
Over a thousand health professionals have already written to President Obama to tell him that shale gas development in the U.S. is a public health disaster. The family doctors of New Brunswick, through our organization the College of Family Physicians of NB, have already advised the previous NB government against developing shale gas because of the health consequences, as have all the doctors practising in the Sackville and Moncton areas through resolutions passed by their hospital medical staff organizations. The NB nurses have passed similar resolutions.
1 Seth Shonkoff outlined the adverse public health effects expected from horizontal hydraulic fracking and summarized those found in the medical literature to 2012 in Public Health Dimensions of Horizontal Hydraulic
Fracturing, by Seth B. Shonkoff, University of California, Berkeley, April 17, 2012.
2 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
3 Calculated by Howarth and the IPCC to be 86 times as bad as CO2 as greenhouse gases over the first 20 years after they are released into the atmosphere for worsening climate change
4 Recently estimated by Howarth as high as 12% of production https://www.dovepress.com/methane-emissions-and-climatic-warming-risk-from-hydraulic-fracturing--peerreviewed-article-EECT
5 www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/leonardo-dicaprio-joins-26tn-fossil-fuel-divestmentmovement

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What makes shale gas development a public health disaster? As a family doctor trained in public health and occupational and environmental health, I would say it is because it bypasses all the controls put in place over the years to protect the public’s health from the toxic chemicals used by industry.
The field of occupational health and safety protects workers’ health first by proper design, preventing people from being exposed to toxic chemicals in an industrial facility; second by engineering controls, monitoring the amounts of substances workers are exposed to, and ensuring the levels remain below a threshold limit value (TLV) during the work day, to prevent adverse health consequences; and third by providing personal protective equipment such as protective suits and masks to prevent worker exposure to hazardous materials. Workers are provided through the Workplace Health Management
Information System ( WHMIS) with training in safe use of hazardous materials at their workplace, and everyone has access to information about hazardous materials at the work site through Material Safety
Data Sheets (MSDS). If these systems fail to protect the worker, in an accident for example, health and safety personnel are available to provide first aid and transportation for necessary treatment with the costs for treatment covered by the workers compensation system.
Fracking involves moving the toxic industrial chemicals from a building designed to control them in an industrially- zoned area to the neighbourhoods where New Brunswickers live with their families, with children, pets, farm animals, etc.. These toxic chemicals are then mixed with water and forced into the ground in an effort to remove shale gas from the rocks. In the process, they can get into our soil, our wells, our air, our rivers, lakes and homes, into our food and drink and into our bodies without our consent or control. There is no building enclosing the materials, no equipment measuring them to ensure they are within safe levels for us, that nobody breathes them in or drinks them, or gets them on their skin or in their eyes. We do not have personal protective equipment , appropriate masks or respirators, or even the MSDS information or WHMIS training. (In the U.S. fracking companies have even refused to give information on fracking chemicals to enable treatment of poisoned patients in medical emergencies as documented by searching “Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians, Mar. 18, 2012, by
Walter Brasch, PhD.”)
Even the workers in the oil and gas industry in the U.S. and in western Canada are not as safe as they should be. The U.S. Dept. of Labor found that shale gas workers are 7 times more likely to die than other workers, and that 8% of the deaths are from explosions 6 . In 2005 the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health began the NIOSH Field Effort to Assess Chemical Exposure Risks to Oil and Gas Workers, beginning with silica exposure and found that nearly half of the oil and gas workers studied in the U.S. were being exposed to dangerous levels of silica dust, making them likely to develop silicosis, a fatal lung disease, which was prevalent in the past, but had been reduced by 93% due to modern workplace controls.
7 OSHA is currently investigating cases of shale gas workers found dead at several worksites, believed due to asphyxiation by hydrogen sulphide or some other asphyxiant gases released unexpectedly at the worksites.
8 They have made recommendations for reducing further deaths which include the wearing of respirators.
6 http://www.mining.com/new-record-workplace-deaths-in-oil-and-gas-up-23-pct-41084/
7 https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/hydraulic_frac_hazard_alert.html
8 www.blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2014/08/21/flowback-2

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Since the 1990’s the Alberta economy became more dependent on oil and gas and oilsandsrelated construction activity, and the number of workers in the 4 related industries (which are the industries responsible for the highest number of disabling injuries and fatalities) grew by 50%. Oil and gas and mining workers in Alberta made up 5.2% of the workforce compared to 1% for Canada in 2008, and Alberta at 166 occupational deaths had a workplace death rate of 8.91 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared to the national average of 7.14.
9 Workplace deaths and injuries were also high among
Saskatchewan and BC workers, other provinces with a substantial number of oil and gas workers. 10
In addition to documenting workplace deaths and injuries, Worksafe BC has also produced a bulletin “Occupational disease hazards in the oil and gas industry” which might be useful for determining some of the diseases one would expect to find in children and adults whose living spaces are invaded by the fracking industry. It is incomplete, however, leaving out hundreds of chemicals with many adverse acute and long-term health effects used in the fracking industry, which are presumably covered by MSDS sheets kept at the worksite. Also the unborn, babies, children, people with illnesses and the elderly who live in the communities would be more vulnerable to a whole range of toxic effects that would not even be considered for a healthy worker with proper protective equipment and training.
Some of these unaccounted-for effects are starting to be recorded in the medical literature, such as birth defects like congenital heart disease and neural tube defects.
11 The discovery of these and other health problems in fracked communities in conjunction with the revelations of widespread water contamination with toxic fracking chemicals 12 and dramatic increases in urban and rural air pollution in fracking areas 13 have contributed to the public health disaster noted by American health professionals.
9 https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/afl/pages/2419/attachments/ori ... D3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net
10 Total workplace deaths in Saskatchewan reached a 30 year high of 60 in 2012, and workplace deaths in Alberta rose to 188 in 2013. (Saskatchewan Worker’s Compensation Board Annual Report, April, 2013, WCB Alberta data)
WorksafeBC reported 186 workplace deaths in 2013 and 145,126 injuries, with 173 deaths, 146,814 injuries, and
3075 claims for occupational diseases in 2014. www.worksafebc.com
The high workplace death rates in western Canada (and Nfld.) raise the Canada-wide average. While NB had only
3.4 deaths per 100,000 workers, and Ontario and Quebec 6.0 and 6.1 respectively in 2005, the higher western rates raised the Canadian rate to 6.8 deaths per 100,000 workers, making Canada 5 th highest in workplace deaths among the 29 developed countries in the OECD. From “Five deaths a day: workplace fatalities in Canada 1993-
2005” by Andrew Sharpe and Jill Hardt, CSLS Research Paper 2006-04. www.csls.ca/reports/csls2006-04.pdf
11 McKenzie, LM et al, Birth Outcomes and Maternal Residential Proximity to Natural Gas Development in Rural
Colorado. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 122, Issue 4, April, 2014.
EHP – Birth Outcomes and Maternal Residential Proximity to Natural Gas Development in Rural
Colorado
12 Theo Colborn, et al (2011): Natural gas operations from a public health perspective, Human and Ecological Risk
Assessment: An International Journal, 17:5, 1039-1056. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10807039.2011.605662
Michelle Bamberger, Robert E. Oswald (2012) Impacts of gas drilling on human and animal health. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/NS.22.1.e
Stephen G. Osborn, Avner Vengosh et al, Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas well drilling and hydraulic fracturing (2011) www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1100682108

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The first hazard to workers from fracking mentioned by the Worksafe BC bulletin is Hydrogen
sulphide (H2S), a toxic gas, which at low levels irritates eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and has a rotten egg odour. At high levels poisoning is rapid, causing respiratory arrest, with death according to Worksafe
BC occurring within seconds or minutes. If an H2S leak occurs, the area must be evacuated. Only workers with self-contained breathing apparatus can enter the area.( At the heavy water plant in Cape
Breton, which was subject to H2S leaks, all workers had to carry a Scott air pack, and travel in pairs. If one collapsed, the other was to put on his own Scott air pack, before putting one on his partner and dragging him to safety while calling for first aid. There was a doctor at the work site 24 hours a day to resuscitate workers.)
Drilling fluids are the next hazard mentioned by the Worksafe BC bulletin, containing hydrocarbons causing dizziness, headaches, drowsiness, nausea, as well as skin rashes. The oil mists cause respiratory inflammation and some of their components cause cancer. WorksafeBC recommends engineering controls, safe work procedures, and personal protective equipment.
Silica is the main component (up to 99%) of fracking sand, and is also used for blasting and in cement, and about half the fracking workers in the US were found to have been exposed to more than the permitted limit. Silica scars the lungs, causing the progressive fatal disease called silicosis, which had been almost eliminated due to workplace controls, until the fracking boom in the US began. Worksafe
BC recommends respirators for all work activities involving silica.
Mercury, found in oil and gas, as Worksafe BC notes, can condense in equipment and be released as vapour later. It is a toxic, cumulative heavy metal that affects the brain and kidneys, and causes tremors, and visual and hearing problems. Even very small amounts are dangerous for people, especially for children. The mercury already accumulated in the New Brunswick environment from poor practices in the past has affected fish, otters and loons. New Brunswick promised to totally eliminate mercury, and went so far as to control dental fillings and mercury thermometers, and collect used fluorescent bulbs and mercury-containing batteries as hazardous waste to keep mercury out of our environment. It would be a big step backward to allow fracking in our communities.
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) including uranium, thorium, radium, and
radon present in the fracking flowback fluids were also a hazard noted by Worksafe BC, building up in the equipment and storage tanks as well as in sludge and drilling fluids. These can irradiate workers directly, or long-term through inhalation, ingestion or absorption, causing cancer. Most of the NORMs have very long half-lives, and must be kept away from the environment. In spite of New Brunswick’s regulations, “treated” fracking fluids might have been dumped into the Moncton sewer system if alert citizens and city councillors had not objected. (Other hazardous chemicals in the flowback fluids, such as the benzene and others measured by OSHA with health and safety hazards discussed in reference 8, for example, were not specifically included in Worksafe BC’s report.)
Thomas H. Darrah, et al (2014) Noble gases identify the mechanisms of fugitive gas contamination in drinking water wells overlying the Marcellus and Barnett Shales www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322107111
Avner Vengosh, et al, The effects of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing on the quality of water resources in the United States (2013), published by Elsevier BV. Doi:10.1016/j.proeps.2013.03.213. Available online at: www.sciencedirect.com
13 http://www.downwindersatrisk.org/2013/04/more-gas-drilling-smog-in-rural-wyoming-leads-to-more-doctorvisits/

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Diesel fuels (including the distillates classed by the EPA as diesels) containing many toxic and
cancer-causing substances are used in fracking. A very small amount of diesel fuel can contaminate over a million gallons of water, and make it unfit to drink. Diesel exhaust contains carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides (NOX), volatile organic compounds ( VOCs), and particulates (especially small ones called PM
2.5
) 14 which are bad for workers’ health, but even worse for babies, children, and seniors. Diesel exhaust exposure leads to lung irritation and damage, to asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, angina and heart attacks and lung cancer. As well, the methane ( CH4) and other VOC’s and the CO2 and NOX from diesel exhaust cause climate change, which is bad for all of us. The damaging smog from the combination of
NOX and VOC’s in the presence of sunlight damages not only our lungs, but also the plants and trees in our environment, and can be transported by the wind to other areas to wreak havoc there as well.
New Brunswick has made commitments to reduce NOX and VOC’s. We are supposed to be reducing air pollution and greenhouse gases. Fracking would destroy our efforts to meet our international commitments, as well as worsening our health and our economy.
The benefits to our economy of reducing air pollution have been documented by Stieb et al in
“Economic evaluation of the benefits of reducing acute cardiorespiratory morbidity associated with air pollution” which can be accessed at: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/1/1/7 . Although there are many other articles on this topic, I have chosen this one, because it is one of the articles using data on the health effects of the air pollution in Saint John, New Brunswick.
14 www.medicaldaily.com/particulate- air- pollution- linked- increase- mortality- rate-even-low-concentrations-
336318
For those over 65, researchers found for each 10microgram per cubic metre increase in PM
2.5 there was a 2.14% increase in death rate for short-term exposure, and a 7.52% increase in death rate for long-term exposure.