Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA by E.G. Vallianatos (Important Excerpts)

Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA by E.G. Vallianatos (Important Excerpts)

“Eliminating the public’s ability to halt the selling or planting of these seeds, the groups said, was removing the one sure way of checking this hugely profitable but potentially dangerous forced march toward the genetic engineering of our food.

We knew this was Bush’s view, of course: State Department cables reveal that the Bush administration threatened the European Union with sanctions unless EU governments allowed the planting of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds in Europe. But the phalanx of Monsanto men and women working for Obama simply confirms that it does not matter who presides over the White House or Congress. Corporations rule the kingdom. While still serving as Obama’s solicitor general, Elena Kagan wrote a brief requesting the Supreme Court to lift a ruling by an appeals court forbidding the planting in California of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa. In August 2010, Kagan was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. She sits beside Justice Clarence Thomas, who once served as a lawyer for Monsanto.
Indeed, when it comes to genetic engineering, “the Obama administration has not been better than the Bush administration, possibly worse,” wrote Jeffrey Smith, an expert on the health effects of bioengineered food. The triumph of Monsanto within the government is bad for our health and bad for the environment. Let me explain further by introducing Don Huber….

Don Huber knows a lot about biological weapons, and he knows a lot about plants. A retired colonel from the Army’s biological warfare corps, Huber taught plant diseases and soil microbiology at Purdue University for thirty-five years. He has also been the coordinator of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service National Plant Disease Recovery System, a program of the USDA. Of all the things he knows about biological weapons and crops, he is most concerned about the destructive effects of pesticides on the biological systems of plants….

On January 17, 2011, Huber wrote a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack, “For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks,” Huber wrote, “Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of high risk status. In laymen’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.

Huber explained that the pathogen is “a medium size virus” and “a micro-fungal-like organism” that can reproduce itself. It has been found in livestock feed made by soybeans and corn genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate (“Roundup soybean meal and corn”).  In addition, the pathogen has been found in pigs, cattle, and other animals that have been struck by spontaneous abortions and infertility. The pathogen “may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations,” Huber added. “These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”

It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases,” Huber continued. Furthermore, glyphosate “dismantles plant defenses” against disease by immobilizing vital nutrients, which means the growing crop is starved of the nutrients it must have to defend itself against disease and to be nutritious. Such impoverished crops, says Huber, are causing “animal disorders.”

Someone leaked the letter Huber sent to Secretary Vilsack. Huber then sent his original letter to the European Union and the European Commission with a cover letter, dated April 20, 2011, explaining why he had felt compelled to write so urgently to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

“I feel it would be totally irresponsible to ignore my own research and the vast amount of published research now available that support the concerns we are seeing in production agriculture,” Huber wrote. He cited evidence showing this new pathogen kills chicken embryos in 24 to 72 hours. The pathogen also intensifies many of the diseases afflicting crops, including an affliction known as Goss’s wilt that in 2010 caused American farmers to lose fully a billion bushels of corn…

Huber’s hopes were quickly dashed. Two weeks after he sent his letter to Vilsack, he received a letter back from the USDA: the government was determined to side with Monsanto on alfalfa. The letter assured Huber that the decision was based “on sound science informed by peer-review research….” – Portions from pages 204 – 207

“Huber responded to the USDA with a long and impassioned letter citing 135 scientific studies supporting his position. He was furious at the intimidation of scientists working on the risks of bioengineered crops, especially on the links between glyphosate and now-unregulated alfalfa.

“The current crop and animal production environment is NOT normal and NOT sustainable!” Huber wrote. “We are experiencing an escalating incidence of crop, animal, and human diseases, the emergence and reemergence of diseases once rare or under practical control, and new diseases previously unknown to science.”

Increasing incidences of disease in animal production programs, especially cattle, dairy, and swine, had become associated with low manganese or other micronutrients, Huber wrote. Manganese deficiencies are associated with infectious diseases, bone and tissue deformities, reproductive failure and death. Discovered just a decade previously, this new “electron-microscope-sized ‘organism’” was causing infertility and miscarriage in animals. “The excessive use of glyphosate is a major contributor to the increased severity and epidemics of plant and animal diseases, reduced nutrient quality, high mycotoxin levels, and toxic chemical residues we are experiencing in production agriculture,” Huber wrote. “I urge your consideration of the decision to deregulate Roundup Ready Alfalfa based on the principle of ‘Scientific Precaution’ until research can be completed relative to its safety, equivalency, and sustainability.”

Huber must have known that asking the USDA to undo the deregulation of alfalfa was hopeless. The Monsanto-controlled agency would not tolerate scientific resistance. So, on November 1, 2011, Huber left for England, where he made a presentation to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology of the British House of Commons, in which he repeated his conclusions he had reported to the USDA, the European Union, and the European Commission.

Now outside the suffocating atmosphere of USDA Huber expressed himself in less diplomatic language. Glyphosate “predisposes plants to disease” and stimulates pathogens” in the soil, he said. Glyphosate compromises the defense of crops against disease and kills the targeted plants by acting as a biological war agent—in a sense, by boosting disease organisms in the soil while killing disease resistance organisms….

Like Morton Biskind sixty years earlier, Don Huber spoke of “a new factor” in our civilization causing havoc in nature, human health, and global food security. The new factor for Biskind in 1953 was the “miracle” of DDT; for Huber in 2011, the danger was posed by a pathogen associated with another “miracle” chemical named glyphosate. In both cases, we have the sick feeling that little, if anything, has changed. The same irresponsible agribusiness policies reign, threatening the very integrity of our food and our health….

Huber, now an emeritus professor at Purdue, wrote to me in August 2012 to say that all his efforts with the USDA had “fallen on deaf ears.” The USDA was busy deregulating genetically modified crops, and scientists working at universities with industry contracts were in hot water: “Several scientists have been limited in what they can say or share, while others have been denied promotion or tenure,” Huber wrote. Thankfully, he said, his own research was still privately funded,” since we couldn’t take a chance on it being shut down earlier.”

Huber’s dire warning is like a sword hanging by a thread. The USDA “regulators” of genetically engineered crops continue with business as usual. In early 2012, they were ready to approve the dangerous herbicide 2.4-D (which, you will remember, was half of Agent Orange) for a new genetically modified corn. This action is certain to double the adverse effects of genetically modified crops. 2,4-D may even trump glyphosate as the greatest chemical threat to American agriculture. Its history of more than seventy years as a chemical weapon, and as a weed killer contaminated by the lethal 2378-dioxin, doesn’t bode well for America…. Dow has convinced the “regulators” of America, Canada, and the European Union that 2,4-D is safe…” – Portions from pages 208 –  212

“According to the EPA, 25% of samples of 2,4-D were contaminated with dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD), which is mutagenic, carcinogenic, and causes reproductive problems at very small doses.” (CDC NIOSH, 2005).

“Charles Benbrook, a former Capitol Hill staff scientist, has shown that, in the period between 1996 and 2011, the GM crops in the United States increased the use of pesticides by about 7 percent, or 404 million pounds a year.” – page 213

“In Wyoming, a small farmer named John Fenton has twenty-four gas wells on his farm, and his drinking water is full of poisons, including drilling fluids, driving muds, and high levels of the cancer causing benzene. Since the contamination, Fenton’s property has lost half of its value; he has to buy drinking water, though he still bathes in the contaminated water. Around his community, he has seen people with “a lot of neurological problems, neuropathy, seizures, people losing their sense of smell, sense of taste. People with their arms and legs going numb.”

Local officials, meanwhile, continue to tell Fenton his water is potable. When Fenton persuaded the EPA to test his water and investigate the fracking of gas wells under his land, the agency agreed with him: fracking had poisoned his water.

The political response to this evidence was predictable. House Republicans held a public meeting on the Fenton water testing case, but when the “public” actually showed up—in the form of Josh Fox, the producer of Garland, a documentary on the devastation caused by natural gas drilling—the elected officials had Fox arrested.

In May 2012, the Obama administration proposed regulations requiring drillers to reveal the composition of their fracking chemicals thirty days before they blasted underground deposits of oil and gas with those chemicals. Once again, industry pressure diluted the effort, and the lobbyists for ExxonMobil and other drillers convinced the White House to reverse the regulation. The drillers would name their fracking chemicals only after they completed their work.

Once again, we find ourselves asking fundamental questions: What does such a policy say about our country’s priorities? Who are such laws meant to protect? As with pesticides, so with fracking: America needs to reinvent itself, to reverse the pervasive and insidious influence of the petrochemical-agribusiness complex” – Portion from pages 227 – 228

“But with the testing of the various toxic compounds released into the human economy and environment, we now also know that pesticides “injure man’s genetic material in precisely the same way radiation does,” my EPA colleague John Hou-Shi Chen, a distinguished geneticist, told me more than thirty years ago. “And what is so awful about such genetic injury is that it is permanent—it can’t be recalled, corrected or somehow restricted to the victim, unless you also castrate the individual. So now with a greater number of pesticide poisons loose in the environment, we as a society are creating a generation of people who will be weak in facing the future. We are then changing, irreversibly, the future itself. The price for that change is—or should be—unacceptable to any people with dignity and respect for themselves and love for their children.”

I agree with this wisdom wholeheartedly. For decades, the EPA was my personal university, where I learned the hard way why America and the rest of the industrialized world have become so hooked on dangerous farm sprays. No science or policy has been allowed to interrupt this corruption. In fact, science and policy themselves have been made a prop to the pesticides industry and agribusiness.

This is a tragic turn of events, especially given the evidence. Tomes of scientific studies have shown farm sprays for what they are: biocides, which cause and promote insect infestations of crops; give cancer to animals and humans; and leave a trail of death among fish and wildlife.

Just as petroleum companies pay for fake “science” that muddles the debate about climate change, most studies funded by the chemical industry muddy the debate about pesticides. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the EPA continue to take up the cause of agribusiness, with catastrophic consequences for family farmers, who have been almost completely swallowed up (or driven into bankruptcy) by industrial-scale farms. In the twentieth century, 98 percent of black farmers and more than 60 percent of white family farmers were forced off the land. The few large farmers and agribusinesses left in charge of rural America are hooked on pesticides precisely because these enable them to control their vast estates.”  – Page 230

“EPA officials know global chemical and agribusiness industries are manufacturing science. They know their products are dangerous. Yet industry power either corrupts or silences EPA scientists, who are forced then to bury or ignore the truth. Scientists find themselves working in a roomful of funhouse mirrors, plagiarizing industry studies and cutting and pasting the findings of industry studies as their own.

These are the behaviors of a traumatized organization. And these are the reasons why, fifty-two years after Silent Spring, farm sprays remain ubiquitous, their makers remain more powerful than ever, and we remain overwhelmed with diseases and imbalances in nature.

President Barack Obama—indeed, any president—needs to take human health and family farming much more seriously. He needs to discard the toxic policies of agribusiness in favor of small-scale agriculture that raises healthful food without injuring humans and wildlife or contributing to climate change. Traditional (and often organic) farmers—until seventy-five years ago, the only farmers there were—are slowly beginning to make a comeback. They have always known how to raise crops and livestock without industrial poisons. They are the seed for a future of good food, a healthy natural world, and democracy in rural America—and the world.”  – Portions from pages 235 – 236

 

 

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New battlefront for petrochemical industry: benzene and childhood leukemia

New battlefront for petrochemical industry: benzene and childhood leukemia by Kristen Lombardi for The Center For Public Integrity

ATHENS, Georgia — It was December 29, 1998, six years after Jill McElheney and her family had moved next to a cluster of 12 petroleum storage tanks. Jill was escorting her son Jarrett, then 4, to the doctor again. He had spent the day slumped in a stroller, looking so pale and fatigued that a stranger stopped her to ask if he was all right.

It was an encounter Jill couldn’t shake. For the previous three months, she had noticed her once-energetic preschooler deteriorating. He complained of pain in his knee, which grew excruciating. It migrated to his shoulder and then his leg. His shins swelled, as did his temples. At night, Jarrett awoke drenched in sweat, screaming from spasms. Jill took him to a pediatrician and an infectious-disease specialist. A rheumatologist diagnosed him with anemia.

Now, as Jarrett lay listless, Jill found herself back at the pediatrician’s office. Tests confirmed a blood count so low that she was instructed to get him to an emergency room immediately. Within hours she was at a hospital in Atlanta, some 65 miles from her home in Athens, watching nurses rush in and out of Jarrett’s room. Doctors identified a common form of childhood leukemia. “I heard the words,” Jill recalled, “and I only knew the bald heads and the sadness.”

In the waiting room, family members heard more unsettling news: A neighbor’s child also had developed leukemia.

Days later, Jarrett’s doctor penned a letter to federal environmental regulators about the two cancer patients, highlighting their “close proximity” to Southeast Terminals, a group of 10,000-gallon tanks containing gasoline, diesel and fuel oil.

“Could you please investigate,” the doctor wrote, “whether high levels of chemicals could have contaminated the water, possibly contributing … to the development of leukemia?”

Only then did the McElheneys consider the possibility that living beside one of the nation’s 1,500 bulk-oil terminals — known sources of cancer-causing benzene — had triggered their son’s leukemia.

“It was one of those light-bulb moments for us,” said Jeff McElheney, Jarrett’s father. “You never get over it.”

New battlefront for industry

Jarrett McElheney does not represent the standard benzene plaintiff. He’s not among the hundreds of thousands of people who toil in American oil refineries or other workplaces contaminated with the chemical and run the risk of developing leukemia. In the rancorous world of toxic-tort litigation, he stands virtually alone. A lawsuit filed by his parents in 2011 against Southeast Terminals owners BP and TransMontaigne is among a relatively few alleging leukemia caused by environmental benzene exposure. Among these, the McElheney case is rarer still: Most have hinged on adult leukemia.

Yet the case may signal an emerging quandary for the petrochemical industry, according to tens of thousands of pages of previously secret documents that have come to light in lawsuits filed against benzene manufacturers and suppliers on behalf of those who suffered from leukemia and other blood diseases, including Jarrett McElheney.

Internal memorandums, emails, letters and meeting minutes obtained by the Center for Public Integrity over the past year suggest that BP and four other major petrochemical companies, coordinated by their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, spent at least $36 million on research “designed to protect member company interests,” as one 2000 API summary put it. Many of the documents chronicle a systematic attempt by the petrochemical industry to influence the science linking benzene to cancer. Others attest to the industry’s longstanding interest in topics such as childhood leukemia.

“A number of publications in the last few years have attempted to link increased risks of childhood leukemia with proximity to both petroleum facilities and local traffic density,” another 2000 API memo warns. “Although these publications have had little impact to date, the emphasis on ‘Children’s Health’ may cause these concerns to resurface.”

“This is indeed a battlefront for the oil industry,” said Peter Infante, a former director of the office that reviews health standards at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who has studied benzene for 40 years and now testifies for plaintiffs in benzene litigation. He has worked on a handful of cases involving children sickened by leukemia.

“It’s in the industry’s economic interests to refuse to acknowledge the relationship between benzene and childhood leukemia,” Infante said.

In May, in a sign of the chemical’s continuing threat, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 5 million Americans — excluding workers — face heightened cancer risks from benzene and 68 other carcinogens spewed into the air by the nation’s 149 oil refineries. The EPA has proposed a rule that would require refinery operators to monitor for benzene, in particular, along their fence lines.

Aimed at curbing “fugitive” emissions from equipment leaks and similar releases, the proposal would set a fence line limit for benzene of 3 parts per billion — a fraction of the 10 ppb the agency recommends as the maximum chronic exposure level for the chemical.

Industry groups are pushing back. In written comments, the API’s Matthew Todd called the proposal “a major and significant Agency action [that] will dramatically increase the paperwork and recordkeeping burden on refineries. It includes several precedent-setting proposals, will cost our industry hundreds of millions of dollars per year, increase safety risk [and] may impact fuels production and cost …. Production outages will likely occur.”

The EPA also heard from the people the rule is designed to protect. “We live near a refinery, and as a result my son can’t breathe,” a woman from Fontana, California, wrote in Spanish. “My cousin had respiratory problems while living near a refinery for more than 10 years,” a woman from Houston wrote, also in Spanish. “Unfortunately, he died 2 years ago from bone cancer. We believe this was a result of the ambient air where he lived.”

In June, California officials lowered the long-term exposure level for benzene from 20 ppb to 1 ppb — among the lowest in the country — setting the stage for further emissions cuts at refineries and bulk-oil terminals in that state. Officials say such regulatory actions aim to protect children, who are more susceptible to benzene’s toxic effects than adults because their cells aren’t as developed. California is considering classifying benzene not just as a human carcinogen, but as a “toxic air contaminant which may disproportionately impact children.”

“The fact that benzene impacts the blood-forming organs when you’re a developing child is a big deal,” said Melanie Marty of the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Hidden menace

ill McElheney agrees. A warm, garrulous mother of five who has schooled herself in the health effects of pollution, she has spent the past 16 years seeking the cause of her son’s leukemia. She has filed open-records requests and contacted state and federal agencies, piecing together a history of gasoline spills and diesel-fuel leaks at Southeast Terminals. She can cite endless details about lingering benzene contamination on terminal property — extensively catalogued in state enforcement files — located “a stone’s throw away” from the trailer park where her family lived for seven years.

Jeff, Jarrett and Jill McElheney stand in the former site of the Oakwood Mobile Home Park, where the family was living when Jarrett was diagnosed with a form of childhood leukemia. Phil Skinner for the Center for Public Integrity
Now vacant and overgrown with brush, the former site of the Oakwood Mobile Home Park lies across a residential street from Southeast Terminals, its tanks rising above a thicket of pines and oaks. All day, every day, trucks drive in and out of the facility’s gates, filling tankers with gasoline and other products.

What can’t be seen is the plume of benzene that has worked its way into the groundwater beneath the tanks. “It’s not like Cancer Alley, with smokestacks belching crap in your face,” Jill said. “It’s hidden — literally.”

When she and Jeff moved to Oakwood in 1992, they saw the 14-trailer community as something of an oasis — quiet, tight-knit. Nestled under shady trees, near churches and schools, it seemed like the perfect location. Even the park’s water supply, drawn from an unpermitted well dating back decades, appeared idyllic: Its pump house served as a beacon on park property, visible for all to see — including, court depositions later confirmed, terminal employees.

“We saw Oakwood as an opportunity,” recalled Jeff, a mustachioed, genial man who operates a roofing company and managed the park for his father, its previous owner.

Jarrett McElheney, center, with 3 of his 4 siblings. Courtesy of the McElheney family
Jarrett arrived two years later and, by his fourth birthday, had grown into an adventurous boy with an abiding love of water. His parents remember him splashing in the tub for hours. Often, he swam in an inflatable pool in their yard, dressed in what he called his “little blue [wet] suit.” He slurped on Kool Aid and popsicles made from well water whose purity his parents never questioned — until his 1998 diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, a form of the blood cancer found overwhelmingly in children.

Within days of hearing the news, Jarrett’s parents tested their water. Samples from the Oakwood well revealed a brew of such chemicals as carbon tetrachloride and 1,2-dichloroethane, sparking a state investigation. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) found benzene in the water of Oakwood’s well at levels up to 13 ppb — 26 times higher than the federal safety standard. In response, the agency shuttered the well and connected residents to public water.

Over the next year, state geologists worked to identify the contamination’s source. They dug monitoring wells and collected soil samples. Their initial investigation linked at least one pollutant in the park well — not benzene — to nearby abandoned grain silos. Geologists eventually eyed Southeast Terminals as a likely source of the benzene contamination, records show.

“The terminals are certainly suspects for the benzene detected in the [Oakwood] well,” one posited in a 2000 email. “The probable path is deep ground water.”

Another noted the presence of “a possible plume (with benzene) moving by Oakwood … and within a few hundred feet of the [park]’s former well, [thus] too close for comfort for a public-water supply well.”

Two years later, EPD investigators were still documenting high levels of benzene, ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 ppb, on terminal property — as well as the likelihood that, one 2002 EPD memorandum states, “the benzene contamination found in the trailer park well came from the Southeast Terminals.”

Ultimately, though, the state’s two-year, nearly $200,000 investigation yielded few answers. By 2008, groundwater monitoring results revealed only trace amounts of benzene at Oakwood. Today, EPD officials say they lack definitive proof tying the well’s benzene pollution to any source.

For Jill McElheney, the outcome of the inquiry was anything but satisfying. “It just seems to me that when you’ve got benzene in a well and a major source of it next door, you’d make the connection,” she said.

In fact, Jill already had been seeking answers elsewhere. In 2000, she turned to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, petitioning it for a public health assessment. Instead, the agency launched a less-thorough public health consultation, meant to ascertain the risk to human health posed by the contaminated well water at Oakwood.

The results brought little clarity. In a 2001 report, the ATSDR determined that “the groundwater contaminant plume” initially sampled in the Oakwood well “is a public health hazard.” At the same time, it singled out a pollutant other than benzene as the threat. For benzene, the agency found that “the likelihood someone would get cancer as a result of their exposure is very low.”

In a 2000 draft filed with the state, however, the ATSDR concluded that the highest concentrations of benzene in the water were of concern. “This risk DOES exceed an acceptable risk level,” the draft states, “and may result in an elevated risk of cancer for exposed individuals.”

An ASTDR spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

Mounting evidence on benzene and leukemia

The science linking benzene to cancer — particularly leukemia, in all its forms — has preoccupied the petrochemical industry for more than half a century. As far back as 1948, the API’s toxicological profile of the chemical discussed “reasonably well documented instances of the development of leukemia as a result of chronic benzene exposure,” cautioning that “the only absolutely safe concentration … is zero.”

Later, as scientific evidence of benzene’s hazards accumulated and regulatory limits on workplace and environmental levels tightened, the industry took a different stance. By 1990, the API and member companies such as BP, Chevron, Mobil and Shell had launched a research program meant to keep further restrictions at bay — or, minutes from an API meeting in 1992 state, research “that will be most useful in improving risk assessment and influencing regulation.”

Within months, the API task force overseeing the program was enumerating “developing issues.” Topping its list, according to minutes from a meeting in 1993, was this notation: “link to childhood leukemia?”

That possible link appeared on the industry’s radar again in 2000, documents show. At the time, API representatives were drumming up financial support for an unparalleled study of workers exposed to benzene in Shanghai, China, delivering what amounted to a sales pitch for the project. They touted what one 2000 API overview described as its “tremendous economic benefit to the petroleum industry” — helping to combat “onerous regulations” and “litigation costs due to perceptions about the risks of even very low exposures to benzene.” Childhood leukemia was mentioned explicitly.

Five years later, industry representatives grew concerned enough to bankroll their own research. Documents show the API task force approved funding for what minutes of one meeting in 2005 dubbed a “benzene regulatory response,” comprising a “childhood leukemia review” and “child-to-adult sensitivity to benzene” analysis, for a total of $30,000.

By then, the scientific evidence on benzene and leukemia in adults was well-established. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, studies of Italian shoe and leather workers indicated a relationship between the chemical and the cancer. Then, in 1977, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, launched a seminal study of two Goodyear plants in Ohio that made Pliofilm, a thin rubber wrap. The research quantified for the first time the leukemia risk for workers exposed to benzene, prompting OSHA to work on a stricter standard that took effect in 1987.

In years since, the science has solidified. Recent research has shown lower and lower levels of the chemical — less than the OSHA limit of 1 part per million — can cause leukemia as well as other blood and bone marrow disorders.

By contrast, experts say, the research on benzene and childhood leukemia isn’t as conclusive. Multiple studies have indicated that children whose mothers were exposed to benzene-containing solvents during pregnancy experience elevated risks of developing the disease. Others have shown that children living near gas stations or highways — breathing in benzene in the air — face heightened risks. One 2008 study reported a significant spike in the rate of the disease in Houston neighborhoods with the highest benzene emissions.

Taken together, the nearly four dozen publications on the topic strongly suggest the carcinogen can cause leukemia as much in children as adults, experts say.

“Children aren’t another species,” said Infante, the former OSHA official who has reviewed the scientific literature for medical associations and governmental agencies. “If benzene causes leukemia in adults, why wouldn’t it cause leukemia in children?”

The scientist behind the API-commissioned analysis would likely disagree. In 2009, David Pyatt, a Colorado toxicologist with long-standing ties to the petrochemical industry, published a journal article about his review, in which he reported examining 236 studies on the relationship between benzene and childhood leukemia. Many of the studies suggesting a link “suffer from the same limitations,” he concluded, such as poorly quantified exposure estimates.

“At this point,” Pyatt wrote, “there is insufficient epidemiologic support for an association or causal connection between environmental benzene exposure … and the development of childhood [leukemia].”

Some say the review reflects a common industry tactic: Compile studies on a subject, and then shed doubt on each one by claiming the data aren’t good enough.

Pyatt did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls from the Center seeking comment; nor did the API.

In depositions, Pyatt acknowledged that he has never testified for a plaintiff in a benzene exposure case. He has worked as a consultant and defense expert for such petrochemical giants as BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell, he has said; the API has financed additional work of his on benzene, as has the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main lobby.

In a deposition taken last year, Pyatt said he wouldn’t discount benzene’s link to childhood leukemia — at least, not to acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, a type rarely found in children.

“There is no reason to think that [children] are going to be protected,” he testified. “So I would certainly think that a child can develop AML if they are exposed to enough benzene.”

In other depositions, Pyatt has conceded no link between benzene and ALL, the type that attacked Jarrett McElheney.

‘They have to stop this practice’

For the McElheneys, the extent of the benzene contamination from Southeast Terminals only came to light years after Jarrett’s chemotherapy regimen had beaten back his leukemia. Yet state and federal enforcement records pinpoint on-site releases of the chemical in 1991, a year before the family moved to the area. At the time, managers of the terminal — jointly owned and operated by BP and Unocal Corp. — discovered a leak of diesel fuel seeping through soil where an underground pipeline was buried.

Terminal employees removed 40 cubic yards of “petroleum contaminated soils,” according to a report filed by BP with the state, and recorded benzene on site at levels as high as 81 ppb. Groundwater samples showed even higher concentrations: 12,000 ppb.

State regulators found such pollution “exceeds our ‘trigger’ levels,” a 1991 letter to the company states, and requested further action.

Under Georgia law, the company was required to develop what the EPD calls a “corrective action plan,” which, among other things, would have delineated the terminal’s benzene plume, as well as identified nearby public water wells.

In a 1991 reply, BP promised the EPD it would file its plan in four months.

Nine years later — after the McElheneys had tested their well water and the EPD had issued a 2000 citation against BP for failing to submit a “timely” corrective action plan — the company finally carried out that requirement, records show.

BP, in charge of the terminal’s daily operations, declined to comment for this article. At different times, Unocal, Louis Dreyfus Energy and TransMontaigne have been BP’s partners at the site. TransMontaigne, its current partner, did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls. TransMontaigne purchased Louis Dreyfus Energy in 1998. Chevron, which merged with Unocal in 2005, declined to comment.

Today, state regulators attribute their own delay in cracking down on the diesel leak to an internal debate over which EPD division had authority over the terminal’s benzene contamination — its underground storage tank program, which has purview over the pipeline; or, its hazardous waste branch. For years, compliance officers in that branch, along with their counterparts at the EPA, had been monitoring the facility’s practice of dumping benzene-laced wastewater on site — a practice later confirmed by terminal employees in court depositions.

In 1990, the EPA issued new rules classifying benzene as hazardous waste and requiring bulk-oil terminals to have permits for discharging the “bottoms water” in petroleum tanks. This wastewater can become tainted by the chemical when mixed with gasoline. Rather than treat the water, Southeast Terminals funneled it through an “oil/water separator” to skim off fuel, and then dumped it into a ditch on the ground.

Company records at the time show that terminal supervisors admitted they drained the wastewater “direct into streams” or “a dike area which eventually drains offsite into a stream.”

“I remember thinking, ‘They have to stop this practice,’” said John Williams, an EPD environmental specialist who inspected the terminal in 1993 and documented the dumping.

Three months later, the EPD issued a notice of violation against Southeast Terminals, forcing supervisors to test the bottoms water. Regulators found benzene at levels four times greater than the legal limit of 0.5 ppb, prompting the EPA to take action.

“We saw an issue there,” said Darryl Hines, of the EPA’s regional office in Atlanta, explaining why officials initiated a 1997 civil enforcement action against the facility.

In its complaint, the EPA accused BP and then-partner Louis Dreyfus Energy of violating federal hazardous-waste law — disposing waste without a permit, and failing to categorize it as hazardous. The agency ordered the companies to shut down the oil/water separator, and implement a plan addressing “any groundwater contamination.”

By the time Jarrett developed leukemia a year later, the EPA had negotiated a settlement with the companies and laid out a series of requirements for cleaning up the benzene. Without admitting fault, BP and Louis Dreyfus agreed to spend at least $100,000 to remove leaking underground pipelines and install above-ground infrastructure. They also paid a penalty of $15,000.

When BP finally filed its long-delayed action plan, it revealed the presence of what EPD project officer Calvin Jones described as a “dissolved hydrocarbon” plume containing benzene — “a bigger problem than we had thought.” The chemical, concentrated at 500 ppb and counting, had spread beyond the immediate spill areas. Of greater concern to regulators, the plan identified “free product” in groundwater.

“There was actually gasoline floating on the water,” explained Jones, of the EPD’s underground storage tank program, who oversaw the facility’s protracted cleanup. Referring to gasoline’s ability to dissolve in water, he said, “You can’t get higher concentrations of benzene … than free product.”

Despite a decade-long cleanup — 35.2 million gallons of contaminated groundwater and 1,009 pounds of benzene were collected — the chemical still saturates much of the nearly 19-acre Southeast Terminals site, records show. Last year, the EPD issued a letter declaring “no further action required,” which released the companies from remediation. At the time, the state-sanctioned benzene count remained at 1,440 ppb.

Over the years, enforcement records show, company consultants and regulators alike have tried to trace the path of the wastewater at the terminal. One company analysis details a trail beginning at the property line and then spilling into adjacent woods before hitting a tributary. Another document, produced by the EPA, depicts the discharge as moving offsite through woods and into a resident’s backyard.

“It’s where the drainage flows,” said Jeffrey Pallas, deputy director of the agency’s hazardous waste division in Atlanta, who oversaw the case against BP and Louis Dreyfus, explaining that the document, complete with photographs, was only intended to verify the hazardous-waste law violations.

“We cannot substantiate from the documentation we have that the benzene left the site,” he said.

Seeking accountability

The McElheneys have seen the evidence they need to connect Southeast Terminals to the benzene in the Oakwood well — and Jarrett’s suffering. They believe all the state and federal enforcement actions have yielded few consequences for the facility’s owners. If Jarrett hadn’t gotten sick, they say, they might never have known about the benzene hazard. “The companies would have paid off their small fines,” Jill said, “and nobody would have been the wiser.”

Seeking some accountability, the family filed a lawsuit three years ago against BP, TransMontaigne and seven other previous owners, alleging that the “illegal discharge and release of toxic chemicals” at Southeast Terminals contaminated the surrounding environment and caused Jarrett to develop leukemia.

In court filings, the companies denied the allegations and dismissed any link between benzene and childhood leukemia. Last year, defense lawyers invoked a familiar tactic: They cited the Pyatt review to support their claims that the chemical couldn’t have caused Jarrett’s illness. The family recently has agreed on a settlement in principle and is working toward resolving the litigation.

“I thought, ‘This is par for the course,’” said Jill, who has read some of the industry documents uncovered by the lawsuit. “The oil industry has fought regulations and lawsuits for workers and adults. Now they’re going to do it with children.”

Jarrett is now a slight, reserved 20-year-old in remission. He remembers his bout with leukemia through a child’s eyes — the “really cool” ambulance rides, the nurses with coloring books, swinging golf clubs in hospital hallways. “I remember being stuck over and over again by needles” while getting a bone-marrow aspiration or a chest catheter or countless blood draws, he said. “But it wasn’t until much later I realized what happened to me didn’t happen to other kids.”

Today, he has had to grapple with cancer’s lasting effects — the feebleness, and the fatigue — as well as its lingering fears. As a leukemia survivor, he is at risk for developing osteoporosis, cataracts, or even another cancer. Sitting in an Olive Garden in Athens, sandwiched between his parents, Jarrett came across as exceedingly shy, uncomfortable in the limelight. Often, his parents did the speaking for him.

Moments earlier, Jill had explained how leukemia had changed her son, taken an emotional toll.

“He had a really loud voice as a toddler but that voice has mellowed,” she said. “I’ll take that voice over anything.”

Maryam Jameel contributed to this story.

Click on the link below to access the original article at the Center for Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/08/16356/new-battlefront-petrochemical-industry-benzene-and-childhood-leukemia

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A dozen dirty documents Twelve documents that stand out from the Center’s new oil and chemical industry archive

A dozen dirty documents
Twelve documents that stand out from the Center’s new oil and chemical industry archive

By Kristen Lombardi for The Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity, along with researchers from Columbia University and the City University of New York, on Thursday posted some 20,000 pages of internal oil and chemical industry documents on the carcinogen benzene.

This archive, which will grow substantially in 2015 and beyond, offers users a chance to see what corporate officials were saying behind the scenes about poisons in the workplace and the environment.

Here are 12 examples of what the petrochemical industry knew about benzene; the impetus behind industry-sponsored science; and the corporate spin that often occurs when damning evidence against a chemical threatens companies’ bottom lines.

What the industry knew:

The industry knew the dangers of benzene exposure at both high and low concentrations, as illustrated by this 1943 report for Shell Development Company by a University of California researcher.

“Inasmuch as the body develops no tolerance to benzene, and as there is a wide variation in individual susceptibility, it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.” That was a conclusion reached in a 1948 toxicological review of benzene prepared for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association.

Benzene’s dangers known in 1943 (pg 2)
This 1943 report, prepared for Shell, is among the earliest to suggest that any prolonged exposure to benzene may be harmful.

No safe exposure level (pg 4) This 1948 review, prepared for the oil industry’s main trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, continues to torment the industry in litigation alleging benzene can cause various types of leukemia and other diseases of the blood-forming organs. In essence, it says the chemical is so potent that there is no safe exposure level.

A 1950 consultant’s memo to Shell lists benzene as having “established carcinogenic qualities.”

Benzene recognized as a well-known carcinogen (pg 1)

This 1950 memorandum from a consultant for Shell Development Company notes that benzol — an obsolete name for benzene — is a well-known carcinogen. As the author states, the memo was prompted by “an increased concern about the incidence of cancer” among Shell workers.

Motivations for industry involvement in research:

In 1995, a benzene study by the National Cancer Institute caught the attention of Exxon scientists, who closely monitored it.

Industry interest in cancer research (pg 1)
An Exxon scientist, B.F. Friedlander, explains that he and industry colleagues are “monitoring” a series of studies by the National Cancer Institute because of their focus on “health risks at low benzene exposures.” The memo shows the petrochemical industry’s early interest in the work of the NCI, which has examined the effects on Chinese workers exposed to benzene at levels below the legal occupational limit in the United States.

While attempting to gain support for a proposed study of benzene toxicity in Shanghai, China, the American Petroleum Institute cites “a tremendous economic benefit” to companies, which could gain data to combat “onerous regulations.” A project overview explains that publications linking benzene to childhood leukemia may cause concerns about the chemical to “resurface.”

‘Tremendous economic benefit’ from the industry study (pg 1)
The six-page overview touts the proposed Shanghai research as a way for the petrochemical industry to gain an “accurate understanding” of benzene’s health effects, which, in turn, would bring “tremendous economic benefit.”

A 2000 summary of the API’s research strategy, drafted by the group’s Benzene Task Force, explains that the research program “is designed to protect member company interests.” The anticipated results could “significantly ameliorate further regulatory initiatives” to curb benzene emissions.

Protecting industry interests (pg 2)

The summary describes the intent of the API’s research program as being “designed to protect member company interests.”

An email exchange explains how “HSE [health, safety and environment] issues surrounding benzene as well as the litigation claims” against the industry compel companies to participate in the industry-sponsored study.

Motivations for research (pg 2)
An email from one Shell executive argues that the “litigation claims we continue to see” are prime reasons for the company to spend millions of dollars on the proposed Shanghai research.

A PowerPoint presentation from 2001 lists “significant issues of concern” to encourage financial support for the API’s research on benzene-exposed workers in China. Among them is “litigation alleging induction of various forms of leukemias and other hematopoietic diseases.” The study, according to the presentation, could provide “strong scientific support for the lack of a risk of leukemia or other hematological diseases at current ambient benzene concentrations to the general population.”

Significant issues of concern (pg 3)
This PowerPoint slide suggests “significant issues of concern” that the proposed Shanghai research might help combat, which would save the petrochemical industry “millions of dollars in expenses.” The issues include more stringent regulations and litigation from benzene exposure.

“Litigation support” and “risk communication” are listed as goals in this 2007 memorandum describing an API risk management program. Further objectives are to establish current regulations as “protective” and avoid additional action.

Oil lobby’s risk management program (pg 1)
The memorandum details the oil lobby’s benzene “risk management” program, intended to “develop scientific data” for it and its member companies to use for “science advocacy” and “litigation support.”

Corporate spin

An undated litigation defense guide written by a senior Shell attorney acknowledges the 1948 report on leukemia and offers a “comprehensive strategy” on how to respond to litigation, including releasing benzene-related documents only on court order.

Acknowledgement of the science showing no safe levels of benzene (pg 4)

Here the author, Richard O. Faulk of Shell Oil’s legal department, references a 1948 Toxicological Review prepared for the American Petroleum Institute. The review found that “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

After a draft of an API recruitment brief reminds potential study sponsors of “personal injury claims,” an email exchange among members of the Benzene Health Research Consortium urges deletion of “the reference to legal liabilities.”

Don’t mention the legal liabilities (pg 3)

This email from a Shell executive responds to an attached draft of a 2002 recruitment brief that reminds prospective donors about benzene liability costs. In the email, the executive urges colleagues to delete “the reference to legal liabilities” and emphasizes that “the only reason we are doing this is in support of protecting workers.”

A 2001 email from the consortium’s communications committee explains that the perception of the study “needs to be that this is not being done to protect against litigation”

Controlling the message on benzene (pg 1)

The email shows the companies behind the Benzene Health Research Consortium working hard to control their message. It lays out the “scope of public affairs” for the consortium’s communications committee, which includes countering any “perception” that the Shanghai study was “done to protect against litigation.”

Click on the link below to access original article and archival documents.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/05/16361/dozen-dirty-documents

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“Internal documents reveal industry ‘pattern of behavior’ on toxic chemicals” by David Heath

Internal documents reveal industry ‘pattern of behavior’ on toxic chemicals by David Heath for The Center for Public Integrity

Sixty-six years ago, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health wrote a report linking leukemia to benzene, a common solvent and an ingredient in gasoline. “It is generally considered,” he wrote, “that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

The report is remarkable not only because of its age and candor, but also because it was prepared for and published by the oil industry’s main lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute.

This document and others like it bedevil oil and chemical industry executives and their lawyers, who to this day maintain that benzene causes only rare types of cancer and only at high doses.

Decades after its release, a lawyer for Shell Oil Company flagged the 1948 report as being potentially damaging in lawsuits and gave out instructions to “avoid unnecessary disclosure of sensitive documents or information” and “disclose sensitive benzene documents only on court order.”

Plaintiff’s lawyers like Herschel Hobson, of Beaumont, Texas, wield such documents in worker exposure cases to demonstrate early industry knowledge of benzene’s carcinogenic properties.

“It shows a pattern of behavior,” Hobson said. “It shows how industry didn’t want to share bad news with their employees. None of this information was made available to the average worker … Most of this stuff kind of gets lost in the weeds.”

No more. Today, the Center for Public Integrity; Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and its Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health; and The Graduate Center at the City University of New York are making public some 20,000 pages of benzene documents — the inaugural collection in Exposed, a searchable online archive of previously secret oil and chemical industry memoranda, emails, letters, PowerPoints and meeting minutes that will grow over time.

The aim is to make such materials — most of which were produced during discovery in toxic tort litigation and have been locked away in file cabinets and hard drives — accessible to workers, journalists, academic researchers and others.

Some are decades old, composed on manual typewriters; others are contemporary. Combined with journalism from the Center — such as today’s story on a $36 million benzene research program undertaken by the petrochemical industry — and articles and papers from Columbia and CUNY faculty and students, the archives will shed light on toxic substances that continue to threaten public health.

Exposed: Decades of denial on poisons

The benzene documents are just the start. In coming months, we’ll be posting hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery material from lawsuits involving lead, asbestos, silica, hexavalent chromium and PCBs, among other dangerous substances. And we’ll be on the lookout for other documents.

The inspiration for the project came when we realized that in CPI’s reporting on environmental and workplace issues, we routinely obtained reams of court documents. Often, these documents hold secrets found nowhere else.

Last year we reached out to William Baggett Jr., a lawyer in Lake Charles, Louisiana, who had acquired more than 400,000 pages of documents from a decade-long case against manufacturers of vinyl chloride, a cancer-causing chemical used in plastics. Baggett agreed to give us all of them.

At the same time, public health historians Merlin Chowkwanyun, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz were collecting court documents to create a public database and had approached Baggett. We decided to collaborate. Chowkwanyun is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and will be an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia next year. Rosner is Ronald Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and History at Columbia. Markowitz is a professor of history at the City University of New York. Both Rosner and Markowitz have served as expert witnesses in a number of major cases related to these documents and have written Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution and other books and articles based on them.

This is not the first database of its ilk. The University of California, San Francisco, maintains a massive collection of documents from tobacco-related lawsuits called the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, which exceeds 80 million pages.

How to search the documents

Our database allows you to search for a word, combination of words or an exact phrase in any of the documents. You can also:

Do a search that excludes a word by putting a ‘-‘ sign in front of the word.
Do a fuzzy search that includes variations of a word by putting a tilde ‘~’ at the end of a word with the numbers of characters that don’t have to match exactly. For example, ‘planit~2’ will match ‘planet.’
Do a search that optionally contains a word by putting a ‘|’ between the words.
Do a search with a phrase by putting double quotes around the phrase.
Each document will include the court case from which it came, including the case title, case number, court as well as date filed and date terminated. The original complaint for each lawsuit is also part of the database.

Soon, we will make available a robust set of text-mining tools that will allow researchers to construct chronologies of documents; generate lists of common words, phrases and names; and sort documents in a number of ways. Qualified researchers will also have access to an even larger set of documents that will eventually contain millions of pages.

Robert Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, has used the UCSF tobacco archive extensively to do research for several books. He called it “an unparalleled treasure” that gives researchers the ability “to look through the keyhole of the mansion of this hidden world and see [corporate officials’] private thoughts, their intent, their ruminations, their jokes, their plans, how they treat their workers, how they treat the public…”

Proctor said he sees value in a similar archive on toxic chemicals. “The internal records of the chemical industry are known only to a tiny group of lawyers and journalists,” he said. “This is going to create a new kind of democracy of knowledge. It also will set the stage for whistleblowers to come forward with documents.”

That’s our hope. The search interface includes options to send us documents or contact us. The ultimate goal, to borrow Proctor’s phrasing, will be to give users “a strong magnet to pull rhetorical needles out of archival haystacks.”

Click on the link below to access the original article at The Center for Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/04/16330/internal-documents-reveal-industry-pattern-behavior-toxic-chemicals

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Russia Blamed, US Taxpayers on the Hook, as Fracking Boom Collapses

Russia Blamed, US Taxpayers on the Hook, as Fracking Boom Collapses

By Ben Ptashnik, Truthout

As Congress removes restrictions on taxpayers bailing out the too-big-to-fail banks, the right is blaming environmentalists and Russia for the demise of the fracking boom. In reality, the banks’ junk bonds and derivatives have flooded Wall Street, and now the fracking bubble threatens another financial crisis.

Collapsing crude oil prices due to oversupply are reaching tsunami proportions, threatening Wall Street banks, investors and a dozen countries, foremost Russia, Iran and Venezuela, where revenue losses have caused severe financial degradation, and economies are about to implode. While Americans are today enjoying $2 per gallon gasoline, Wall Street’s analysts predict that an imminent energy market collapse will bring financial institutions to their knees once again, and taxpayers are being set up for another mandatory bailout.

At the heart of these tectonic shifts in the entire energy sector is the recent expansion of the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry, a boom cycle that began in earnest when Congress and the Bush administration passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempted the new horizontal drilling technology from the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. By tapping considerable quantities of new oil and gas resources from shale deposits, the fracking boom promised US energy independence, upending the world’s prevailing paradigms around renewable energy and peak oil expectations. Environmentalists fought against the huge Keystone pipeline infrastructure that would deliver the fossil fuels to foreign markets, fearing that exploiting these resources would undermine the struggle for the curbing of carbon emissions.

Fracking also threatened the dominance of Russia and Saudi Arabia as the fossil fuel suppliers of Europe when it became evident that the United States would soon become a net exporter. In the United States, fracking was hyped on Wall Street as a get-rich-quick opportunity, attracting massive capital input, and creating an investment bubble. Bloomberg reported this year that the number of bonds issued by oil and gas companies has grown by a factor of nine since 2004.

“There’s a lot of Kool-Aid that’s being drunk now by investors,” Tim Gramatovich, chief investment officer and founder of Peritus Asset Management LLC, told Bloomberg in an April 2014 article. “People lose their discipline. They stop doing the math. They stop doing the accounting,” he continued. “They’re just dreaming the dream, and that’s what’s happening with the shale boom.”

When gas fracking first popped onto the scene, grandiose claims were made that the United States had 100 years of gas supply in shale, or 2,560 trillion cubic feet. And Wall Street rode that initial estimate. The only downside (beside the environmental disaster left by this toxic industry) was that, like the housing bubble which depended on ever-growing home values to maintain profitability, shale gas wells had to deliver consistent or growing production and profitability to pay back heavy debt interest loans on well driller companies: $3 to $9 million per well. Fracking wells require not just drilling, but also huge injections of energy, water, sand and chemicals to fracture the rocks that hold the oil and gas deposits.

But in fact, no statistical evidence confirmed the hyped claims of a 100-year shale gas supply. In 2011, a study downsized this estimate from 2,560 trillion cubic feet to 750 trillion cubic feet, and by 2013, the US Geological Survey refined that down to 481 trillion cubic feet – less than a 19-year supply based on 2013 rates of production. Nevertheless, huge amounts of capital poured into increasingly marginal operations, and the fracking market was flooded with junk bonds and derivatives as investors piled in.

Meanwhile oil fracking, which is separate from gas fracking, also needed huge injections of capital, but more importantly, oil frackers needed oil prices to stay at $85 a barrel or higher on average to break even. Many of the shale oil wells that have sucked up a huge amount of investment have also turned out to have short lives and their operators required continued infusions of capital to drill new wells to keep afloat, even as prices tumbled due to the glut they themselves created. The Bakken, one of the largest oil fracking plays, is a typical example. It grew exponentially after environmental protections were removed. But since 2008, Bakken has required increasingly larger numbers of wells just to maintain level production and service debt. The industry, already in trouble in 2013, has now endured plunging revenues through a year of oil selling at $60 to $70 per barrel, on average, instead of $90 to $100.

Everyone had expected that in 2014 the Saudis would move to limit supply and maintain stable oil prices by cutting back production, as OPEC has done for decades. But an unexpected shockwave hit the industry in November 2014: The Saudis laid down the gauntlet and announced their intention to continue full production and let oil prices drop.

For the Saudis, this serves two purposes: First, it undermines the expansion of US shale oil by forcing prices down so low that many of the wells have to be shut down or lose money. Second, it punishes their enemy, Iran, whose oil export-based economy has been savaged by the lower prices. The Saudis are sitting pat, with a trillion-dollar war chest savings account accumulated over a decade of $100 per barrel oil. Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has publicly admitted that the Saudis will wait as long as needed to retain market share, even if prices plunge further.

Falling oil prices will place a huge stress on the world’s junk bond market as energy companies now account for 15 percent of the outstanding issuance in the non-investment grade bond market. The plunge in the prices of crude could trigger a “volatility shock large enough to trigger the next wave of defaults,” according to Deutsche Bank.

This explains why the Obama administration – with complicity of both congressional Democrats and Republicans – managed in the wee hours of the morning to slip a loophole into the supposedly “must-pass” cliff-hanger omnibus budget bill. This toxic Trojan horse, passed in December 2014, now includes a minor footnote provision that might cause taxpayers to pick up the tab on more than a trillion dollars (yes, trillion) if the energy market bubble implodes, which it must if oil stays at half the price it fetched just six months ago.

After last minute, heavy lobbying on the budget bill by Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and an army of 3,000 Wall Street lobbyists, it appears that once again sufficient insecurity and fear had been spread among the political class regarding destabilization of the financial markets (or withdrawal of campaign financing). They allowed a last minute amendment that killed Dodd-Frank protections, and allowed US taxpayers to be shaken down to cover Wall Street’s shale gambling debacle.

The heavy-handed move by the financial industry has outraged progressives and libertarians alike. It seems that these Wall Street criminals, like junkies attached to their drugs of choice, just could not resist the high of easy cash from Ponzi scheme market bubbles, and so they have stuck it to the US public once again: Preposterously huge bonuses, Porsches, pricey call girls, and million-dollar Manhattan condos were at stake. So hey, why should they kick the habit? After all, not a single one of those con artists went to jail last time.

Wall Street is now flooded with fracking industry derivatives contracts that protect the profits of oil producers from dramatic swings in the marketplace. Derivatives are essentially insurance policies taken out by the oil industry to guard against fluctuations in the cost of fossil fuel supplies. Dramatic swings rarely happen, but when they do they can be absolutely crippling.

Derivatives taken out to ensure prices don’t go down are now creating billions in losses for those who sold such bets on the market; someone is going to have to absorb massive losses created by the sudden drop in oil on the other end of those insurance contracts. In many cases, it is the big Wall Street banks, and if the price of oil does not rebound substantially they could be facing colossal losses.

The big Wall Street banks did not expect plunging home prices to implode the mortgage-backed securities market in 2008, but their current models also did not have $60 oil prices included in projections. The huge losses may send a shock wave into the entire financial industry. It has been estimated that the six largest “too-big-to-fail” banks control $3.9 trillion in commodity derivatives contracts, those same gambling instruments that brought us the 2008 housing collapse. And a very large chunk of that amount is made up of oil derivatives. Combined with the huge flood of shale junk bonds on the market, the derivatives could initiate a bubble burst that could turn into a financial market implosion.

Meanwhile, the global climate change issue and energy market turbulence have morphed into geopolitical tensions over European fracking. Unsubstantiated allegations in a New York Times report by Andrew Higgins claim that the Russians are funding anti-fracking protests to maintain their hegemony over gas markets.

The allegations have infuriated environmentalists and climate justice activists. The last thing they want is to be made scapegoats for the fracking collapse and be played as the neo-Cold War dupes of the Russian empire. But memories of red-baiting suddenly hang in the air as (by seeming coincidence) dozens of right-wing media sites regularly devoted to anti-Soviet slanders or climate change denial immediatelypicked up Higgins’ Times piece, as if on cue.

There are now dozens more of such published reports. Even as the US fracking industry collapses and tensions over control of Ukraine and other former Soviet satellites re-emerge, there seems to be a concerted right-wing effort to label fracking opponents Russian agents.

Vague innuendos dominate this narrative. In the Times piece, for example, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is quoted: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engage actively with so-called non-government organizations.” Others write, “Some in Sophia believe” or “Those who suspect Russian involvement” or “There’s no smoking gun, yet . . .”

Critics in Romania accused the Times and Higgins of scapegoating environmentalists and acting as partisan players in a renewed Cold War.

“What, exactly, is the grand total of evidence that Russia is financing these anti-fracking protests?” asks American blogger in Romania, Sam C. Roman, in his article, “Pot vs. Kettle,” pointing out that the first anti-Russia allegation came from a politician who owned land that Chevron planned to frack, and is thus losing money from the protests. “Not one allegation against Russia in the entire article is proven by a single document, piece of evidence or other direct proof. All that exists are shadowy insinuations and allegations.” He asserts that accusations by Lithuanian, Romanian and NATO officials against Russia have not yet to be backed up by any proof.

“Add it up,” Roman writes. “You’ve got two former NATO [secretary generals] stumping for Chevron (which competes with Gazprom, a Russian energy company that also conducts fracking operations in Europe) blaming the Russian government for protests. . . . And all of this tied up in a neat little bow by an American journalist who has already been caught publishing anti-Russian propaganda in his newspaper before.”

This all leaves the United States somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the United States and NATO’s foreign policy hawks are delighted by the oil price collapse; it serves to isolate and subdue Russia, expand NATO’s influence in Eastern Europe, and puts pressure on Iran to negotiate on nuclear aspirations. Not to mention that with gasoline at $2 per gallon, consumer spending and economic growth will be enhanced. The US economy grew by a comparatively robust 5 percent in the third quarter of 2014.

According to an article by Larry Elliott in The Guardian, “Stakes Are High as US Plays the Oil Card Against Iran and Russia,” the price drop was an act of geopolitical warfare by the United States, administered by the Saudis. Elliott suggests that US Secretary of State John Kerry allegedly struck a deal with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in September. That might explain how oil prices dropped during the crisis caused by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which would normally have caused prices to rise.

It would also explain why the Obama administration allowed the financial industry the amendment to Dodd-Frank that effectively exempts financial institutions from liability associated with derivatives. Though shale derivatives were not specifically mentioned by the Wall Street lobbyists as they pressured their allies in Congress and the White House, it is becoming increasingly clear that the too-big-to-fail banks were beginning to panic as dark clouds gathered on the horizon in the shale derivatives trade.

Most bank customers and voters don’t know that Congress has already written into finance regulations that, in the case of insolvency, financial institutions could grab the assets of depositors and “bail-in” – which means they can save themselves from their losses in gambling operations at their investment divisions by grabbing cash assets of depositors, even those that are FDIC guaranteed, and legally convert them to bank stocks. That means that in the event of another market crash, Chase and Citi could take their depositors’ cash in savings accounts or CDs, and give the customers back a bank stock certificate (of questionable value) instead.

There are also those who scratch their heads and ask, “Why did the TBTF banks push for a deletion of the Dodd-Frank provision now, instead of waiting for the friendlier Republican-controlled Congress to pass this legislation?” The only answer that seems to make sense, and explain their urgency, is that the collapse is imminent.

In the 1990s dot-com craze, every new Silicon Valley start-up company was advertised as the next Microsoft. What followed was the crash of 2000, when the NASDAQ dropped 4,000 points (80 percent) in months. This chart below is what the crash looked like in 2000 to 2002 after the market had reached 5,000 (almost exactly where it stands today).

Having learned their lesson well from the last bailout, and knowing that they will have a much harder time coming to Congress hat-in-hand after a collapse, the TBTF banks probably decided not to wait, pushing their minions in the Beltway to inoculate them as soon as possible from the potential market explosion.

In the meantime, they were probably dumping their own stocks on unsuspecting investors. Based on year-end reports for March 31, 2014, for 127 major oil companies, cash input for the fracking industry was $677 billion, while revenues from operations only totaled $568 billion – a difference of almost $110 billion. And this was before the price of oil started dropping six months ago.

In three out of seven major fracking fields in North America, companies are already reporting losses, with closures particularly acute in Canada. It’s not clear whether economists fully appreciate what’s about to transpire. This decline in rig count is just the beginning. Perhaps the end will come as early as this winter or spring, as fiscal reports for 2014’s fourth quarter are published, operations shut down, crews are laid off, and many unprofitable oil and gas rigs are mothballed.

So, whom will the banks, brokers and investors scapegoat for this upcoming crash? Some predict that they will likely use every available media outlet to blame community activists, Democrats and Obama for stopping the Keystone pipeline and for opposing the fracking industry. And as in the climate change denier movement, the narrative will probably use “communist” and “socialist” rhetoric, which is why the Russian card is so important to play: Hence the Higgins article.

The pundits on Fox will likely play on the patriotism of the right and use their Big Lie ploy (say something enough times, it becomes the truth) to the hilt. Six months from now, while studiously avoiding mention of our “allies,” the Saudis, or the Wall Street banks, they will likely be vociferously defending those poor “beleaguered US oilmen” who could have made our country strong and independent again in energy, but were broken by the Democrats and those “commie environmentalists” working for Putin. The market crash will be blamed on the “climate hoax.”

BEN PTASHNIK

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28406-russia-blamed-us-taxpayers-on-the-hook-as-fracking-boom-collapses

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THE SKY IS PINK – Short film by Josh Fox regarding Hydraulic Fracturing & New Anti-Fracking Film by Gasland’s Josh Fox Targets Cuomo: ‘Governor, What Color Will the Sky Be Over New York?’ RS Politics Daily by: Jeff Goodell

THE SKY IS PINK – Short film by Josh Fox regarding Hydraulic Fracturing

New Anti-Fracking Film by Gasland’s Josh Fox Targets Cuomo: ‘Governor, What Color Will the Sky Be Over New York?’

Rolling Stone Politics Daily

by: Jeff Goodell

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of the great state of New York, I’d like you to meet Josh Fox. As you may know, Josh, who is 39, wrote and directed a film called Gasland, which I’m sure is at the top of your Netflix queue. In 2010, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and helped bring the world’s attention to the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking. To put it another way, Josh is the guy who is largely responsible for the political minefield that you now find yourself tip-toeing through as you consider whether or not to lift the moratorium on fracking in New York State.

FYI, Josh is working on a sequel for HBO, called Gasland 2, which will be out later this year. But meanwhile, he has written and directed The Sky Is Pink – a short (18-minute) film that is, well, just for you, governor. You can watch it below.

I know fracking is a subject you’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. In 2008, your predecessor, David Paterson, signed the moratorium on fracking in New York State, pending environmental review. Since then, we have all learned a lot about the risks of fracking – about how the toxic chemicals used can migrate into drinking water, about how methane can leak out of well casements, about the danger of disposing of billions of gallons of polluted wastewater the process produces. I know you have had teams of scientists from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation studying all this. I‘m sure you have had teams of lobbyists from big gas companies like Chesapeake Energy pushing you and your team hard to declare fracking “safe” and to lift the moratorium ASAP.

Last week, someone in your administration – I won’t try to guess who! – leaked details of your administration’s plan to allow fracking to the New York Times. I’ll give you this: You didn’t allow Chesapeake and the other gas industry thugs to roll you entirely; among other things, the plan limits fracking to five counties in the southern tier of the state and places restrictions on drilling near drinking water supplies. Obviously, you’re trying to appear rational and pragmatic about all this, talking about following “the science” while balancing economic development with environmental and public health concerns.

Well, guess what? When it comes to fracking, there isn’t much “science” to follow yet – there’s mostly just industry-funded propoganda. Not only that, but there are a whole lot of people in your state who don’t want you to balance anything. They’ve seen what has happened in Pennsylvania where the gas companies have run wild and they fear that once the drillers get their bits into the ground in New York, it’s a mad rush to ruin.

This reaction from Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper – the Delaware River is part of the New York watershed – is pretty typical: “How can Governor Cuomo consider allowing shale gas development when the state’s environmental study is so riddled with holes and unaddressed pollution and public health issues? How can Governor Cuomo allow shale gas drilling in New York when he can see how many citizens and communities are getting sick, hurt and traumatized from the practice in other states? And how can New York pretend it is safe to drill in some counties and not in others – especially when science shows the pollution problems are the result of drilling and fracking shale formations, not where or how deep these well bores go?”

Fred LeBrun, a political columnist at the Albany Times Union, noticed that you seemed taken aback by the ferocity of the reaction to your proposal: “Once the story of the state’s supposed plan was in play, the governor went out of his way to neither confirm nor deny it was correct, yet he couldn’t stop talking around it while never really saying anything. At least not believable. “What came out was vintage Cuomo’s Deli, where you can get any cold cut you want as long as it’s baloney, sliced anyway you want to hear it.”

These are treacherous waters for you, governor. Remember all the trouble your dad had with the anti-nuke activists on Long Island in the 1980s? Fracking could be a similar quagmire for you, especially given your immodest aspirations to the Oval Office.

Anyway, the guy you really gotta come to terms with is Josh Fox. Because this little film about the troubles with fracking in New York is pretty damn good. Among other things, he’s got some damning info from the industry on well failures that you might want to have a look at. Whatever you think of the film, one thing is for sure: It’s gonna be seen by a lot of people – a lot of voters, governor. So as you ponder how and when to lift the ban on fracking in New York, give it a look. Journalists like myself will be interested to hear your response to the question Josh addresses to you at the end of the film: “Governor Cuomo, what color will the sky be over New York?”

To access Rolling Stone article click on the link below.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/new-anti-fracking-film-by-gaslands-josh-fox-targets-cuomo-governor-what-color-will-the-sky-be-over-new-york-20120620?print=true

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Chemicals in Natural Gas Operations by TEDX (Hydraulic Fracturing, Drilling, & Pit Chemicals)

Chemicals in Natural Gas Operations

INTRODUCTION

As natural gas production rapidly increases across the U.S., its associated pollution has reached the stage where it is contaminating essential life support systems – water, air, and soil – and causing harm to the health of humans, wildlife, domestic animals, and vegetation. This project was designed to explore the health effects of products and chemicals used in drilling, fracturing (frac’ing, or stimulation), recovery and delivery of natural gas. It provides a glimpse at the pattern(s) of possible health hazards posed by the chemicals being used. There are hundreds of products in current use, the components of which are, in many cases, unavailable for public scrutiny and for which we have information only on a small percentage. We therefore make no claim that our list is complete.

Toxic chemicals are used at every stage of development to reach and release the gas. Drilling muds, a combination of toxic and non-toxic substances, are used to drill the well. To facilitate the release of natural gas after drilling, approximately a million or more gallons of fluids, loaded with toxic chemicals, are injected underground under high pressure. This process, called fracturing (frac’ing or stimulation), uses diesel-powered heavy equipment that runs continuously during the operation. One well can be frac’ed 10 or more times and there can be up to 28 wells on one well pad. An estimated 30% to 70% of the frac’ing fluid will resurface, bringing back with it toxic substances that are naturally present in underground oil and gas deposits, as well as the chemicals used in the frac’ing fluid. Under some circumstances, nothing is recovered.

Drilling or reserve pits are found on most well pads. They hold used drilling muds, frac’ing fluids and the contaminated water (produced water) which surfaces with the gas. Produced water is found in most regions where gas is extracted and continues to surface for the life of the well (20 to 30 years). It is a common practice to haul it in “water trucks” to large, central evaporation pits. Many of the chemicals found in drilling and evaporation pits are considered hazardous wastes by the Superfund Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Upon closure, every pit has the potential to become a superfund site.

Potable and arable water resources in the West are already marginal and especially vulnerable to contamination. Mountain watersheds that provide drinking and irrigation water for vast numbers of people downstream are at risk of contamination as a result of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leasing of hundreds of thousands of acres of underground mineral and gas resources to energy developers. Just as there is no accounting for what happens to the millions of gallons of fluids used to drill and fracture each well, there is no accounting for the source of the water being taken to complete these processes, how much of the fluid is water, and where and in what condition it is returned to the watershed.

In addition to the land and water contamination issues, at each stage of production and delivery, tons of toxic volatile compounds, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, etc., and fugitive natural gas (methane), escape and mix with nitrogen oxides from the exhaust of diesel-driven, mobile and stationary equipment to produce ground-level ozone. Ozone combined with particulate matter less than 2.5 microns produces smog (haze). Gas field produced ozone has created a serious air pollution problem similar to that found in large urban areas, and can spread up to 200 miles beyond the immediate region where gas is being produced. Ozone not only causes irreversible damage to the lungs, it is equally damaging to conifers, aspen, forage, alfalfa, and other crops commonly grown in the West. Adding to this is the dust created by fleets of diesel-driven water trucks working around the clock hauling the constantly accumulating condensate water from well pads to central evaporation pits.

All meaningful environmental oversight and regulation of the natural gas production was removed by the executive branch and Congress in the 2005 Federal Energy Appropriations Bill. Without restraints from the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and CERCLA, the gas industry is steamrolling over vast land segments in the West. Exploitation is so rapid that in less than 6 months in one county, 10 new well pads were built on the banks of the Colorado River, the source of agricultural and drinking water for 25 million people downstream. Spacing has dropped from one well pad per 240 acres to one per 10 acres. From the air it appears as a spreading, cancer-like network of dirt roads over vast acreage, contributing to desertification.

Drilling & Fracturing Chemicals in Natural Gas Operations by TEDX

DRILLING CHEMICALS

The information here is based on chemicals used in drilling a natural gas well, Crosby 25-3, in Park County, Wyoming. Natural gas, petroleum condensate, and drilling fluids were accidentally released from the ground adjacent to the well due to a breach in the surface casing. This occured over a period of about 58 hours between August 11 and 13th, 2006.

Click here to download a summary of the products and chemicals used to drill the Crosby 25-3 well (PDF).

Click here to download an EXCEL spreadsheet of the chemicals used to drill the Crosby 25-3 well.

FRACTURING CHEMICALS

Fracturing, frac’ing, and stimulation are terms used to describe a process commonly used to facilitate the release of natural gas and to improve production. In this process, depending on the geology of the region, as much as one million gallons of fluid or more are injected underground under extremely high pressure to open up fractures in the strata being mined. The fluids used in this process are composed of water and a variety of chemicals.

Click here to download a summary of the products and chemicals used to fracture natural gas wells (PDF).

Click here to download an EXCEL spreadsheet of chemicals used to fracture natural gas wells.

PIT CHEMICALS

Several different types of pits are used in natural gas operations. Drilling pits are earthen-bermed reservoirs on the well pad used for storage of discarded fluids from drilling, fracturing or other processes. These might be lined with heavy plastic sheeting, or unlined. Large evaporation pit complexes are used to dispose of water stripped from the natural gas as it surfaces, and the fluids from the drilling pits. These pits can be either commercial, servicing many drilling companies, or private, operated by one company. Natural gas processing plants also use pits to dispose of the water used to “wash” the gas before it leaves the refinery.

In 2007, an industry committee comprised of 19 oil and gas companies operating in New Mexico sponsored a sampling and analysis program (SAP) of pit solids. The SAP was completed by a third party consultant and analytical laboratory. The SAP focused on six drilling reserve pits in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico and the Permian Basin of southeast New Mexico prior to closure. TEDX’s analysis of the chemicals, their relevance to national toxics lists, and an EXCEL spreadsheet (which can be downloaded, searched and sorted as needed) are provided below.

Click here to download a summary of chemicals found in six drilling reserve pits in New Mexico (PDF).

Click here to download a summary of chemicals on national toxics lists found in the New Mexico pits (PDF).

Click here to download an EXCEL spreadsheet of chemicals found in six drilling reserve pits in New Mexico.

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Gasland by Josh Fox – 2010 Documentary (Hydraulic Fracturing/Fracking)

Gasland trailer

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(Public record under freedom of information act! WordPress Admin cannot remove what is public record.)Jim Ford (Federal Relations Director of the American Petroleum Institute) Directives for Bush Administration Regarding Energy Policy Implementation March 20, 2001

Jim Ford (Federal Relations Director of the American Petroleum Institute) Directives for Bush Administration Regarding Energy Policy Implementation) March 20, 2001 to Joseph Kelliher (Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy)

From Jim Ford to Joseph Kelliher

March 20, 2001

Subject: Statement on Energy Policy Implementation

Importance: High

As we discussed, please find attached short paper on the U.S. oil and natural gas supply situation, together with a list of steps that the Administration could take to alleviate the situation. I will send you additional materials under separate cover.

Jim Ford
Federal Relations Director
American Petroleum Institute

Available Administrative Actions on National Energy Policy in the Oil and Natural Gas Sectors

Require Executive Branch agencies to avoid significant adverse energy consequences in proposing regulatory and other administration actions.

Require Executive Branch agencies to review existing rules and policies and revise them as necessary to eliminate significant adverse energy consequences.

Make energy policy a key assignment for a senior White House aide.

Direct the Interior Department, in consultation with other federal land management agencies and the Energy Department, to complete the inventory of federal oil and natural gas resources mandated by the 2000 amendments to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

Direct the Energy Department, in consultation with the federal public land management agencies, to identify administration barriers to timely exploration and development of federal oil and gas resources and take steps to remove those barriers.

Provide a “strike force” to complement existing staff of public land management agencies to immediately reduce the tremendous backlog of pending applications for permits to develop federal and oil leases, to revise resource management plans, and to complete required environmental analyses. Ultimately, provide adequate staffing/resources to maintain and expedited timetable for these activities.

Direct the Interior Department to expand royalty-in-kind (RIK) programs onshore and offshore, with any RIK oil to be transferred into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Maintain the December 2001 schedule for OCS Lease Sale 181.

Grant California’s request to the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver from the Clean Air Act’s oxygen mandate for reformulated gasoline.

Ensure that the first annual report from the advisory group to EPA on technological feasibility (equipment and construction resources) of the on-road diesel sulfur rule includes meaningful conclusions and recommendations that the agency can use quickly to decide whether modifications should be made to avoid adverse fuel supply and price consequences.

Direct the Labor Department, in consultation with the Energy Department, to develop recommendations for a job training program designed to fill employment needs in the oil and natural gas industry.

Direct the Office of Management and Budget to determine whether fiscal 2001 funds could be reprogrammed to increase grants to states for low-income heating and weatherization assistance.

Direct OMB to determine whether funds could be reprogrammed to ensure full funding of U.S. Coast Guard nautical charting programs and Corps of Engineers harbor maintenance activities to ensure that tankers can move needed petroleum products safely and expeditiously.

The information above can be located on Page 16 of 26. There were a couple of typos – I did not correct them.

SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT

Hydraulic fracturing is a vital technology that is used in over half of the natural gas wells in the country. Current litigation over the regulation of this activity could dramatically increase the cost of this technology and limit natural gas production in some areas of the country. Clarification is needed for the Safe Drinking Water Act’s underground injection control provisions to exclude coverage of hydraulic fracturing. This would allow states to continue to regulate hydraulic fracturing under their oil and gas regulatory programs.

Recommendation: Amend Section 1421 (d)(1) of the Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300 h (d)) to clarify that the term underground injection does not include hydraulic fracturing similar to S. 724 in the 106th Congress.

Located on Page 20

To access these extraordinary documents click on the link below. Special thanks to the NRDC for making these available for public viewing by utilizing the Freedom for Information Act.

Jim Ford (Federal Relations Director of the American Petroleum Institute) Bush Administration Directives Regarding Energy policy Implementation) March 20, 2001

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