By Carly Casella
Residents who live downwind of fracking wells (click here) are likely being exposed to radioactive airborne particles, according to a new statistical analysis of public data.
While the levels measured in this case are not extremely dangerous, if inhaled on a regular basis, scientists worry they may cause adverse health outcomes, like lung cancer, in nearby areas.
Once these radioactive particles are in a person's body, they can continue releasing ionising radiation, possibly inducing oxidative stress and inflammation, even at the low levels observed.
Fracking is known to produce radioactive waste, usually from briny water welling up to the surface and bringing isotopes or uranium and radium up from below.
But the potential health effects of these particles are unclear and the current literature is limited. Despite many reasons to worry – including links to high-risk pregnancies, adverse birth outcomes, migraines, chronic rhinosinusitis, and severe fatigue – radioactive drilling waste from fracking is "virtually unregulated" in the United States, and both presidential candidates support the practice.
"If you asked me to go and live downwind [of fracking sites], I would not go," public health scientist Petros Koutrakis from Harvard University told The Guardian....
This is not a new base of knowledge about the oil and gas business. There has been radioactive waste from those sites for a long time. If this is STILL A PROBLEM. then the states need new legislators that aren't owned by the petroleum industry as does the federal government. This is a perfect example of why FEDERAL LEGISLATORS do not put the people first, they are owned by the petroleum industry. It is called corruption. But, hey, there are always tax dollars for cancer research. Right?
By Jodi Peterson
Bags full of radioactive oil filter socks, the nets that strain liquids during the oil production process, piled in an abandoned building in Noonan, North Dakota, in March 2014.
...As HCN reported last year, (click here) in North Dakota alone, the state’s oil and gas operations generate an estimated 70 tons a day of radioactive waste. Because the waste is often too radioactive to be disposed of in landfills, it sometimes gets dumped illegally, creating a health and environmental hazard. There’s no federal oversight of such waste; that job is left to states, many of which don’t have any regulations for handling and disposing of it.
Now, the Western Organization of Resource Councils has produced a report titled “No Time to Waste,” detailing the regulatory situation in six Western states: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. The report calls for federal regulation of radioactive oil and gas waste and more rigorous and comprehensive state standards. “Without thorough, stringent, and effective regulation of this waste stream, Western communities are left vulnerable to serious health and environmental impacts,” Bob LeResche, the WORC chair from Clearmont, Wyoming, said in a press release accompanying the report....
