RADIOACTIVITY EXPOSES WORKERS AND ACCUMULATES IN SOIL, PLANTS & LIVESTOCK

Fracking waste has been reused for a variety of purposes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, providing direct evidence of the the significant harms of fracking waste reuse. Those harms include increased rates of cancer in downstream populations, even after waste was treated, airborne radiation from steam used in the treatment process, sickness and death of treatment plant and oil field workers handling the waste, elevated levels of radiation downstream from treatment plants (200 times higher than upstream!), and radioactivity bioaccumulating, particularly through what is known as the “beef/milk pathway,” all the way through to infant formula.

 

One of the most dangerous radionuclides found in “produced water” is radium, which mimics calcium in the body, causing it to be absorbed into our bones. A 2022 study showed that radium levels in fracking waste from the Permian range from around 800 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) to more than 1500 pCi/L. The EPA has a specific level of radium at which they define a liquid waste stream as “radioactive” - 60 pCi/L.

 

That means so-called "produced water" from the Permian can officially be labeled radioactive waste. 

 

According to the National Academy of Sciences “There is no safe threshold for radiation...The health risks – particularly the development of solid cancers in organs – rise proportionally with exposure.” The more radiation a population is exposed to, the more cancer we can expect in that population. And yet NMED not only proposes to allow “demonstration projects” and “industrial projects” for fracking waste reuse, but provides absolutely no scientific standards or testing requirements.

 

As one fracking waste transport hauler who had been working in the oil field for four years told Justin Nobel, the award winning journalist who authored opposing testimony against NMED's proposed reuse rule: “My fingertips and lower face is numb, like I been to the dentist. The joint pain is like fire, and my fillings are coming out.” He knows some symptoms are hard to attribute, like the nausea, constant pressure on his temple, swelling of his lymph nodes, blood that doesn’t seem to clot as quickly and the heart attack he had not so long ago at the well pad, but he warned: “By the time the government gets off their asses, if they ever get off their asses, how much damage has been done that can’t be undone? There is no reversing this, ever.”