On Monday this week, the independent
peer Lord Smith of Finsbury - who use to be Chris Smith, Labour MP for Islington
South & Finsbury until 2005 - was interviewed on BBC TV’s The Daily Politics lunchtime programme
on his new role as chairperson of a so-called ”independent “ inquiry into fracking,
(http://www.shaletaskforce.uk/) which
will be funded by the fracking industry.
Most recently Lord Smith has been
the chairman of the environment regulator, the Environment Agency, for 5 years until he retired at the end June
this year. Earlier he held the post of Culture Secretary for four years
from 1997 in Tony Blair’s first New Labour administration. In opposition from
1992-94 he was shadow environment secretary, as well as shadowing the heritage, pensions and health portfolios to the 1997 general election.
He told the Daily Politics presenter, Jo Coburn, who asked would he publish a
report that was critical of fracking, despite
the provenance of his inquiry’s funding,:” If that is what the evidence
points to, that is what we will say.” A week ago he told the Guardian “We will assess the existing evidence,
ask for new contributions and lead a national conversation around this vitally
important issue.” (Former Environment
Agency head to lead industry-funded fracking task force, 21 October, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/21/former-environment-agency-head-to-lead-industry-funded-fracking-task-force)
Just before he left office at the Environment
Agency, I wrote to Lord Smith about his oft repeated views in support of
fracking eg in May 2012 he said in a in a lecture to the Royal Society for the
encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce that a "useful addition"
to the UK's "energy mix" if certain requirements were met. (“Environment Agency head Lord Smith supports fracking expansion”, BBC on line, 8 May 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17987356).
National
anti-fracking group Fracked Off were unimpressed (http://frack-off.org.uk/press-release-lord-smith-demonstrates-his-contempt-for-environment/)
I specifically
raised with Lord Smith the concerns over
radon risks from fracking, as extensively aired in the US, but barely at all in
the UK, and the health hazards posed by endocrine disrupter chemicals - so
called ‘gender-bender’ chemical additives- used in fracking fluids.
In his letter of response
dated 8 July, Lord Smith, confirmed the Environment Agency was “aware of the use
of endocrine disrupters in some parts of the USA” stressing “the way we will
regulate shale gas fracking in England will reduce the risk from endocrine
disrupters by appropriate management of chemicals and the treatment and
disposal of flow back fluid.” Note he did
not say eliminate, but only “reduce the risk” of these hazardous chemicals.
On radon gas risks,
he merely passed the buck to Public Health England and the Health and Safety
Executive, two other regulatory quango, selectively citing soothing
reassurances from HPE’s recent report on the Review of the potential Public Health Impacts of Exposures to Chemical
and Radioactive Pollutants as a Result of Shale Gas Extraction Process, published
in June 2014
PHE said, inter
alia, it considered it “unlikely” that shale gas extraction and related activities
”would lead to significant exposure form outdoor radon or indoor levels in
nearby homes.”
Lord Smith offered
me the chance to discuss the matter further with the EA’s onshore oil and gas team at: uncongas@environemnt-agency.gov.uk,
which I certainly will do
Following my correspondence
with Lord Smith, six weeks ago I took up the cudgels with new Environment Secretary, Liz Truss, a
former oils & gas industry executive. Following her appearance before the Environment
Select committee, writing:
I listened very carefully to your
testimony before the Efra select committee on 10 September on
environmental impacts and implications of hydraulic fracturing. (http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=15996)
There are a number of environmental
health impacts neither committee members nor yourself raised or addressed
(although Dr Leinster mentioned radioactivity briefly in passing). I
have set out some details below, along with some supporting articles. This
should help Defra develop environmental protection policy re.fracking
through being evidence-led, as you affirmed is your position to the select
committee.
I would be very interested to know
your views as the new SOS - not your officials' views, as they have been in
post for a while - on these matters.
On
13 August this year, a team of experienced research scientists presented the
fruit of new research on fracking hazards to the 248th National Meeting of
the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Dr William Stringfellow,
an environmental engineer at the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory reported his research team – jointly with the University of
the Pacific - had scoured databases and reports to compile a list of substances
commonly used in fracking, including gelling agents to thicken the fluids,
biocides to keep microbes from growing, sand to prop open tiny cracks in the
rocks and compounds to prevent pipe corrosion.
that most fracking
compounds will require treatment before being released to the environment, and
also identified eight substances,
including biocides, as being particularly toxic to mammals.
Also, late last year, academic
researchers at the University of Missouri, released the results of research
they had conducted into the known
chemicals used in fracking. Their research paper, Estrogen and Androgen Receptor
Activities of Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals and Surface and Ground Water in a
Drilling-Dense Region, published in
the journal Endocrinology.( Volume
155 Issue 3 - March 2014 http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/en.2013-1697), found higher levels of hormone-disrupting
('gender-bender) activity in water located near fracking wells than in areas
without drilling.
Endocrine disruptors
interfere with the body's endocrine system, which controls numerous body
functions with hormones such as the female hormone estrogen and the male
hormone androgen. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as those
studied in the MU research, has been linked by other research to cancer, birth
defects and infertility.
Dr
Susan Nagel, associate
professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health at the MU School of
Medicine, put it starkly: ”More than
700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb
hormone function. With fracking on the rise, populations may face greater
health risks from increased endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure."
In addition, there is the
radiation risk from radon gas released during fracking.
One conclusion in the
report published in March this year by the public health watchdog, Public
Health England, in their Review of the Potential Public Health Impacts of Exposure
to Chemical and Radioactive Pollutants as a Result of Shale Gas Extraction, states:"If the natural gas delivery point were
to be close to the extraction point with a short transit time, radon present in
the natural gas would have little time to decay ... there is therefore, the
potential for radon gas to be present in natural gas extracted from UK
shale."
Radon
is unquestionably the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.
Moreover, Professor, James
W. Ring, Winslow Professor of Physics Emeritus, Hamilton College in New
York State stresses:
"The
radon and natural gas coming from the shale mix together and travel together as
the gas is piped to customers. This is a serious health hazard, as radon -
being a gas - is breathed into the lungs and lodges there to decay, doing
damage to the lungʼs tissue and eventually leading to lung cancer."
Hence
there is undoubtedly a risk of radon gas being pumped into citizens' homes as
part of the shale gas stream. Unless the gas is stored for up to a month to
allow the radon's radioactivity to naturally reduce, this is potentially very
dangerous.( a half-life of 3.8 days. Using the general rule of thumb of 10
half-lives to decay to 1/1000 of original concentration, that would be 38 days,
or roughly one month, depending on how radioactive it was to start.)
The Environment Secretary has still not replied to my letter,
despite a polite reminder, but she did find time last Sunday (26 October) to be
interviewed on The Sunday Politics
show, during which she again cheer-leaded for fracking. I am not encouraged.
No comments:
Post a Comment