Fracking: First, Do No Harm
Our country is addicted to oil and gas. In recent years the technique of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, or fracking, has gotten greater attention, both positive and negative. It is a Trojan horse, sold to us as a way to become energy independent, provide local jobs, and stimulate the economy. As an MD, I need to note that the disease, death and destruction of fracking outweighs its appeal.
Fracking is a process where a large amount of water is mixed with sand and/or chemicals that are then injected deep underground into rock formations, fracturing the geologic formations to release petroleum, natural gas, or other substances for extraction. With today’s technologies horizontal bores can be drilled for miles away from the well.
While the precursor to modern fracking has gone on for decades, the potential health and environmental risks associated with today’s fracking methodologies are significant. Since federal laws have failed to prevent fracking pollution and groundwater contamination so severe that some rural wells are now producing flammable water that literally burns, states like Illinois have been faced with attempting to regulate it.
Modern fracking across the country is so water-intensive it uses some seven billion gallons of water annually in just four western states—North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado—mixed with massive amounts of a “chemical cocktail,” many of which are known cancer-causing agents, in addition to other kidney, liver, neurologic and respiratory toxins. The industry has refused to provide the identity of many of these agents under a “trade secret” law, though studies have identified more than 600 chemicals used. This lack of transparency and inherent “trust us” attitude is suspect at best in an industry that has brought us oil spills, pipeline breaks, and environmental degradation with their associated health impacts the world over.
This process is also premised on the assumption that there will be no cross-contamination of groundwater aquifers, demonstrably false. This assumes a leak-proof “plumbing” pipeline without mention of the potential for surface ground and air quality toxin contamination. It also fails to deal with the handling and detoxification of the millions of gallons of contaminated fracking water that result.
This new fracking is happening around the country and currently is being planned for California’s rich underground petroleum deposits. The California legislature is currently developing the oversight laws to regulate this industry. Senate Bill 4 authored by Sen. Fran Pavely passed the California Senate on Wednesday. Unfortunately this law does not protect the health and wellbeing of our citizens from the chemicals being used in fracking and even has the potential to gag physicians from revealing the impacts of fracking chemicals to their effected patients and consulting medical colleagues under threat of being sued by the oil and gas industry as their “trade secret” gets out. This gift to the oil and gas industry is unethical and forces physicians to break their Hippocratic oath. Yet this already is the law in states like Pennsylvania.
When it comes to safeguarding the public health, anyone who has the potential to impact it would be well served to abide by the medical dictum of “first, do no harm.” As a family physician my responsibility is to protect the health of my patients and community. What is to be an acceptable risk for cancer and health risks of these toxins? Is it 1 in 10,000, 1 in 100,000? Who will decide? The oil and gas industry? In addressing incurable illnesses it is better to prevent what we cannot cure.
At the same time that we pursue fracking, our efforts are diverted from the bigger picture and the more pressing need to move away from our dependency on fossil fuel and toward the development of renewable forms of energy. Scientists tell us that of the existing carbon-based fuel in oil, gas and coal global reserves we can only consume ~20% before we reach the tipping point for catastrophic climate change and its resultant health implications. Without shifting the paradigm in energy sourcing, it is not a question of energy independence or whose fracking project is more favorable but more realistically a question of whose match will light the final fuse.
We have a limited time to get ahead of this process and work for real solutions to our energy needs while simultaneously protecting our health and environment. This is a time for the people to lead and the leaders to follow.
Robert F. Dodge, M.D., serves on the boards of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Beyond War, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions, and writes for PeaceVoice.
On President Obama’s Hiroshima Visit
Japan seeks not an apology or reparation but an awareness and intimate connection to the common humanity we all share and that is at once threatened by the continued existence of nuclear weapons.
Any nation that continues to keep these weapons is not more secure or powerful but rather a bully ready to threaten others and indeed themselves.
Current scientific and medical research has drawn an even closer connection between nuclear war and catastrophic climate change. We now recognize that a small regional nuclear war for example between Pakistan and India using 100 Hiroshima-size bombs and representing less than ½ percent of the global nuclear arsenals would put at risk the lives of two billion people on the planet from the global famine that would follow.
The ballistic thermonuclear weapons on a single U.S. Trident submarine can produce this same disaster. The U.S. has 14 of them, plus a fleet of land-based missiles and strategic bombers.
The old adage of MAD for Mutually Assured Destruction is now better termed SAD for Self Assured Destruction as whomever would unleash such an attack would put their own people at risk from this climate change becoming de facto suicide bombers.
We must ignore the voices who continue to promote the myth of nuclear deterrence which in reality is the greatest driver of the arms race. They do so either out of ignorance of the effects of these weapons, suicidal ideation, raging irrational hatred, or financial gain for war profiteers who make and sell these weapons of extinction.
Indeed, the continued existence of these weapons comes at a staggering financial burden as well. We are spending $4 million an hour on nuclear weapons and the Obama administration proposes the U.S. spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to pursue a second nuclear arms race that, in turn, will encourage the other nuclear powers to follow our lead and do likewise. These current and proposed massive expenditures rob future generations of critical funds needed to address their basic needs including the threat of climate change.
It is important for President Obama to meet with Hibakusha, survivors of the attack, and listen to what they are saying. For more than seven decades the Hibakusha have tried to make the world understand the full horror of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make sure that nuclear weapons are never used again. Like survivors of the Nazi Holocaust they have, over and over again, made themselves relive the most painful experiences imaginable in the hope that others will not have to suffer their fate. For decades nuclear-armed states have talked about these weapons as though they were playing some abstract game of chess. The Hibakusha make flesh and blood the real nature of nuclear war.
President Obama came to office offering the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, but since the successful negotiation of the New START treaty, which was a major step in that direction, even considering his groundbreaking Iran nuclear deal, his administration has seemingly abandoned that goal.
The United States has refused to join the growing Open Ended Working Group of more than 140 nations supporting a nuclear weapons ban treaty, just as other weapons from chemical, to biologic, and land mines have been banned.
If the President is serious about seeking a world free of nuclear weapons, we must change course. We need to abandon the trillion dollar nuclear spending spree and embrace instead the international movement to eliminate nuclear weapons and the existential threat to human survival that they pose.
In Hiroshima, we don’t need another speech. We need a new nuclear weapons policy.
We have a choice – to continue down the path of a second nuclear arms race or to abide by our legal treaty obligations as required under Article VI of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and to move toward nuclear disarmament.
So, we the people implore you, Mr. President, as you process your experience, the choice is clear. You have the opportunity to make history. Choose life Mr. President. The world longs for your leadership on this issue. This is our prescription for survival.
Robert F. Dodge, M.D., is a practicing family physician, writes for PeaceVoice, and serves on the boards of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Beyond War, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.