![]() ![]() But in 2021, the agency determined “additional evaluation of the potential for oil and gas-derived waste to radiologically impact landfill leachate was necessary.” The oil and gas industry says it maintains strong radiation protocols with its waste and references a 2016 Pennsylvania DEP study that found “little or limited potential for radiation exposure to workers or the public” from fracking operations. The Allegheny Front receives support from Duquesne University. The recent study was funded by The Heinz Endowments and the Park and Colcom foundations, which also fund The Allegheny Front. “The release of liquid and solid wastes that contain radioactive material may pose risks to public health from oil and gas, but the fate of these radioactive contaminants and their impact on human exposure and health is not well-understood,” Deziel said. Nicole Deziel, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study, said its findings were “consistent with other literature” on the impacts of fracking, such as a recent Harvard study funded by the EPA that found radioactivity of ambient particles was higher downwind of unconventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and her own study, funded by the EPA and National Institutes of Health, which found Pennsylvania children living near fracking sites at birth were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed at ages 2-7 with leukemia than those who did not live near oil and gas activity. “If there’s more and more of this waste…it’s going to be around for a long time.” Study is ‘consistent with other literature’ “It’s a problem because you really need to know how much of this stuff is being taken,” Stolz said. This could make it difficult to assess environmental impacts, Stolz said. “Reporting of waste receipt in landfill reports was inconsistent and incomplete,” the study found. The researchers could not find reports for more than 800,000 tons of fracking waste sent to landfills in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. The paper also found large data gaps in oil and gas waste reports in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. “It has all the chemistry and characteristics, including that it is radioactive, and was being shipped down to the local wastewater treatment plant.” “When we analyzed the leachate from that landfill, it looks like oil and gas waste,” Stolz said. One landfill in Westmoreland County, which has been fined by the state for sending polluted leachate to a nearby sewage treatment plant, had high levels of pollutants commonly found in oil and gas waste. “They are turning these sanitary landfills into toxic waste dumps that are going to need remediation in the future because of the build-up of this material ,” Stolz said. Study co-author John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University, said this waste could accrue over time in landfills, causing problems down the road. New York state, for instance, recently tightened its requirements for fracking waste by classifying it as hazardous waste, thereby limiting the types of facilities that can accept it. A 2011 analysis by federal scientists found liquid waste from Marcellus wells had concentrations of radium roughly 40 times what the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission classifies as “hazardous” or “radioactive” waste.īut a loophole in federal law means oil and gas waste is not considered hazardous and can be disposed of at a variety of landfills, though some states have tighter requirements. ![]() Those cuttings are high in naturally occurring radioactive materials. “It’s not acceptable to discharge it to waterways.” Why fracking waste isn’t considered hazardousįracking a well in the Marcellus or Utica shale creates thousands of tons of drill cuttings - basically, dirt and rocks excavated to build the well. ![]() “We need to have a safeguard so we can say, okay, you need to do something else with that leachate,” he said. He said the state should make the treatment plants test for markers of oil and gas waste, including radioactivity, but also salts and heavy metals associated with drilling wastes, to ensure they aren’t just passing pollutants into the environment. While landfills must test leachate for radium and other markers of oil and gas waste, wastewater treatment plants don’t. The study appeared in the journal “Ecological Indicators.” DEP to require landfills to test for radioactivity from fracking waste.How did fracking contaminants end up in the Monongahela River? A loophole in the law might be to blame. ![]()
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