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Editor's Note: On Preventing the Preventable Suffering
Friends,
A remarkable achievement of science over the past 25 years is hard evidence that much of human suffering can be prevented. For example, thirteen years ago, SEHN’s science director, Dr. Ted Schettler co-authored a volume entitled Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging. The authors showed that the risk of key diseases of old age, including Alzheimers and Parkinsons, was substantially reduced in people with lower exposures to a variety of environmental chemicals and pollutants.
Ted’s report has unfortunately been validated by many newer studies, including a number showing that exposure to air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is consistently linked to an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia. And, as I was writing this, another study was published concluding that “Elderly people living near or downwind from unconventional oil and gas wells such as fracking sites are more likely to die prematurely."
We have a moral duty to prevent the preventable suffering. Where do we start in fulfilling that duty?
Consider the fact that fires, floods and hurricanes, birth defects, cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease are often caused by or made worse by some form of fossil fuel extraction, burning or use. Fossil fuels are made into toxic chemicals, including plastics, that contaminate our food and water. Climate change magnifies ordinary weather events into monstrous storms or fires.
In a remarkable Atlantic essay SEHN board member Rebecca Altman says:
“But plastics and climate aren’t separate issues. They are structurally linked problems, and also mutually compounding, with plastics’ facilities spewing climate-relevant emissions and extreme weather further dispersing plastic into the environment. Research is under way to study their interaction—the way, say, thermal stress affects how species respond to toxic exposures. But they have the same root.”
Years ago, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, then a SEHN board member, determined that fracked fossil fuels are the common root of the twin scourges of toxic chemicals and climate change. If we could end fracking then we would end the litany of suffering that is caused by those fossil fuels.
In this issue of the Networker, we tell two stories about scientists who are working to prevent the preventable suffering.
In the first essay, Sandra and Carmi Orenstein, co-authors of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking (the Compendium), document how they use the science on the health effects of fracking to support grassroots groups that work to obtain bans and moratoriums on fossil fuel extraction. All the evidence shows that the fossil fuel industry has fundamentally altered the Earth’s chemistry, causing extraordinary human health problems and wreaking climate havoc. Sandra and Carmi first gathered other medical professionals and scientists to review and report the early data on fracking in 2012, and have continued this work as the number of studies—and the evidence for harm—grew dramatically. A new edition of the Compendium will be released soon, and we are taking this opportunity to look back at how science can influence policy and guide action. “Policy” and “action” are dry words but the right policies and actions can lead to lower rates of asthma, less contaminated water, a sporting chance at a stable climate. Health and well-being are anything but dry, as those in the path of the fracking industry have, regrettably, come to know.
In our second story, Dr. Steven Gilbert, recognizing the suffering caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, describes toxicology as the language of hazardous and broken dreams. His book A Small Dose of Toxicology equips the layperson with the keys to understanding toxic chemicals and how they affect living things. If you are curious about the chemicals you or your family are exposed to, Steve’s book will help you make sense of this complex field and take action to avoid harm.
Maybe these issues strike close to home for you. They do for me. This week authorities said the drinking water of my town in Iowa has “forever chemicals” – toxic chemicals that are used in household goods, fracking and fire suppression. Chemicals that are known to cause cancer, immune problems, liver damage and more. Chemicals that shatter dreams.
What do we learn from the two books featured here? It doesn’t have to be this way. We can prevent a litany of suffering.
Carolyn Raffensperger
Executive Director
The Fracking Science Compendium: Eighth Edition
By Carmi Orenstein, MPH and Sandra Steingraber, PhD
The more we learn about fracking—that set of destructive extraction methods used to force hydrocarbon bubbles trapped inside deep rock layers to rise to the surface—the worse it looks.
Ever-expanding evidence documents fracking’s harm to human health, ecological systems, and the climate itself. Methane, which leaks at every stage of oil and gas extraction, is at least 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a 20-year period and is a more powerful agent of climate destruction than had been previously appreciated. Equally alarming, as revealed by isotopic analysis and evermore accurate satellite monitoring, the North American fracking boom is driving an ongoing, accelerating surge of methane into the global atmosphere at emission rates far greater in magnitude than previously understood. Fracking is a villain, not a hero, in the story of the climate crisis.
A recent report from the United Nations itself warns us that these emissions must be stopped in order to stabilize our climate system. Reigning in carbon dioxide alone is not sufficient to avert runaway calamity; methane emissions must also be apprehended. And yet the shale and gas industry continues to ramp up operations in the United States, nearly unabated, and is now apparently on track in 2022 to have its “strongest year-over-year gain since 2006.” That is to say, only one year after the COVID-19 pandemic slashed global oil and gas demand and tanked profits, fracking is poised for a comeback. The shale gas and oil industry has stepped up its propaganda machine—greenwashing its processes and products; fighting municipal and now even statewide initiatives to ban new gas hookups; and promoting false solutions like carbon capture, utilization and storage—with far too much help from some elected officials and even current federal policy.
In sum, the United States (minus a few states) fracks on.
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Toxicology: The Language of Hazardous and Broken
By Steven G. Gilbert
As a toxicologist I am often asked exactly what is it I do as a toxicologist? Is there something I do that makes me a toxicologist after over 40 years of work? The closest I can get is to say that I prevent bad things from happening to good things. In other words, by taking a precautionary approach I try to prevent harm.
“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically (Wingspread Conference, 1998).” The primary elements of the precautionary principle can be summarized as “do no harm” and “take action even if there is uncertainty.” Epiprecaution requires us to include the entire environment of the developing and mature individual into consideration. "Do no harm" is not good enough, we must "do good." It is not sufficient to simply reduce chemical exposure, we must take the next step to create a nurturing environment.
Understanding the risks related to exposure to chemicals (or ‘risk assessment’) is not new. Early humans were careful observers of their environment and the interactions between their environment and their health. Eating a new plant may involve the risk of harm but doing nothing risked starvation. If a plant made someone of the tribe sick, people remembered that and avoided that plant in the future. Over time information about plants and other compounds was passed on to new generations by word of mouth and ultimately by careful recording of those observations -- or science!
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