Posted on 05/16/2012 3:05:20 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
Kay Allen had just started work, and everything seemed quiet at the Cornerstone Care community health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. But things didn't stay quiet for long.
"All the girls, they were yelling at me in the back, 'You gotta come out here quick. You gotta come out here quick,' " said Allen, 59, a nurse from Weirton, W.Va.
Allen rushed out front and knew right away what all the yelling was about. The whole place reeked — like someone had spilled a giant bottle of nail polish remover.
"I told everybody to get outside and get fresh air. So we went outside. And Aggie said, 'Kay, I'm going to be sick.' But before I get in, to get something for her to throw up in, she had to go over the railing," she said.
Nothing like this had ever happened in the 20 years that Allen has been at the clinic. After about 45 minutes, she thought the coast was clear and took everyone back inside.
"It was fine. But the next thing you know, they're calling me again. There was another gust. Well, the one girl, Miranda, she was sitting at the registration place, and you could tell she'd had too much of it. And Miranda got overcome by that and she passed out," she said.
'It's The Unknown I Think That's The Scariest Thing'
This sort of thing has been happening for weeks. Mysterious gusts of fumes keep wafting through the clinic.
In fact, just the day before being interviewed by NPR, Allen suddenly felt like she had been engulfed by one of these big invisible bubbles.
"And all of a sudden your tongue gets this metal taste on it. And it feels like it's enlarging, and it just feels like you're not getting enough air in, because your throat gets real 'burn-y.' And the next thing I know, I ... passed out," Allen said.
Half a dozen of Allen's co-workers stopped coming in. One old-timer quit. No one can figure out what's going on. For doctors and nurses used to taking care of sick people, it's unnerving to suddenly be the patients.
"It's the unknown I think that's the scariest thing," she said.
Richard Rinehart, who runs the rural clinic, can't help but wonder whether the natural gas drilling going on all around the area may have something to do with what's been happening.
"I lay in bed at night thinking all kinds of theories. Is something coming through the air from some process that they're using? I know they use a lot of chemicals and so forth. Certainly that could be a culprit. We're wondering, Is something coming through the ground?" Rinehart said, noting that he'd just noticed a new drill on a hill overlooking the back of the clinic.
Now, no one knows whether the gas drilling has anything to do with the problems at the clinic. It could easily turn out to be something completely unrelated. There's a smelting plant down the road and old coal mines everywhere.
"Anything could be possible, and we just are trying to get to the root of it," he said.
Mysterious Symptoms, Lots Of Questions
People living near gas well drilling around the country are reporting similar problems, plus headaches, rashes, wheezing, aches and pains and other symptoms.
Doctors like Julie DeRosa, who works at Cornerstone, aren't sure how to help people with these mysterious symptoms.
"I don't want to ignore symptoms that may be clues to a serious condition. I also don't want to order a lot of unnecessary tests. I don't want to feed any kind of hysteria," DeRosa said.
To try to figure out what's going on, the clinic called the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which is investigating. It also started testing the air for chemicals, monitoring wind direction around the clinic and keeping diaries of everyone's symptoms. In addition, the clinic contacted Raina Rippel, project director for the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project.
The local nonprofit was set up recently to help people in this kind of situation. Her team tested tap water from inside a men's room and from a stream out back.
Rippel says she knows people in the area have a lot of questions: "Is my water fit to drink? Is the air fit to breathe? Am I going to suffer long-term health impacts from this?"
Connecting Experts In Search Of Answers
To try to answer these questions, her project is connecting doctors and patients with toxicologists, occupational health doctors, environmental scientists and other experts.
"People go from physician to physician, because 'nobody seemed to be able to treat this awful rash that I have,' or 'nobody seemed to be able to deal with my gastrointestinal pain that I have.' And so they go from place to place, trying to find someone who can do that," said David Brown, a toxicologist who helped set up the project.
The project is also starting to educate doctors about what kinds of tests they can try and what kinds of advice to give. In addition, a nurse practitioner visits and counsels people who are sick.
Dr. Sean Porbin, a private doctor who advises the project, gives the project's nurse practitioner advice when she needs it. But Porbin is skeptical that many people are getting sick from the drilling, which is commonly called "fracking." There are about 5,000 new wells in Pennsylvania.
"If it's true, you'd expect people dropping all over the place based on the amount of fracking that's going on here. You would look around and see people dropping like flies. It's not the case. I don't see anybody affected. And it's not for a lack of looking," he said.
Porbin, who like a lot of people in the area has leased some of his land for drilling, wants to make sure no one's missing more mundane explanations — like Lyme disease, sinus infections and migraines.
"We have an old saying in medicine: When you hear hoof beats, you don't think zebras — you think horses," he said.
Lots Of Anecdotes, Little Evidence
The natural gas industry says there's no evidence the drilling is causing health problems.
Public health experts say the only way anyone is going to really know whether the drilling is making people sick is to do some big studies.
"There's a lot of anecdotal evidence out there. And so a well-conducted study looking at a number of communities could help us better understand if there's an impact, what its magnitude [is], how we should avoid having that impact if there is one," said Christopher J. Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
In the meantime, patients and doctors don't have a lot of options. In western Pennsylvania, a lot of them are referred to Charles Werntz at West Virginia University. Werntz, an occupational medicine specialist, is used to dealing with chemical exposures. Lately, he's seeing more people who live near the drilling.
But for now, he says he can't really do much more than offer basic advice: Drink bottled water, air out the house, leave your shoes outside. If it's still too bad, move — if possible.
"It is frustrating. As a physician, I like it when somebody can come to me with a problem and I can help them solve the problem. Whether it's through a specific treatment or, you know, whatever. And this is frustrating, because in this case, the treatment is to get away from the exposure. And that's hard to do," Werntz said.
Back at Cornerstone, Rinehart just wants to get back to taking care of patients.
"We are in the business of trying to improve and maintain the public's health here. And now we are in the throes of it. And we're trying not to point fingers," Rinehart said.
The next day, people got sick again, and the clinic had to be evacuated once more. So they've moved the clinic to temporary offices until someone figures out what's going on.
No names, places, dates, nothing. Yet, the NPRbots will accept this as the gospel truth.
Only by the ignorante. Drilling is not fracking. Hydraulic fracturing only begins after the drilling is done.
Fracking is only slang for Hydraulic Fracturing.
Only by the ignorant. Drilling is not fracking. Hydraulic fracturing only begins after the drilling is done.
Fracking is only slang for Hydraulic Fracturing.
Here's one from a frac in Greene Cty, PA :
(click)
No info on PSI w/that one, but looks like ~10 pumpers.
If young again, I'd go back to the patch.
Was a mudlogger awhile at the tail end of the 70s,
then drove a sand truck for BigRed in NW PA for a year in early 80s.
Good memories .. ears still ringing and hangover flashbacks on occasion ;-)
Wouldn't trade memories for nuttin' !
Those people are still around. I get emails from one of them warning in shrill tones of doom that the microwave is killing us all. Thee are women (mostly) who will refuse a cup of tea if the water was heated in one.
Can you link an article that actually shows it used in hydraulic fracturing? I searched "acetone as a fracking agent". None of the articles I read actually substantiated that claim, only used the words somewhere in the article but not in that phrase.
On the public listing of hydraulic fluids, I have not seen it listed.
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/hydraulic_fracturing/fluids_disclosure.html
Speaking of hysteria, what happened to brain cancer caused by those evil cell phones that only evil business men could afford to use in the beginning.
Now that every kid has one, and the freeloaders are getting them on the tax payers dime, there is no harm and no radiation coming from them.
Avg. water table is ~50-100' down.
Avg. frac depth in PA, below impermeable shield rock, is usually => ~1,000 ft down.
Chances of fracking causing groundwater contamination are about 0.
That doesn't rule out foul-ups up top, but most of the site bosses are (rightly) nazis about keepin' the sh!t together.
Smart money will always bet on hysteria/agendas behind unicorn farts like this article.
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/hydraulic_fracturing/fluids_disclosure.html
hhttp://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used
http://www.hydraulicfracturingdisclosure.org/fracfocusfind/
I found 324 wells in Bradford County, PA listed in the Fluid Disclosure registry (last link above). The chemicals are listed and their maximum concentrations used by well.
Here is one. Like I said, all the articles that list acetone are of the anti fracking variety. I suspect they all got their information from the same primary source and I don’t know what agency or media source that is. One example should suffice since they are all basically parroting the original source.
http://www.alive.com/articles/view/23262/fracking_in_canada
Thanks! I have been around drilling operations for decades, and we haven’t used it on any of the locations I have been on. I have not heard the production folks mention acetone, either.
Fixed.
No, it isn't.
hundreds of chemicals may be used
May, as in maybe, maybe not, we don't know.
The links I provided are actual chemicals used and their maximum concentration. The FracFocus.org site list them by specific wells.
I don't claim to have read every combination, but I haven't found one that uses acetone, and they do not show up on the lists of chemicals considered for use.
Absolutely. Right on the mark.
Although there are dozens to hundreds of chemicals which could be used as additives, there are a limited number which are routinely used in hydraulic fracturing. The following is a list of the chemicals used most often.
http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used
Thanks, thackney! (no acetone).
Discovery’s “Frozen Planet” updated in 2011 continues to pretend polar bear populations are dwindling and the polar ice caps are melting.
They do this in the full knowledge of the HUGE increases in Polar Bear populations over the last 50 years and the lack of any warming over the last 12 years.
Then go on to explain how the OIL COMPANIES don’t really mind the melt and the warming.....because it make their operations easier......
These clowns don’t give a damn about the truth or science.
They have an agenda to damn capitalism, energy production, and population growth, as evils that must be overcome.
Never underestimate the power of suggestion: Oh, they said they smelled something bad and then felt sick; wait, I think I smell something too, and yes, there it is, a pain in my head!
I also don't underestimate the number of people hoping to "win the legal lottery" by signing on to a big-money lawsuit. The prospect of that can make healthy people develop all sorts of symptoms.
I'm not saying they weren't smelling something, or even having problems from it, but blaming it on drilling and fracking must seem like a win-win to the NPR folks: stop the eeeeevil oil/gas companies, and make them pay pay pay for "harming" people.
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