Living Near Fracking Sites Raises Risk of Premature Death For Elderly, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 132
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Elderly people living near or downwind from unconventional oil and gas wells such as fracking sites are more likely to die prematurely, according to a major new US study. Extracting oil and gas through newer or unconventional methods like fracking has expanded rapidly across America over the past two decades with at least 17.6 million people now living within one kilometer of an active well. Compared with traditional drilling, unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) is linked to higher levels of exposure to toxic air pollution and poor water quality, as well as noise and light pollution which can be harmful to human health. The impact of fossil fuel extraction -- including by unconventional methods -- has disproportionately affected low income communities and people of color.
Researchers from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health studied the health records of 15 million people on Medicare, the health insurance program that includes at least 95% of Americans aged 65 and older, living in all significant drilling regions from 2001 to 2015. They also gathered data on about 2.5 million oil and gas wells covering leading exploration states, from Montana to Texas and Pennsylvania. The closer people live to an oil and gas operation, the higher the risk of dying prematurely, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental and demographic factors such as gender and race, according to the study published in Nature Energy.
Residents most adversely affected are those living nearby and downwind, suggesting toxic airborne contaminants emitted from UOGD sites probably contributed to higher mortality rates. Exposure to toxins associated with unconventional drilling such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides and radioactive materials are linked to a wide range of life-threatening medical conditions. Overall, elderly residents living near these wells have about 2.5% higher mortality rates than those living far away compared with 3.5% for those who are also downwind. This would mean thousands of premature deaths linked to the oil and gas boom, though the peer-reviewed study does not include estimates of lives lost.
Researchers from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health studied the health records of 15 million people on Medicare, the health insurance program that includes at least 95% of Americans aged 65 and older, living in all significant drilling regions from 2001 to 2015. They also gathered data on about 2.5 million oil and gas wells covering leading exploration states, from Montana to Texas and Pennsylvania. The closer people live to an oil and gas operation, the higher the risk of dying prematurely, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental and demographic factors such as gender and race, according to the study published in Nature Energy.
Residents most adversely affected are those living nearby and downwind, suggesting toxic airborne contaminants emitted from UOGD sites probably contributed to higher mortality rates. Exposure to toxins associated with unconventional drilling such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides and radioactive materials are linked to a wide range of life-threatening medical conditions. Overall, elderly residents living near these wells have about 2.5% higher mortality rates than those living far away compared with 3.5% for those who are also downwind. This would mean thousands of premature deaths linked to the oil and gas boom, though the peer-reviewed study does not include estimates of lives lost.
Elderly fracking in nursing homes & STDs (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Elderly fracking in nursing homes & STDs (Score:2)
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I have a friend who used to work in a nursing home and I wish I could forget the stories he's told me.
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Do you like to have someone inject toxic chemicals into your drinking water and everything around you while being protected from any lawsuits? If you really like that, would you like that in your tea too? Or maybe some PFAS as a BBQ sauce (yes, that is what they put in the fracking mix).
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Who wants to spend their last years near death constantly? I'd rather be healthy until I'm not. Premature deaths (earlier than otherwise) are just easier to measure than quality of life. Quality of life is certainly way more important and is equally affected by environment.
Re: Elderly fracking in nursing homes & STDs (Score:3)
Huh? (Score:1)
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The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
There is always a bit of leakage. I'm a bit curious about the entirety of the measurements that they are using.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fracked gas is not the same as conventional gas. For instance, fracked gas is much less likely to contain significant helium, and the transition to fracking is one reason for helium price spikes. Fracked gas also has less radon, but fracking increases radon leaks in the surrounding areas.
But this may just be a case of "correlation is not causation." Rural areas have significantly lower life expectancies than urban areas, and economically depressed rural areas are even worse. People suffering financially may be more likely to lease their mineral rights to frackers to earn some extra income. Rather than the wells causing lower life expectancy, people already predisposed to health issues may choose to live close to the wells.
Disclaimer: My mom gets a monthly royalty check from a gas well on her farm.
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Fracked gas is not the same as conventional gas. For instance, fracked gas is much less likely to contain significant helium, and the transition to fracking is one reason for helium price spikes. Fracked gas also has less radon, but fracking increases radon leaks in the surrounding areas.
I can imagine radon issues. I live below the Marcellus, but in the Utica shale region, and Radon is a problem here even if there isn't any fracking, the geology is somewhat similar.
But this may just be a case of "correlation is not causation." Rural areas have significantly lower life expectancies than urban areas, and economically depressed rural areas are even worse. People suffering financially may be more likely to lease their mineral rights to frackers to earn some extra income. Rather than the wells causing lower life expectancy, people already predisposed to health issues may choose to live close to the wells.
Disclaimer: My mom gets a monthly royalty check from a gas well on her farm.
I'm going to have to take a look at the study with my school access. As you note, life expectancy is less there, and I would have preferred to see some of the reasons for that in the summary. Plus this article has bad study-itus. Seems like a quick jump to a conclusion.
We get royalty checks from some oil and gas wells too. M
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We get royalty checks from some oil and gas wells too. My SO thinks this is funny since I'm big on alternative energies.
My mom is also a greenie. She has a solar array to power her farm. But she likes the royalty checks and producing gas in America is better than importing.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
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Itâ(TM)s not pure water being used, it is often non-potable water from other drilling operations and it is often loaded with chemicals.
Boy howdy is it loaded with chemicals. The retaining ponds for the used fracking juice don't even attract ducks.
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The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
If you think it's just water that they are using you should* try drinking some.
*Don't really do that. Even the summary tells us it's not just water...
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even the summary tells us it's not just water...
"In the US, about 750 compounds [wikipedia.org] have been listed as additives for hydraulic fracturing, also known as ingredients of pressurized fracking fluid, in an industry report to the US Congress in 2011 after originally being kept secret for "commercial reasons". [This link] is a partial list [wikipedia.org] of the chemical constituents in additives that are used or have been used in fracturing operations, as based on the report of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, some are known to be carcinogenic."
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I wonder if the Petroleum lobby has a counterpoint study.
Sure, they've been able to find people to lie on their behalf for money for decades, even though they've known they were causing AGW for decades. Why wouldn't they be able to find someone to lie about fracking, too?
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
You pump in water to force out oil and gas at high pressure. But that is not all, you can also fragment the rock via explosion to allow for increased gas flow. They fire off a big gun with horizontal projectiles sprayed out and designed to penetrate the adjacent rock. It is all quite impressive - albeit destructive.
The thing is, there is very little preventing that oil and gas, which is under pressure, from making it into adjacent ground water. From there it can reach the surface in many different ways - most notably, wells dug for water. Ground water is at a different elevation so traditional oil extraction (pumping out the oil) does not cause the same issues that fracking does.
My sister purchased a house in northern Alberta. Before the purchase, she had a water test performed. A year later they started fracking and she could literally burn the water coming from the faucet - it contained that much gas. Thankfully she had the water test performed and could prove the water was contaminated after fracking started. The neighbours were not so lucky - the oil/gas company simply denied responsibility and there was nothing they could do.
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Hydraulic fracturing (commonly called fracking) uses water pressure, not explosives, to fracture the rock and deliver sand to keep the cracks open.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
Hydraulic Fracturing Additives [geology.com]
The fracturing fluids used for gas shale stimulations consist primarily of water but also include a variety of additives. The number of chemical additives used in a typical fracture treatment varies depending on the conditions of the specific well being fractured.
A typical fracture treatment will use very low concentrations of between 3 and 12 additive chemicals depending on the characteristics of the water and the shale formation being fractured. Each component serves a specific, engineered purpose.
Friction Reducing (Slickwater) Additives
The predominant fluids currently being used for fracture treatments in the gas shale plays are water-based fracturing fluids mixed with friction-reducing additives (called slickwater). The addition of friction reducers allows fracturing fluids and proppant to be pumped to the target zone at a higher rate and reduced pressure than if water alone were used.
Other Additives and Proppants
In addition to friction reducers, other additives include: biocides to prevent microorganism growth and to reduce biofouling of the fractures; oxygen scavengers and other stabilizers to prevent corrosion of metal pipes; and acids that are used to remove drilling mud damage within the near-wellbore area. These fluids are used not only to create the fractures in the formation but also to carry a propping agent (often silica sand or sintered bauxite) which is deposited in the induced fractures.
The make-up of fracturing fluid varies from one geologic basin or formation to another. A list of potential additives is given in Table 1. Evaluating the relative volumes of the components of a fracturing fluid reveals the relatively small volume of additives that are present. Overall the concentration of additives in most slickwater fracturing fluids is a relatively consistent 0.5% to 2% with water making up 98% to 99.5%.
Fracturing Fluids Vary from One Play to Another
Because the make-up of each fracturing fluid varies to meet the specific needs of each area, there is no one-size-fits-all formula for the volumes for each additive. In classifying fracturing fluids and their additives it is important to realize that service companies that provide these additives have developed a number of compounds with similar functional properties to be used for the same purpose in different well environments.
The difference between additive formulations may be as small as a change in concentration of a specific compound. Although the hydraulic fracturing industry may have a number of compounds that can be used in a hydraulic fracturing fluid, any single fracturing job would only use a few of the available additives. It is not uncommon for some fracturing recipes to omit some compound categories if their properties are not required for the specific application.
Most industrial processes use chemicals and almost any chemical can be hazardous in large enough quantities or if not handled properly. Even chemicals that go into our food or drinking water can be hazardous. For example, drinking water treatment plants use large quantities of chlorine. When used and handled properly, it is safe for workers and near-by residents and provides clean, safe drinking water for the community.
Although the risk is low, the potential exists for unplanned releases that could have serious effects on human health and the environment. By the same token, hydraulic fracturing uses a number of chemical additives that could be hazardous, but are safe when properly handled according to requirements and long-standing industry practices. In addition, many of these additives are common chemicals which people regularly encounter in everyday life.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
According to the US EPA, fracking fluid is not just water.
Comparison of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids Composition with Produced Formation Water following Fracturing – Imp lications for Fate and Transp ort [epa.gov]
The exact formulas for fracking fluids are trade secrets, meaning that they do not have to be disclosed to the public.
FRACKING FLUIDS: REGULATORY DISCLOSURE AND TRADE SECRET INGREDIENTS [ndlsjet.com]
There have been several federal level efforts to force disclosure. None have been entirely successful.
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I'm actually someone who works in the industry.
Every office needs a janitor.
I cannot speak for every company employing fracking but I know what my company employs.
You have the hint of an idea.
I am not familiar with any of the compounds these articles touch on.
That much is clear. But you use them, whether you know it or not.
You do not hydraulically fracture with (just) water. You start with water. A whole shitload of it.
You can't fracture without a proppant, and there's no proppant I'm aware of that is going to work without a lubricant.
That's minimum. Without that, you're just wasting a bunch of water.
Arguably, even with that, you're almost just wasting a bunch of water.
You also need thickening agen
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I'm actually someone who works in the industry.
Apparently not in a role that actually deals with the fracking.
I cannot speak for every company employing fracking
And yet you did.
I am not familiar with any of the compounds
That's for sure!
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The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
Could be the complex mix of chemicals that they add to that water [sciencestruck.com], or the fact that they use a lot more of it, and the fact that they are doing something entirely different to release the gas - shattering large volumes of previously low permeability rock, thus mobilizing everything in the rock that can migrate (like radon).
It would be far more accurate to say the only similarity with traditional drilling is that they are both putting holes in the ground.
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The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
Other people told you how you are wrong, and I refer to them, however you do have a point.
This is an experiment which shows that hydrocarbon drilling is killing people. I'm sure that fracking is worse than the average, but I'm also sure you are right that other forms of hydrocarbon exploitation cause problems too. We already have better alternatives such as wind power and can currently, inefficiently but definitely, create hydrocarbons from electricity, water and captured carbon dioxide. It seems like it's
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The study concludes that there is a significant correlation between being downwind of the well and dying earlier. So the assumption is that it is not water in ground that's the problem, but what's in the air, with no hint in the summary of how or what is in the air.
I don't see how that affects my comment? I'm just suggesting that based on the study fracking is bad but other hydrocarbon extraction can be bad too. I don't know whether that's due to direct gas release or maybe gasses carried up in water which then release into the atmosphere (there are plenty of hydrocarbons that could be liquid underground and then gaseous above ground).
Or are you maybe replying to my comment by accident when you meant to reply to the parent of my comment?
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> ... with no hint in the summary of how or what is in the air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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water.
I mean, yeah, they use water. 99% of fracking fluid is water and silica sand, but that still leaves one gallon of "whatever the hell they want" per 100. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% on-board with fracking. But it's absolutely insane that they aren't required to disclose what they are pumping into the ground. Saying "it's just water" is disingenuous.
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The only difference between a traditional drilling site and a fracking site is the use of water. How is using water to free up trapped natural gas causing people to die prematurely?
To give an idea of the process, The big differences are that the fracking - which is a nickname for fracturing, relies on water with certain chemicals, placed under pressure to release gas more efficiently. from the areas where it is trapped.
There is always a danger of gas finding it's way to the surface if rocks are fractured near the surface. It's not very likely but has happened. The gas company hates it when that happens because it is a waste. A little more likely, but still uncommon is if it pollute
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Unfortunately, these days, fact is subjective.
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Methane is carcinogenic now? Maybe in California, but not that I know of.
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Methane is carcinogenic now? Maybe in California, but not that I know of.
No, my sentence could have been worded better-
One can imagine that the fracturing causes leaks of methane and other carcinogenic hydrocarbons upward.
could probably have been written:
One can imagine that the fracturing causes leaks of methane and other hydrocarbons that are carcinogenic upward.
Your criticism is fair.
OTOH... (Score:3)
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Fracking is not unconventional (Score:3)
Hydraulic fracturing in vertical wells has been used for over fifty years to improve the flow of oil and gas from conventional reservoirs.
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Vertical fracturing is done to increase permeability directly around the perforated casing, in rock that was previously permeable (just compressed by the drilling process itself)
Horizontal fracturing fractures entire lengths of substrata, up to 1-2 miles from the bore.
It also requires silly pressures, because we're doing this to get at hard-to-get-at-hydrocarbons. Non-permeable rocks. We're trying to turn thousands of feet of solid rock into a shattered mess, not open up the area a
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In german we have a saying, it is always the amount which makes the poison...
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It made it over to English long ago as "The dose makes the poison" but it definitely seems to have originated with Paracelsus [wikipedia.org], a Swiss man who lived 500 years ago.
by a Climate justice reporter (Score:2)
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The link in the Guardian to the article works for me (even in a fresh incognito tab), but only if I click on it from there. If I cut'n'paste the link, I get a paywall.
For what it's worth:
This work was made possible by support from:
* The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant RD-835872
* The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R01 MD012769
* The Climate Change Solutions Fund at Harvard University
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The reporter is not making up the study.
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So because a 'green' reporter reports about a study that's in their area of interest, you're now skeptical of the study?
That's.. Quite far a reach.
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You won't be happy unless the study is conducted by Exxon in partnership with Chevron, will you?
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media consumption lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
Why write like this? Why lead off with the big numbers? 17.6 million, 15 million, 95%, 2.5 million.
Why isn't the important number - literally the only number anyone reading this story cares about - right up front? It isn't like the importance of 2.5% or 3.5% was going to be missed unless the reader was prepared with crucial backstory. Those other numbers added nothing to the reader's understanding of the story. In fact, I suspect that they were put there deliberately to detract from the reader's understanding.
I bet that if the number had been 50%, it would have been first - a headline like "Fracking kills 50%!!!one!" and you would have had to read to the 8th paragraph to find out that the headline number was actually an annualized mortality rate delta, which would still have been bad, but slightly less bad than the headline.
But in this case, since the number is so underwhelming, and there really isn't any way to sexy it up, just bury it. Leave it out of the abstract, bury it 8 paragraphs down in the press release after 4 big numbers that have nothing to do with the conclusion and hope that the editors give it a headline like "Living near fracking sites raises risk of premature death for elderly, US study finds" and pray that no one reads past the headline.
Now the activists can point to it and say "Fracking kills!" and the slightly more informed and honest activists can say "Fracking steals days off the ends of the lives of people who were going to die soon anyway."
And the clever people can say "Wait - they used zipcodes? Just how big is a zipcode anyway? Aren't they pretty large in rural places? Is this another one of those proximity studies where they didn't actually look at proximity except in the crudest sense?"
(And before the twitter mob organizes to cancel an old Motorhead song: Don't misunderstand my sarcastic point about the days. Days of life are not unimportant. If it were me, I'd want those days back, but lets not pretend that this is "above the line" for many people.)
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Maybe you should have actually read the article that was cited.
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This sort of thing drives me crazy. I want the environment to be clean, I don't want to poison the air or the water.
But when people misuse statistics to try to make a point, it only hurts the cause.
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If someone is lying to you, then no matter what motivation they claim, they aren't looking to help you.
Well that obviously isn't true. We lie to each other all the time in order to help. Whether it is helping self esteem or because the truth would be more confusing than a slight generalization, or any number of other reasons.
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and the slightly more informed and honest activists can say "Fracking steals days off the ends of the lives of people who were going to die soon anyway."
Can you spell that out for me please? I read from the article "3.5% increased mortality downwind" and "the peer-reviewed study does not include estimates of lives lost". The scientific paper itself is either beyond my statistical ability to understand, or doesn't mention YLLs (Years of Life Lost, if that's what you're referring to), and I didn't even see the number 3.5% anywhere in the paper. I also don't have benchmarks for YLLs due to other causes.
How do you get to "days off the ends of lives"? What is th
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(I spent a while trying to understand the relationship between mortality rate and YLLs in general, found some an interesting NHS study relating it to cost of care, found on wikipedia the mortality rates in the US and actuarial life tables for 2003 from the CDC, but none of that answered my questions).
Ah, there's your problem. You need to be able to do arithmetic also.
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It was a very rough mental estimate. The vast majority of medicare participants are over 65 years old, where the potential years of life lost per excess death is necessarily pretty low.
I'm not 100% sure that it is possible to calculate the actual years of life lost. You don't need medicare data to figure out when people die. As far as I can tell, they used medicare data because there isn't a general registry of where each person lives at all times.
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And the clever people can say "Wait - they used zipcodes? Just how big is a zipcode anyway? Aren't they pretty large in rural places? Is this another one of those proximity studies where they didn't actually look at proximity except in the crudest sense?"
I don't understand the significance of your point about zipcodes. You seem to be arguing that zipcodes are so big that zipcode-based analysis will mask the effects of proximity. And yet they detected a statistically significant effect based on proximity of the zipcode to fracking sites. Doesn't this necessarily mean that zipcode analysis is powerful enough? Is your point that if they had access to finer-grained proximity information then they'd have discovered a worse health outcome for people *really* livi
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I don't understand the significance of your point about zipcodes
This is how the authors of the article phrased it:
Our study has several limitations [...] Third, we had available data on the ZIP-code level but not on the street-level address of residence. This could result in potential exposure misclassification; however, we used a population-weighted method to mitigate this issue.
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This particular dam broke a while back. If I recall, it was the diesel particulate studies that correlated diesel particulate exposure with various respiratory diseases and death, but didn't actually measure diesel particulate exposure, they assumed it based on crude geographic distance from imputed sources which also weren't measured, but were assumed to be polluting at rates deduced from averages of measurements from other, possibly similar sources. After that, people have been signing up left and right
The flipside (Score:1)
Getting Our Oil From The Middle East Raises Risk of Premature Death For Our Teenagers. But neocons have never seen a war they didn't like.
The Neocons' Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors. [substack.com] One of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the thought leaders in American liberalism.
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I rate that article flat out fucking misinformation.
I'll gladly grant you that Trump wasn't a neocon, and wasn't surrounded by neocons.
But trying to paint liberals as neocons, now, because we temporarily align with them against The Great Orange Moron? Fucking spare me.
Sounds like a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that each and every one of you was a neocon, and happily voted for neocons
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The third paragraph, you at least bring a direct piece of evidence: Billy Kristol's frequent appearances on MSNBC, to talk about- you guessed it.
Donald Fucking Trump.
Nicolle Wallace was never a neocon. She was conservative, until the party took a strong turn into the realm of fucking morons.
Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt... Again, I'm pr
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Why's it a surprise they're now infesting the Democrats?
It's not. It would have to be true for it to be a surprise.
Is it true that the Democrats find themselves in league with the anti-Trump components of the Republicans? Of course it is. Just as the neocons found it useful to tap into the tea party, a decision they have since reaped the whirlwind for.
Regardless, neocons are pretty solidly antithema to liberalism, so it's laughable to say that they're somehow in control of the direction of the political ideology. They're merely useful allies in the current p
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If you fail to cast out neocons, you are aligned with neocons. If you have a table with a neocon and 10 people talking to her, you got a table with 11 neocons.
No. We're right back to where we started. Your assertion is logically false. You make it with such confidence, that I can only assume you have an IQ of 47, or you're flat out gaslighting.
There is no situation where a group of people is defined by one of them, who is outnumbered 10:1.
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If there's a table with one N*zi and ten people talking to her, you got a table with eleven N*zis.
Alright, then Republicans are neocons, racists, and fascists.
Glad we cleared that up.
Who came up with this idea? Hmm? Oh, yeah, the left.
I'll go ahead and respond to this with a quote of my own:
I have no idea who this "left" is, but it's clear that if they are such a thing who thinks such a way, you and them have more in common than you like to believe.
The neocons have killed over six million people in their illegal wars of aggression since 9/11. The N*zis killed six million Jews and they are the most evil motherfuckers ever to live on planet Earth. But they only lasted 12 years and are all dead now. Neocons are going strong and still killing - hell, they're about to start a huge war with Russia (to the applause of the formerly anti-war left).
Quit talking about neocons like you weren't one of them.
You know damn fucking well you voted for Bush. I've been here long enough.
The Trump wing of the Republicans famously cast out the neocons. Liz Cheney was absolutely furious. Why's it a surprise they'd suddenly find a home with the Democrats? They fit right in - Joe Biden raped a woman, gropes and sniffs children on camera and was a guest of honor at the funeral of the Grand Wizard of the KKK.
The Trump wing of the Republicans famously cast out anyone who dissented with them, because while the neocons are some warmongering imperialist fuckstains, they are, at least interested at some level, of a functioning democracy in this c
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Alright, then Republicans are neocons, racists, and fascists.
There you go! Was that so hard? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks for helping me make my point.
I have no idea who this "left" is,
Oh please. You have no idea who the left is. They're the ones who call everyone racists and fascists, while being racist themselves, and power-worshipping fascists. According to the latest data, half of Democrats want to put half of America in camps. Behind every double mask is a potential concentr
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The Trump wing of the Republicans famously cast out the neocons. Liz Cheney was absolutely furious. Why's it a surprise they'd suddenly find a home with the Democrats? They fit right in - Joe Biden raped a woman, gropes and sniffs children on camera and was a guest of honor at the funeral of the Grand Wizard of the KKK.
Alright then was an indicator of sarcastic intent to use your logic against you. A log you ascribe to "The Left", but you yourself use.
Why I expected you to understand irony when you don't acknowledge your own hypocrisy... I couldn't tell you.
Oh please. You have no idea who the left is. They're the ones who call everyone racists and fascists, while being racist themselves, and power-worshipping fascists. According to the latest data, half of Democrats want to put half of America in camps. Behind every double mask is a potential concentration camp guard.
No, I don't know who "The Left" is.
I'm certain there are a group of people who consider themselves "The Left", but I've never encountered them, and I'm not sure where they exist geographically.
I live in Seattle, WA, and while we're definitely liberal on average up h
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Seriously. And you live in Seattle. And you don't know any leftists. These are possibly the most ignorant statements in human history and I salute your bravery in making them publicly. OK, we're done here. Gaslighting, uh-huh. Typical: accuse others of what you're guilty of yourself. That packs a whole lot of stupid in a few words. But expected from a serial killer who hasn't killed anyone, yet. You belong in hell in the same room as the guy who ratted on Anne Frankâ(TM)s family.
Let's look at it from the perspective that I'm full of shit, that in fact Seattle is full of "leftists", and not "a group of folks that aren't generally opposed to voting Republican except in national elections where Republicans tend to be either neocons, or fascists, with every little in-between (past the primary, anyway)".
My comment in that instance, still doesn't rise to "gaslighting" (unless there's some reason why I'd want you to question your reality in this instance?)
We were done here with your fi
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Come on, man. Learn to lose with more grace.
Questions.. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the areas of Pennsylvania where fracking happens, it is a whole lot like wilderness. I love those areas, but mainly because they allow me to get away from urban and suburban life and to get out of cell phone range. If I were in an accident there - it might be 50 miles or more to find a hospital. And it might just be a clinic type place. I'd likely die in those places, but not in my neighborhood.
So that's the price of living in that area for elderly people. It is really beautiful, peaceful and cheap real estate. But if you have a heart attack you'll have a long ride to the hospital.
Now all that being said, they really need to come up with a serious mode of death at what concentration of air pollution, and at what distance from the wells. This should be very easy to find out. Some rather simple sensors can be emplaced at different distances. And the wind in Northern PA tens primarilay from the west - northwest.
And very specifically, anyone dying who has well water - a program to measure their water post-mortem would not be all that difficult to enact.
Otherwise, it kinda looks like they have picked Fracking as the cause, then looked to make it the cause.
Re: Questions.. (Score:2)
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Considering they can't even tell when a live line is cut and pumping gas into a house from a near by fracking operation, you think they would be able to measure above ground emissions? LoL -,> https://www.denverpost.com/201... [denverpost.com]
They did find it. The question is why they didn't pressure test the well after bringing it back on line, Another question is why it wasn't odorized. But finding methane and propane is quite possible. But it's a big world, and the mercaptan odorant gives us really strong clues when there is a problem.
That's why in the forests around these fracking places, sensors can be set that will find methane if for some reason it isn't coming from the wellhead. Expensive? Glad you asked.http://www.learningaboutelectro
Re: Questions.. (Score:2)
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They did find it. > LoL yea. Boom! Oh hey guys, there's a gas leak! (And a dead home owner) - And wtf is up with "Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art." Give me a break /. You add quotes and an arrow and it freaks???
I've been caught by the lameness filter as well like adding a few periods after a sentence. Long accepted as just not continuing a sentence when something obvious would have been written.
Then a few posts later someone posts actual ascii art.
Seems like the "lameness filter" might be what is lame here, not normal posters.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh they could, but you don't make any money by reporting your own pollution.
In Colorado... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Boonies (Score:2)
When you "live in proximity to or downwind of" a fracking site, you're mostly just living out in the boonies, not anywhere near (for example) big hospitals with higher levels of medical care. That would easily account for the problems they're claiming.
The difference in downwind mortality (1%) could easily be explained by location, too. It wouldn't take too many samples to skew such a small result.
Let's see some graphs and maps from this study - it would be really interesting to see how they worked the data
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You're just making stuff up.
"We studied a cohort of 15,198,496 Medicare beneficiaries (136,215,059 person-years) in all major US unconventional exploration regions from 2001 to 2015. We gathered data from records of more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells. For each beneficiary’s ZIP code of residence and year in the cohort, we calculated a proximity-based and a downwind-based pollutant exposure. "
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You're just making stuff up.
Right you are.
This topic provides an interesting sample of right wing nut jobs (one of whom calls himself RightWingNutJob) dropping their canned attacks on any study about anything these days. Gish galloping with "just asking (lots) of questions", throwing out bizarre objections to every use of numbers, conjuring up numbers they claim aren't there (but are, but they didn't read the article), throwing their prejudices down as if it was an actual objection ("see its a 'cliamte justice' - e.g. environment beat
Cause and effect? (Score:2)
If a person lives 1 mile from a fracking site... especially down wind, they die sooner than other people for MANY reasons.
Research east side vs west side mortality for every industrial city on earth.
Now... Do some research on whether the people are dropping dead sooner because of the fracking or because they are east side people.
Re: (Score:3)
I dislike shitty commenters. At least read the article - they controlled for socioeconomic factors since there are lots of people living in similar conditions who do not happen to live just downwind of a fracking site.
The scientific and statistical illiteracy you exhibit is stunning.
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All it did was draw the conclusion that there is value in investigating it further.
There was absolutely no chemistry data involved, it was purely circumstantial from beginning to end. It made lots of great guesses. My issue is less with the paper and far more with the headlines. It's the CNN/Fox News style "Let's draw conclusions from data that doesn't exist and pr
Wisdumb (Score:1)
Thou Shalt Kill Prophets for Profits
Typical eco-horror propaganda (Score:2)
It's essentially a causation-correlation fallacy, pushed by an outfit that opposes fossil fuels [shocking!]
Notice: there's no actual, specific victim, and no actual specified direct injury - the reader is purposely left to his own imagination as to the specific details of the accusation (it's hard to get sued over a specific false accusation if you make no actual specific accusation).
This is about on-par with some pro-life outfit publishing a story that elderly people living near a Planned Parenthood facili
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Thought about the same thing - are they correcting for socio-economic factors? Looking at the original paper, page 5, they are at least reporting things like mean household income and no-high-school-diploma, but I don't think they are correcting for them.
At same time, I just don't see the correlation at all. Mortality in sites with no exposure is 4.9%. Mortality in areas with very high exposure is 4.8% upwind and 4.8% downwind. Mortality in areas with medium exposure is between 5.0% and 5.1%. No idea how it
Living Near Heavy Industry Affects Health (Score:2)
News at 11.
It's nice that they put in specific numbers, but this is hardly news, and nothing will get done about it anyway.
There's no reason for politicians to make the lives of poor people easier.
Correlation is not causation (Score:2)
Who was TH Chan? An unsettling answer... (Score:2)
Nope!
He was a super-wealthy Chinese real estate developer whose billionaire sons donated $350 million to Harvard. Sons who live in China, have close ties to the CCP, and backed Carrie Lamb against the pro-Democracy protestors in Hong Kong. Neither they nor their father had anything to do with medicine, or much to do with the US outside of shady business deals (
Fracking is saving our asses (Score:2)
Follow the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Fracking Extends Life of Poor Elderly By Collapsing Heating Prices
But you don't see lawyers suing and buying 3-engine electric pickup trucks from it.
News Flash (Score:2)
Most fracking sites are in rural areas. People living in rural areas (away from medical care) don't typically live as long.
17.6 million people?? (Score:2)
That's about 1 in 20 americans.
That's really bizarre. One in 20 US citizens live near a toxic installation just so you all can drive your cars around in your massively inefficient burbs.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a clue. Because the frackers aren't setting up fracking everywhere in there is poor in America,. They are only operating in areas where there is tight oil and gas in the ground. That leaves many similarly poor areas without fracking to use as controls, which they did.
It does not take very much thought at all to understand this.
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If there's a geographic bias in the control group's distribution, then it's not really a control group.
There is no geographic bias problem. There are poor rural areas with shale basins and there are poor rural areas not on top of shale. There are poor rural areas with shale that hasn't been mined yet too. It would be trivially easy to control for these socioeconomic factors in these studies.
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That is actually why studying older people helps. They were probably there before the fracking and are unlikely to move at their age. The "good place to live" changes over time.