http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/06/01/a-cautionary-tale-tar-sands-oil-and-health-part-2/
[I believe we should reward innovators by protecting their intellectual
property, be it via copyright, trademark or 'proprietary information'.
I'm prepared to extend that protection to the oil industry and their
dilbit formulations - but only so long as it is contained in their
property or that of their affiliates or delegates (e.g., production,
transportation, storage, processing or distribution facilities). The
instant there is a breach of containment, then public health concerns
trump proprietary information. If the company is not prepared to
release detailed information to first responders within minutes of
arriving on scene and determining there is a real incident, the
company(ies) should be subject to immediate, substantial and cumulative
daily fines until the information is provided. (I'm inclined to
something in the order of 1% of annual gross sales for the firm per day,
combined with a shutdown of all operations nation-wide after a week,
until they comply. Clearly, the oil oligopoly companies need
significant signals to gain their attention and prompt action.) If the
product owner / carrier is not prepared to release the information
within minutes of the event response, first responders have to be
equipped as though they are dealing with biological and chemical toxic /
carcinogenic elements - because in all likelihood, they are. In that
circumstance, we simply don't know which ones and how much.]
[multiple links and images in on-line article]
A Cautionary Tale: Tar Sands Oil and Health. Part 2
By Sharon Guynup on Jun 1, 2014
The question of whether tar sands are hazardous to our health is growing
stickier.
A final decision from the Obama administration on construction of the
much-debated Keystone XL pipeline remains on hold, stalled by legal
challenges to its planned route through the state of Nebraska.
But other questions have been raised in Congress about the possible
health effects that may result from pumping 35 million gallons a day of
diluted bitumen—tar sands oil—through a pipeline every day from Alberta,
Canada, through the heart of America to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
And there are questions that are barely being asked or answered. Here,
we take a look at some of them.
***
It has now been over a year since ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline
ruptured, immersing the Northwoods subdivision in Mayflower, Arkansas,
and nearby Lake Conway in 210,000 gallons of Canadian heavy crude. Many
residents are still suffering from serious health problems they blame on
that spill.
A far larger spill in July 2010 dumped more than a million gallons of
tar sands oil from an Enbridge Energy pipeline into yards, fields, and
the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Michigan. Citizens are still waiting
for information on chemical exposure and health risks from the Michigan
Department of Community Health—information that’s now three years
overdue, according to Marshall resident Susan Connolly, a paralegal who
testified at a Congressional hearing on the spill.
No one knows exactly which chemicals were in the oil that inundated
these communities—nor do doctors, researchers or regulators know just
how harmful they might be.
As we explained in Part 1 of this series, published in 2013, tar sands
oil is not conventional crude. It’s a viscous mix of sand and tarry
petroleum known as bitumen that is so thick that it must be diluted with
liquefied natural gas and various chemicals so it can flow through a
pipeline. Any of 1,000 chemicals may be used to make diluted bitumen, or
“dilbit”—and companies are permitted by the government to conceal those
formulas as trade secrets.
These unknowns prompted the U.S. Senate Environment Committee to request
a “comprehensive study on the human health impacts of tar sands oil and
the proposed pipeline.” In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry in
February, senators called the health information in the most recent
State Department environmental review “woefully inadequate.” In April, a
State Department official confirmed that they “will address health
impacts” but did not talk about plans to start a broad independent
health study.
Acute Exposure
On March 29, 2013, oil streamed from the ruptured pipeline and fumes
enveloped Mayflower in a caustic petrochemical plume, sickening hundreds
of people in this small working class community of 2,200 people. It
smelled like asphalt, but worse, says Genieve Long, a mother of four who
lives beside the lake. “The air was so thick it burned your lungs. It
burned your eyes,” Long told WhoWhatWhy.
Crude oil contaminated 22 properties in the Northwoods subdivision;
those families were evacuated, but neighbors who lived just a few
hundred yards away or along oil-slicked Lake Conway were not. Many,
including Arkansas’ Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, later questioned
why everyone living in close proximity had not been removed.
Intense exposure sparked acute symptoms that for many, persisted for
three to four months: Residents dry heaved or vomited for days on end;
they suffered from bowel issues, endless migraines, nosebleeds,
exhaustion, dizzy spells and confusion; their skin was covered in rashes
that resembled chemical burns—and they gasped for breath.
It was a mirror image of what had happened to the citizens of Marshall,
Michigan, after the Enbridge spill three years before. A state report
found that nearly 60 percent of those living in the vicinity experienced
the same health problems.
“These are classic symptoms of acute exposure to both airborne
petrochemicals and to the chemicals used to liquefy the thick Canadian
tar sands oil,” says Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist who works
with communities impacted by oil spills. “There’s an entire population
that’s been made very, very sick by the emissions.”
Limited Information
Because ExxonMobil barred news reporters from the area after the
Arkansas spill, little information was available in the early days, said
Ann Jarrell, who lived 300 yards from the site. Those who contacted
police, the health department, or the company, she said, were repeatedly
assured there was no danger.
The overpowering stench in their oil-soaked neighborhood prompted her
daughter, Jennifer, to call the Mayflower police department: She was
worried about her four-month-old infant. When she asked if they should
evacuate, she was told that if there was no oil on their property, they
should be fine—but both Ann and Jennifer were nauseous and coughed
constantly, their heads pounding.
***
No government agency stepped forward to educate the public about health
risks, and state officials told residents that contaminants in the air
were “below levels likely to cause health effects for the general
population” in an online press release. So even though they were sick,
most people stayed in their homes, either because they’d been told to,
couldn’t afford to leave, or simply had nowhere else to go.
In the event of an oil spill, there is little guidance from the federal
government: There are no federal guidelines on when—or if—the public
should be evacuated, nor protocols for evaluating public health after
exposure. At a press conference, Attorney General McDaniel expressed
concern about “the short- and long-term effects of carcinogens released
into the air which are still detectable in the living rooms of people in
that area.”
Five months after the spill, the state finally offered Mayflower
residents free health assessments. For many, their problems had been
compounded by the fact that most doctors have little training or
experience diagnosing or treating chemical exposures. And though
citizens pushed Exxon and the health department to establish a centrally
located clinic and bring in specialists versed in occupational and
environmental medicine, it never happened.
Long-term Effects
It’s hard to know what, if anything, to do about tar sands oil, since
there are no data on the long-term health effects of exposure to it. And
there are few efforts to correct that knowledge gap—so it’s difficult to
assess what safety regulations are needed to properly protect the public.
Susan Connolly advocated for an ongoing epidemiological study of those
who were affected in Marshall, but was repeatedly rebuffed. April Lane,
an expert on the health effects of fossil fuels, also wanted to collect
health data in Mayflower, but her request for federal funding was turned
down. Without such studies, it is impossible to track the incidence of
chronic illnesses or cancers that may result from living amidst an oil
spill. Subra notes that these people are continually re-exposed.
For some Mayflower residents, pre-existing conditions have worsened.
Others now suffer from chronic health issues that have appeared in the
months since the spill. Among the more serious cases are people
hospitalized with kidney infections or “chemical pneumonitis,” a type of
pneumonia. “It’s not a ‘one size fits all,’” says Lane. “Each person
reacts differently to toxins.”
Severe respiratory problems have repeatedly landed Jennifer Jarrell’s
son, Logan, in the emergency room over the past year and he now uses a
steroid inhaler twice daily to breathe. His grandmother Ann, lost her
voice, her thyroid levels skyrocketed, and her headaches grew so intense
that her doctor suspected a brain tumor and sent her for an MRI.
***
Genieve Long, who lives on Lake Conway, stayed because it was impossible
to uproot four kids without any assistance. Six months post-spill, she
mysteriously developed gallstones and kidney stones that weren’t there
nine months earlier when she’d had diagnostic scans for something else.
She was told that it should take years, not months, to develop stones as
large as hers. Her question now: “What’s going to happen to me or my
kids in 20 years?”
Though they no longer smell oil every day, whenever boaters disturb Lake
Conway’s shallow waters, or windy, rainy weather stirs up the water, tar
balls rise and petroleum rainbows slick the lake’s surface. The family’s
early, acute symptoms return along with a metallic, chemical taste in
their mouths. They start wheezing, they can’t think straight, and
they’re again plagued by headaches. Long’s two youngest children have
been left with poorly functioning lungs, she says, and struggle to
breathe every day.
Residual dilbit is a big problem, especially around waterways. Unlike
normal oil, heavy tar sands oil sinks. Once the diluting chemicals
evaporate, it reverts to its original viscous state and is almost
impossible to remove.
ExxonMobil’s remediation work in Lake Conway is still under way. And in
Michigan, Enbridge’s cleanup efforts continue as the company struggles
to remove the estimated 180,000 gallons of dilbit that remains submerged
in the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries, which has already cost over
a billion dollars, with a minimum of $22 million in fines still looming
for Clean Water Act violations.
With Petrochemicals, How Little is Too Much?
Aaron Stryk, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil, told WhoWhatWhy that
contractors hired by the company conducted “exhaustive” air sampling and
continuous air quality tests in Mayflower. They tested for three
substances: benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and total volatile organic
compounds (VOCs). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also sampled
air and monitored air quality, but only released data on total VOCs.
These grouped VOC readings don’t identify what chemicals are actually
present in the air, nor their concentrations, says fossil fuels expert
Lane. She explains that without identifying which chemicals are
present—and in what amounts—it’s impossible to accurately gauge health
risks.
Much of the focus was on benzene. It’s toxic in miniscule doses, and is
known to cause leukemia and neurological problems and to lower immunity.
In Mayflower, airborne benzene levels at the spill site averaged 0.6
parts per million, sometimes spiking to 2.2 parts per million.
There are dozens of government guidelines for benzene exposure. For
example, Federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSD)
standards estimate that people can breathe air containing 9
parts-per-billion (ppb) for up to two weeks—or 6 ppb for up to a
year—without adverse health effects. However, these guidelines did not
include cancer risk—even though benzene is a known carcinogen.
Moreover, public health decisions become the domain of county or state
officials after an oil spill—though such decisions often fall well
outside their experience or expertise. The variations are staggering. In
Arkansas, the Department of Health established the benzene exposure
threshold at more than five times ATSD standards: 50 parts per billion
for up to a six-month period. Lori Simmons, who runs the agency’s
environmental epidemiology department, said that residents could be
exposed to these levels without long-lasting health problems.
Health experts, including Wilma Subra, April Lane and others, are
concerned that the state’s “safe” levels were set too high to protect
the public—and that the health department failed to issue special
warnings for those who are the most vulnerable to chemical exposures:
pregnant women, the elderly and young children.
Communities get sick even when the concentrations are well below the
more stringent federal “acceptable standards,” says Subra, and
monitoring protocols are frequently insufficient. State and federal
agencies may rely on equipment that monitors only in the
parts-per-million range, which for some substances is not sensitive enough.
A growing body of research shows that infinitesimal doses of some
chemicals can have serious effects. Over the last few decades,
scientists have discovered that low-dose toxins may disrupt endocrine
functions that orchestrate everything from growth, development,
reproduction, immunity and cognition to memory and metabolism. The
unborn are particularly at risk: Exposure in-utero can interfere with
the gene-controlled signaling systems that influence every aspect of
fetal development.
***
Effects of early exposure may not appear until later in life, and
damaging genetic changes can be inherited by future generations. Health
problems caused by these “endocrine disruptors” is a problem of such
growing global concern that it prompted research on the state of the
science by the World Health Organization in 2012.
But most chemicals have never been safety-tested. When the Toxic
Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) was introduced, it grandfathered
in some 60,000-plus existing chemicals, assuming they were safe until
proven otherwise. Since then, the EPA has required testing of about 200
of them and has partially regulated just five.
Manufacturers have provided little if any information to the agency on
the safety of 22,000 chemicals created since then. According to the
Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, TSCA makes it
“nearly impossible for the EPA to take regulatory action against
dangerous chemicals, even those that are known to cause cancer or other
serious health effects.”
For a decade prior to his death last year, Senator Frank Lautenberg
(D-NJ), fought to overhaul chemical safety laws. But the Chemicals in
Commerce Act that was introduced in the House in February has drawn
fire, with critics arguing that the proposed legislation would weaken
current regulations by pre-empting state standards and allowing
companies to conceal the chemicals used in their products.
In both Marshall and Mayflower another knowledge gap became glaringly
obvious: There has been virtually no testing of either the cumulative
effects of various chemicals—or their combined, synergistic effects—on
the human body.
Trade Secrets May Endanger Public Health
It’s all a little like KFC and their secret recipe. Companies can
legally withhold their “proprietary” dilbit formulas from regulators,
including the EPA. Even the State Department’s 2013 Keystone XL
environmental impact study lacked specific information on diluents: “The
exact composition of the dilbit is not publicly available because the
particular type of bitumen and diluents blend produced is variable and
is typically a trade secret.”
That leaves the overseers in the dark. Carl Weimer, the executive
director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, says that though regulators have
some knowledge of what’s being used to thin heavy crude, they don’t know
the contents of any particular batch. Over 1,000 chemicals may be
present in dilbit, depending on what’s cheapest at the time. Many are
hazardous to humans.
Independent air samples taken by Lane and analyzed by Subra on the first
four days following the Mayflower accident were found to contain 30
chemicals.
“Each of the 30 hydrocarbons measured in the Mayflower release is a
toxic chemical on its own and may pose a threat to human health
depending on exposure and individual factors,” said Neil Carman, a
former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality inspector who now is a
Clean Air Program director with the Sierra Club.
What else citizens were breathing may be anyone’s guess because of the
limited testing done on the air samples, Lane says. Her monitoring
charted high levels of benzene, potentially dangerous concentrations of
n-hexane, octane, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which naturally
occur in oil and tar deposits. Lower levels of butane, toluene, and
other chemicals were also detected. Some of these are among the most
toxic airborne chemicals regulated under the Clean Air Act Amendments of
1990.
Heavy Metals in the Heavy Crude
Alberta’s tar sands oil also carries heavy metals in significantly
larger concentrations than those in conventional oil: mercury,
manganese, nickel and chromium, which are toxic at high doses, as well
as arsenic and lead, which damage the nervous system at relatively low
doses. The list of potential maladies from these chemicals and heavy
metals is long and frightening.
In 2009, the Alberta Research Council, a government-funded research and
development corporation focusing on energy, reported that the region’s
bitumen had 10 times the chromium and 38 times the manganese as Canada’s
standard crude oil.
Without testing, it’s unclear whether these metals and other chemicals
in bitumen are seeping into dwellings, gardens, the water table, or are
present in dust and soil—and if so, at what levels.
Water testing in an oil-soaked area of Lake Conway known as “the Cove”
has repeatedly measured manganese in amounts exceeding EPA safety
standards for drinking water. In some cases, it has tested at 30 times
acceptable levels.
Rising Imports, Rising Risks?
Concerns about tar sands extend beyond just the proposed Keystone XL
pipeline. Tar sands oil imports from Canada have tripled over the past
decade, jumping from 9.2 million gallons per day in 2000 to more than
27.3 million gallons in 2011. Producers hope to double that in the next
five years, according to Canada’s National Energy Board.
To transport Canada’s heavy crude from Alberta’s landlocked tar sands to
American refineries, the U.S. is constructing, or repurposing, a
plethora of existing oil and gas pipelines, some of which have been in
use for decades—and were constructed for much lighter loads. So no one
knows how well those pipes will handle the tar sands oil.
In part because of the controversy and delays over the pipeline, Exxon
is already making other plans: Starting in 2015, it will ship Canadian
oil by train out of a newly built terminal, up to 4.2 million gallons a
day. Rail transport poses its own risks. The last three years have seen
seven out of the nation’s worst 10 railroad oil spills—dumping 1.2
million gallons in 2013 alone.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works recently raised the
larger issue about bringing greater quantities of diluted bitumen into
the U.S., though they were specifically questioning Keystone XL.
“We believe that putting more Americans at risk for asthma, cancer, and
other serious health impacts is not in our national interest,” the
senators wrote.
Residents of Mayflower understand the risks firsthand. “There’s no fence
that stops toxins,” says Genieve Long. “We’re the collateral damage.”
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=====================================================
Link to Part 1:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/10/07/new-reasons-to-be-terrified-of-xl-pipeline-obama-is-considering-part-of-1-of-a-2-part-series/
or http://tinyurl.com/mg8cetd
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