Cancer survivors and medical officials recently wrote to Governor Cuomo and other state government leaders, warning that rushing to issue hydrofracking permits before conducting a full assessment of public health risks threatens to expose New Yorkers to the carcinogens that have been identified in other states soon after the gas drilling began.
The letter, sent the day that hearings began on the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) that supports the issuance of thousands of hydrofracking permits across the state, was signed by organizations fighting breast and prostate cancer, as well as cancer in young people.
Prime signatories are Sandra Steingraber, a biologist, ecologist, author and a cancer survivor, and Lois Gibbs, a founder of the Love Canal Homeowners Association and the director of the Center for Health and Environmental Justice.
“New York State ranks 11th in highest overall annual incidence cancer rate in the United States at 486.2 cancer diagnoses for 100,000 New Yorkers each year—well above the national average of 455.7,” the letter reads. “We urge you to improve this situation rather than risk raising our cancer rank further by allowing a carcinogen-dependent industry into our state.”
The cancer-focused letter came weeks after a group of 250 pediatricians and other physicians and medical personnel — operating under the umbrella group Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) — wrote Cuomo asking that he delay consideration of the SGEIS until the state conducts a formal health impact assessment as recommended by federal officials. A state health official told a member of a special advisory committee on hydrofracking that the state planned to monitor health impacts once the drilling has begun, which the doctors called unacceptable.
The cancer-focused letter notes that cancer risks have been identified in other states where hydrofracking takes place.
“In Texas, breast cancer rates rose significantly among women living in the six counties with the intensive gas drilling,” the letter reads. “By contrast, over the same time period, breast cancer rates declined within the rest of Texas.”
The letter outlines a series of problems with the SGEIS specifically, and problems with hydrofracking in general, including:
- Hydraulic fracturing introduces cancer risks from the start and into perpetuity. Cancer-causing chemicals are associated with all stages of the high-volume hydraulic fracturing process, from the production and use of fracking fluids, to the release of radioactive and other naturally hazardous materials from the shale, to transportation and drilling-related air pollution, to the disposal of contaminated wastewater.
- Fracking fluids contain carcinogens and cancer-promoting chemicals. Between 2005 and 2009, according
- to the (U.S House) Committee on Energy and Commerce, hydraulic fracturing companies used 95 products containing 13 different known and suspected carcinogens. These include naphthalene, benzene, and acrylamide. Thirty-seven percent of chemicals in fracking fluids have been identified as endocrinedisruptors. Exposure to endocrinedisrupting chemicals has been implicated in cancers of the breast, prostate, pituitary, testicle, and ovary.
- Fracking operations release from the Earth radioactive substances, carcinogenic vapors, and toxic metals. The shale bedrock of New York contains many highly carcinogenic substances that can be mobilized by drilling and fracturing. Among these are arsenic, chromium, benzene, uranium, radon, and radium. Drill cuttings and flowback waste are typically contaminated with naturally occurring radioactive substances and cancer-causing metals, which would otherwise remain safely entombed underground.
- Fracking pollutes the air with known and suspected human carcinogens. Air pollutants from fracking take the form of diesel exhaust (from trucks, pumps, condensers, earthmoving machines, and other heavy equipment) along with volatile organic compounds, including benzene (released from the wellheads themselves) and formaldehyde (produced by compressor station engines). Exposure to these air pollutants have been demonstrably linked to lung, breast, and bladder cancers.
- Fracking adds carcinogens to drinking water. Nationwide, more than a thousand different cases of water contamination have been documented near fracking sites.
- The proposed mitigation strategies set forth in the revised environmental impact statement are insufficiently protective. The revised SGEIS makes no attempt to explicate the possible human health effects from thousands of gas wells and fleets of trucks that will service them nor to project the monetary costs of these health effects.
The letter concludes that the lack of health considerations within the SGEIS require the state at a minimum to reopen its consideration for a full assessment of potential health impacts. “We need a precautionary, prevention- oriented approach to reducing environmental cancer risk,” the letter concludes.