Tag: Common Dreams

Opinion: Big oil goes all in on toxic plastic

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Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash
Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash

Great at creating problems for humanity, fossil fuel giants increase oil demand in the form of plastic.

By Maya Rommwatt, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Oil companies are high on the hog again, with record high gas prices fueling record profits–profits so high they’re even catching the attention of Democrats in Congress. And of course, they’re using the profits to buy back shares so their shareholders will benefit from higher stock prices.

Maybe all that money is going to their heads because only a handful of years have passed since we learned Exxon and many other big oil companies have known since the seventies exactly how their dirty product was about to trigger a global meltdown. Yet they’re still up to their old tricks and trying to fool us while they pump more oil. As governments and communities race to stop runaway climate change, oil companies have quietly found a way to sell even more oil, in the form of plastic. Plastic production is projected to grow astronomically and is expected to account for 60% of oil demand in the next decade.

It would be nice if plastic made from oil was as clean and benign as makers of plastic would like us to believe, but petrochemical plastics are dirty from start to finish, and it’s the product where big oil is placing its largest bets. It turns out some of the biggest oil corporations are also some of the biggest petrochemical corporations. And petrochemical production is mostly plastics.

Cheerleaders of increased plastic production can talk all day about how the solution to the plastic waste crisis is simply more recycling, but less than 9% of plastic is actually recycled, and the industry is now trying to relabel plastic incineration as recycling to help justify increased production. And plastic waste may be just the tip of the iceberg. Before all of the needless plastic products and packaging oil companies make even reach the waste stream, they’ve already done countless damage to communities near sites of production and to consumers.

To make plastic out of oil, petrochemical plants release toxic air pollution that saddles nearby communities with inordinate negative health impacts, communities which are more often likely to be communities of color. If plastic production increases as planned, these communities will be subject to even more dangerous air pollution than they already grapple with.

Once the plastic is made, it enters the market where consumers become the next group of humans put at risk by dirty oil in the form of petrochemical plastic. Unless you live on the dark side of the moon, where presumably it’s not yet a problem, then you’ve probably heard of the microplastics problem. How plastic things fall apart into little pieces, each shred smaller than the last. How scientists can’t seem to find a place on the planet that’s not teeming with microplastics. How scale doesn’t matter because it’s in the air above the tallest mountains, in the streams on every continent, and in our blood and breastmilk. Now that we know it’s everywhere, scientists are beginning to ask if plastic is actually safe, because it’s made with myriad chemicals.

As they examine the toxic impacts of petrochemical plastics, scientists are beginning to warn that it’s not looking good for us. The more research that is done into the impact of plastics on human health, the more that dangers are discovered. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals, and it turns out many of those chemicals are moving from the plastic into our bodies. That plastic soda bottle you drank out of last week? Odds are good that the chemical used as a catalyst in the bottle making process has made its way into the soda. That polyester stuffed animal your infant adorably sucks on the ears of? It’s also made with a dangerous catalyst that may be released into your child’s mouth. Defend Our Health tested beverages in plastic bottles and found dangerous chemicals in every single one, at least one of the chemicals a known carcinogen.

We cannot continue allowing oil companies to poison our air, bodies, and climate with their toxic product. This is a critical moment in history, and when they’re not too busy reaping outrageous profits, oil companies are trying to convince us the product they’re selling isn’t killing the planet and everything on it, despite the evidence. Instead of making more stuff we don’t need, like a box full of air-filled plastic bubbles that take up nine-tenths of the box space because it was somehow cheaper for Amazon to mail a thing that way, perhaps the industry could check the room and start trying in earnest to transition itself off its dirty product. You’d think none of these companies would want to be the last one around trying to sell a product no one wants, but it seems they’re all participating in a mass delusion driven by short-term thinking. It’s time to draw down, not ramp up, oil and gas, and that means plastic production too.

Kids born near fracking sites 2-3 times more likely to develop leukemia: Study

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Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash
Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash

Exposure to fracking and its effects is “a major public health concern,” said a study co-author.

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Adding further evidence of the negative public health impacts associated with planet-heating fossil fuel pollution, new research published Wednesday found that children living in close proximity to fracking and other so-called “unconventional” drilling operations at birth face significantly higher chances of developing childhood leukemia than those not residing near such activity.

Existing setback distances, which may be as little as 150 feet, are insufficiently protective of children’s health.

—Cassandra Clark, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale Cancer Center

The peer-reviewed study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, examined the relationship between residential proximity to unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) and risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood leukemia.

Researchers compared 405 children ages 2 to 7 who were diagnosed with ALL in Pennsylvania between 2009 and 2017 to a control group of 2,080 children without leukemia matched on birth year. They measured the connection between in utero exposure to unconventional oil and gas activity and childhood leukemia diagnoses in two exposure windows: a “primary window” of three months pre-conception to one year prior to diagnosis and a “perinatal window” of pre-conception to birth.

Children with at least one fracking well within 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) of their birth residence during the primary window had 1.98 times the odds of developing ALL compared with those whose neighborhoods were free from such fossil fuel infrastructure, they found. Children who lived within 2 kilometers of at least one fracking well during the perinatal window were 2.8 times more likely to develop ALL compared with their unexposed counterparts.

Accounting for maternal race and socio-economic status reduced the strength of these relationships, but only slightly, with the adjusted odds of developing childhood leukemia 1.74 and 2.35 times higher for those exposed to UOGD during the primary and perinatal windows, respectively.

“Unconventional oil and gas development can both use and release chemicals that have been linked to cancer,” study co-author Nicole Deziel, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said in a statement.

Last summer, Physicians for Social Responsibility uncovered internal records revealing that since 2012, fossil fuel corporations have injected potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas—after former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists’ concerns about toxicity.

The possibility that children living in close proximity to such sites are “exposed to these chemical carcinogens is a major public health concern,” said Deziel.

Roughly 17.3 million people in the United States, including nearly four million children, live within a half-mile radius of active oil and gas production, according to the Oil & Gas Threat Map, a geospatial analysis released in May.

Not only do those people have a greater risk of suffering severe health problems from toxic air pollution, but as the research published Wednesday notes, fracking also contaminates drinking water—creating another pathway of exposure to cancer-linked chemicals.

The new study adds to a growing body of literature documenting the deleterious health and environmental consequences of fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction.

Research published earlier this year found that residential proximity to UOGD is correlated with a higher risk of dying early. More broadly, the World Health Organization warned last year that burning coal, oil, and gas is “causing millions of premature deaths every year through air pollutants, costing the global economy billions of dollars annually, and fueling the climate crisis.”

Other recent studies have estimated that slashing energy-related air pollution would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths and save $608 billion per year in the U.S. alone, while eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would save 74 million lives around the globe this century—demonstrating that the “mortality cost of carbon” is astronomical.

“Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly. It should be banned entirely.

—Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

Despite this obvious case for rapid decarbonization, President Joe Biden has yet to use his executive authority to cancel nearly two dozen fracked gas export projects that are set to unleash pollution equivalent to roughly 400 new coal-fired power plants.

The researchers behind the paper published Wednesday hope that their findings will be used to improve public policy, including better regulation of “setback distances”—the required minimum distance between a private residence or other sensitive location and fracking wells.

Setback distances are currently being debated across the U.S., with some communities calling for setback distances to be lengthened to more than 305 meters (1,000 feet) or as far as 1,000 meters (3,281 feet), the authors wrote.

In Pennsylvania, where the study was based, the current setback distance is 152 meters (499 feet), up from 61 meters (200 feet) in 2012. Researchers, meanwhile, observed elevated risks of childhood leukemia from fracking activity within a 2,000 meter (6,562 feet) radius.

“Existing setback distances, which may be as little as 150 feet, are insufficiently protective of children’s health,” lead author Cassandra Clark, a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Cancer Center, said in a statement. “We hope that studies like ours are taken into account in the ongoing policy discussion around UOG setback distances.”

Other critics of fracking have demanded far more extensive federal action, including prohibiting the practice entirely.

As “hundreds of scientific studies and thousands of pages of data have already shown over the last decade,” Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said last year, “fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it.”

“This says nothing of the dreadful impact fossil fuel extraction and burning is having on our runaway climate crisis,” she added. “Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly. It should be banned entirely.”

Hot planet made deadly South African floods twice as likely: climate scientists

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Flash flood in Palapye, Central District, Botswana. Heavy rain caused a small dam to burst on the Lotsane River, which flows through the village. The mud walls of traditionally built houses dissolved like icing sugar, leaving just the roofs: the breeze-block buildings in the background survived intact. A young goat has become entangled in a wire fence and drowned, but it's believed no human lives were lost. Taken 1995 on film. Author: JackyR, CC BY-SA 3.0
Flash flood in Palapye, Central District, Botswana. Heavy rain caused a small dam to burst on the Lotsane River, which flows through the village. The mud walls of traditionally built houses dissolved like icing sugar, leaving just the roofs: the breeze-block buildings in the background survived intact. A young goat has become entangled in a wire fence and drowned, but it’s believed no human lives were lost. Taken 1995 on film. Author: JackyR, CC BY-SA 3.0.

“We need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a new reality where floods and heatwaves are more intense and damaging,” said a co-author of the study.

“If we do not reduce emissions and keep global temperatures below 1.5°C, many extreme weather events will become increasingly destructive.”

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Intense rainfall that led to deadly flooding and landslides in South Africa last month was made twice as likely by the human-caused climate crisis, a team of scientists revealed Friday, pointing to the findings as proof of the need to swiftly and significantly curb planet-heating emissions.

Experts at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative found that heavy rainfall episodes like the one in April that left at least 435 people dead can be expected about once every 20 years versus the once every 40 years it would be without humanity warming the planet.

WWA climatologists warn that without successful efforts to dramatically reduce emissions, the frequency and intensity of such extreme events will increase as the global temperature does.

“If we do not reduce emissions and keep global temperatures below 1.5°C, many extreme weather events will become increasingly destructive,” said study co-author Izidine Pinto of the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town. “We need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a new reality where floods and heatwaves are more intense and damaging.”

During an April speech announcing a disaster declaration, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that communities in the eastern part of the country were “devastated by catastrophic flooding,” noting that it “caused extensive damage to houses, businesses, roads, bridges and water, electricity, rail, and telecommunications infrastructure.”

Ramaphosa also highlighted the death toll, sharing that when he and other officials visited affected families, “they told us heart-breaking stories about children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, and neighbors being swept away as their homes crumbled under the pressure of the flood waters.”

The city of Durban was hit particularly hard and its port—the largest in Africa—had to suspend operations because of the extreme weather.

Friederike Otto from Imperial College London, who leads WWA and co-authored the new study, pointed out that “most people who died in the floods lived in informal settlements, so again we are seeing how climate change disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable people.”

“However, the flooding of the Port of Durban, where African minerals and crops are shipped worldwide, is also a reminder that there are no borders for climate impacts,” she added. “What happens in one place can have substantial consequences elsewhere.

In addition to the chances of an event such as the mid-April rain disaster doubling due to human-induced climate change, the WWA team found that “the intensity of the current event has increased by 4-8%.”

The New York Times noted that “the work has yet to be peer-reviewed or published, but it uses methods that have been reviewed previously” and “the finding that the likelihood of such an extreme rain event has increased with global warming is consistent with many other studies of individual events and broader trends.”

WWA’s previous work includes a review of last year’s fatal heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, which the scientists concluded would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without the climate emergency.

“Our results provide a strong warning,” that WWA analysis said. “Our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods.”