Fracking began in Pennsylvania more than 15 years ago, and there is continuing concern for the potential health impacts related to the shale industry.
The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple recently spoke with Nathan Deron, project manager at the Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit that has been working on these issues for over a decade. The organization debuted a new online tool called Compounds of Concern, which they’ve developed to help residents navigate exposure to chemicals and compounds from industrial facilities.
LISTEN to the conversation
Kara Holsopple: How did the Compounds of Concern tool come about? Where did the idea come from?
Nathan Deron: The Compounds of Concern tool comes out of our long work in this region. EHP was founded in 2012 as an organization that was really responding to community concerns about exposures around mostly fracking wells. A lot of our experience in the early days of our organization was working with communities that simply didn’t know what was happening in their backyards. In that process, we did a lot of air sampling – taking a canister, filling it with air, and sending it off to a lab. They would tell us all of the things that were in that air sample. Some of the things in those samples were things that people had heard of before, things like benzene or formaldehyde. But a lot of them were compounds or chemicals that people weren’t necessarily familiar with.
We worked very hard to communicate on what these compounds are and what kinds of health responses people might see when exposed to them. And in the intervening years, there have been more reasons that we felt this kind of tool would be helpful. There could be some sort of event involving a chemical that people aren’t familiar with, and it’s in the news, and they need information quickly. Obviously the East Palestine train derailment is a prime example of this, and across the country, every day, there are smaller and less dramatic incidents that are still important to the people that live in those communities. So, being able to provide folks with some information about something that’s happening in their community that they might be worried about was another reason to develop this tool.
And lastly, people come to us all the time, saying, me, my neighbor, and our friend down the street, we all have this strange form of cancer that doesn’t seem to be very common, or everyone’s getting these headaches or shortness of breath. People are seeing different symptoms or diseases in their communities, and they’re concerned about whether or not this could be linked or caused by some sort of environmental exposure.
Kara Holsopple: What will people see when they log into the tool?
Nathan Deron: When people go to the site, they will see basically a three-paneled website. On the very left-hand side, they’ll see a variety of ways to filter down the compounds that we’re looking at. One of the ways to do that is by the organs or target organ groups that might be impacted. These are things like your respiratory system, your digestive system, and your neurological or central nervous system. So if you’re getting shortness of breath or having trouble breathing, you could select the respiratory system there, and it’s going to narrow down the list of compounds to a short list of all of the ones that impact that system.
So there are a variety of other filters on this left-hand side as well that if people are interested in compounds that are carcinogenic or come from specific kinds of facilities, these are other ways that people are able to narrow down the list of compounds.
If you’re coming to the tool with a compound name already, you can go to that central panel, put in your compound name, and that takes us to the right panel, which then gives you all of the information that we are providing about that particular compound. And lastly, we provide sourcing for everything. Folks can see every piece of information that was cited and go to the source itself and look through it if they choose.
Kara Holsopple: Can you give me an example of a compound that might be released from an industrial facility, and then a related potential health impact?
Nathan Deron: One compound that can be emitted from industrial facilities is toluene. So toluene is one of those core BTEX compounds, and can have impacts on just about every organ system from your central nervous system to your respiratory and cardiovascular systems as well as your bone marrow and reproductive systems.
The symptoms that can be associated with toluene exposure include headaches, dizziness, cognitive impairment, skin irritation, and fatigue. You can be exposed to toluene in various ways, both through inhalation as well as exposure on your skin. The levels that we see for toluene exposure that become concerning – the minimum risk level is one part per million. That’s a relatively high concentration when compared to other compounds, and that is over a chronic timeframe. We usually see concentrations that are lower than this. Sources of this particular compound, toluene, include semiconductor manufacturing, painting or solvent manufacturing, adhesives, textile and leather manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, extraction and support activities, construction, petroleum manufacturing, petrochemical manufacturing, and a whole lot of others.
Kara Holsopple: So, if someone were to go to your site, look up toluene, find out some of this information, what would you envision them doing with that information?
Nathan Deron: That might depend on what brought them to our tool in the first place. If they, for instance, lived near a kind of industrial development, saw that this compound toluene is associated with that facility that they lived near, potentially, they could take note of these symptoms that are associated with exposure, and keep a health diary or a health journal. They could say, “I know these are the kinds of symptoms that are markers of toluene exposure. I’m gonna just jot down every time I get a bad headache, then I can bring that to my physician next time I go in for my annual, or if it gets really bad, maybe set up a specific doctor’s visit to go in and discuss my concerns with my health care provider.” We really want to make sure that people are using this as a way to collect more information about their own experiences and then talk to a qualified healthcare provider about those concerns, who can guide them on what to do next, if that’s a biomarker study or some environmental investigation.
Kara Holsopple: Why is this important, especially now, do you think? I mean, why are you rolling this out now?
Nathan Deron: This tool is particularly important right now because we’re seeing communities that are very worried about the environment. In the current political climate, we have heard from a lot of folks that the protection of the environment and public health is not a priority. People are worried and feel that they don’t necessarily have access to the information that they need. To understand what’s going on in the environment around them and protect the health of themselves, their families, their neighbors, and their communities in ways that are meaningful.
We think that this is one small step towards providing people the knowledge and information they need to better understand their environment and identify ways to protect the health of themselves and those they care about. I’ll also say that this is something that we anticipate adding to over time. We want to make sure that we have good information out with a key core list of compounds, roughly 45 in the tool right now, that are relevant to our work and to the work of communities we know and have worked with in the past.
Nathan Deron is program manager at the Environmental Health Project.
