Gas fracking: do we understand the potential health consequences?

UNEP has just released a new bulletin on Hydrological fracturing (fracking). The document introduces the topic, and then analyses it in the context of climate change and energy consumption needs.  Among the  aspects addressed there are a few very relevant for HIA and public health practitioners. There is also a bibliography for those interested in further information.

Environmental and health concerns
UG exploitation and production may have unavoidable environmental impacts (see Figure 4). Some risks result if the technology is not used adequately, but others will occur despite proper use of technology (EU, 2011). UG production has the potential to generate considerable GHG emissions, can strain water resources, result in water contamination, may have negative impacts on public health (through air and soil contaminants; noise pollution), on biodiversity (through land clearance), food supply (through competition for land and water resources), as well as on soil (pollution, crusting). The sections below further outline the potential environmental and health impacts

Risk on public health

When occurring in densely populated areas, UG production raises several specific threats to well-being. The most direct concern is the risk of explosion from the construction of new pipelines (Rahm, 2011). Other consequences have a slower onset, such as release of toxic substances into air, soil and water. In Texas, emissions from shale gas operations are being checked for contaminants after blood and urine samples taken from household residents near shale wells revealed that toluene was present in 65% of those tested and xylene present in 53% (Rahm 2011). Both of these chemicals are commonly present in fracking fluid and known for being toxic. The biocide substances which are also contained in fracking fluid, and may be released during surface water leaks, can lead to serious damage to the surrounding habitat (IEA, 2012).
More common nuisances include noise pollution, primarily associated with drilling and fracking (which is a non-stop operation over several weeks), but also from truck transport (Rahm, 2011).
Fracturing fluid consists of large amounts of water mixed with chemicals and sand. In most countries the chemicals used in fracking fluid are considered trade secrets (Zoback et al., 2010). If companies are not required to publicly disclose the full list of chemicals used, assessing potential short- and long-term impacts on public health will be difficult. Colborn and others (2011) compiled a list of products (about 1000) used in fracking fluid. They carried out literature review on 353 chemicals and found that "more than 75% of the chemicals could affect the skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40–50% could affect the brain/nervous system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations." (Colborn et al., 2011).
Nonylphenol, for example, which is commonly used in fracking fluid, mimics estrogen, and can cause the feminization of fish, even at concentrations not detected by normal monitoring of the fluid (NYS-WRI, 2011). The consequence of the feminization of fish is an imbalance between male and female populations, resulting in a deficit of fertilization and potentially leading to a rapid decline of these fish populations.

Health must be central to climate action

This is the declaration prepared by health and medical organisations during the COP18.  The declaration can be supported by Organisations and Individuals.

Health and medical organisations from around the world are calling for the protection and promotion of health to be made the one of the central priorities of global and national policy responses to climate change.

The protection of health and welfare is one of the central rationales for reducing emissions in Article One of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Article Four requires all countries to consider the health implications of climate adaptation and mitigation. Yet health is being overlooked in the development of responses to climate change, and its importance undervalued by policymakers, business and the media.

Human health and wellbeing is a basic human right and contributes to economic and social development. It is fundamentally dependent on stable, functioning ecosystems and a healthy biosphere.  These foundations for health are at risk from climate change and ecological degradation.

Health as a driver for mitigation and adaptation

The impact of climate change on health is one of the most significant measures of harm associated with our warming planet. Protecting health is therefore one of the most important motivations for climate action.

Climate change is affecting human health in multiple ways: both direct – through extreme weather events, food and water insecurity and infectious diseases – and indirect – through economic instability, migration and as a driver of conflict.
The risks to health from climate change are very large and will affect all populations, but particularly children, women and poorer people and those in developing nations.  Urgent and sustained emissions reductions as well as effective adaptation are needed.
Climate action can deliver many benefits to health worldwide. Reducing fossil fuel consumption simultaneously improves air quality and improves public health.  Shifting to cleaner, safer, low carbon energy systems will save millions of lives each year.  Moving to more active lifestyles and expansion of and access to public transport systems can improve health through increased physical activity and reduced air pollution.  Improving insulation in homes and buildings can protect people from extreme temperatures and reduce energy consumption. All of these changes will provide significant economic savings. Climate action that recognises these benefits can improve the health of individuals and communities, support resilient and sustainable development, and improve global equity.

What we seek from climate action

Recognising health in all policies and strengthening health systems globally can advance human rights and help create safe, resilient, adaptable, and sustainable communities.   

We call for:

1.       The health impacts of climate change to be taken into account domestically and globally

•Health impacts and co-benefits to be fully evaluated, costed and reflected in all domestic, regional and global climate decisions on both mitigation and adaptation;
•Health and environmental costs to be reflected in corporate and national accounts;
•Assessment of loss and damage from climate change to include impacts on human health, wellbeing and community resilience, as well as impacts to health care infrastructure and systems;

2.       Investment in climate mitigation and adaptation to be significantly increased on a rapid timescale

•Priority given to decarbonisation of national and global energy supplies;
•Cessation of fossil fuel subsidies globally and greater funding for renewable and clean technologies;
•Funding for programs to support and protect health in vulnerable countries to be significantly increased;
•Investment in adaptation and mitigation programs that can demonstrate health benefits to be substantially increased;    

3.       The health sector and the community to be engaged and informed on climate action

•The health sector to be engaged and included in the processes of designing and leading climate mitigation and adaptation worldwide;
• National and global education programs to increase public awareness of the health effects of climate change and promote the health co-benefits of low carbon pathways; and
•More inclusive consultation processes in global climate negotiations to reflect the views of young people, women and indigenous people.

Our Future

Human health is profoundly threatened by our global failure to halt emissions growth and curb climate change. As representatives of health communities around the world, we argue that strategies to achieve rapid and sustained emissions reductions and protect health must be implemented in a time frame to avert further loss and damage.
We recognise that this will require exceptional courage and leadership from our political, business and civil society leaders, including the health sector; acceptance from the global community about the threats to health posed by our current path; and a willingness to act to realise the many benefits of creating low carbon, healthy, sustainable and resilient societies.

Towards noiseless turbines?

At the IAIA conference in Portugal we hosted a session on Community Responses to New Energy Sources. There were very interesting case studies of wind turbine projects in Australia and in the Netherlands (see the posts of May on this blog).

Wind energy is a constantly growing source of alternative energy worldwide and while it is accepted as green alternative to the usual coal and fossil fuels, local communities are not so supportive of wind parks in their backyard. Indeed deciding where to place wind turbines is a major challenge in the decision making process and one of the complaints often made by local inhabitants is noise.

A recent study reviews recent advances in the area of noise pollution from wind turbines. “To date, there have been many different noise control studies. While there are many different sources of noise, the main one is aerodynamic noise. The largest contributor to aerodynamic noise comes from the trailing edge of wind turbine blades. The aim of this paper is to critically analyse and compare the different methods currently being implemented and investigated to reduce noise production from wind turbines, with a focus on the noise generated from the trailing edge.”

The discussion is not over and community acceptance of new energy will remain a topic at the next conference in Calgary

Climate Change Health Risk Assessment

I'm at a workshop on climate change risk assessment and environmental interventions at the NSW Ministry of Health this morning. It's particularly focused on a climate change health risk assessment that was conducted in the UK and lessons for Australia.

I'll update this post throughout the morning.
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UK Climate Change Risk Assessment
Dr Sotiris Vardoulakis gave an overview of the UK's climate change risk assessment. Some of this headline issues include:

• Increases in flooding, difficulties with water supply, heat effects and heatwaves, and biodiversity impacts and changes to ecosystem services.


• Significant increase in deaths due to heat, particularly by 2080s.


• The main opportunity in the UK is a reduction in cold-related deaths and potentially some scope to increase outdoor physical activity.


• There's quiet a bit of variation in the level of confidence we can have in predicting impacts.


• The risks are not homogenous even within a setting with more limited climatic range like the UK. Different regions face different challenges.


• The public health repsonse to the CCRA included a heat wave response plan and health advice for flooding.


• Air pollution and extreme weather events are well characterised risks. Many other impacts, especially financial and social ones are poorly understood, as are climate tipping points.


• Uncertainty is a critical issue not only in predicting impacts but also in trying to understand the the effectiveness of adaptation methods.

So what does this mean for health and health services?

• What major risks are we failing to take into account? What presumptions are being made? For example work in Hong Kong has found that rates of MI increased during cold periods, which wasn't anticipated.


• In Australia we lack national policy coordination on climate change, unlike the UK.


• There's a genuine risk in linking everything to climate change, e.g. extreme weather events, as these can be misleading.

Shale gas: an updated assessment of environmental and climate change impacts

Researchers at Tyndall Manchester, in partnership with The Co-operative, have updated their assessment of the environmental impact of shale gas in light of new developments in the UK. The report, released in November 2011, updates their January 2011 work. It finds that in the absence of a stringent global emissions cap, large-scale extraction of shale gas cannot be reconciled with the commitments enshrined in the latest international climate change agreement, the Copenhagen Accord (2009).
The report has also an interesting chapter on human health and one of the main findings of this work is that there is a paucity of information on which to base a quantified assessment of environmental and human health risk.
The report provides a list of key risks and impacts of shale gas and shale gas processes and development. Those can be divided as follows:
 contamination of groundwater by fracturing fluids or mobilised contaminants arising from:
o wellbore/casing failure; and/or
o subsurface migration;
 contamination of land and surface water, and potentially groundwater via surface route, arising from:
o spillage of fracturing additives; and
o spillage/tank rupture/storm water overflow from liquid waste storage, lagoons/pits containing cuttings/drilling mud or flowback fluid;
 water consumption/abstraction;
 wastewater storage, transport and treatment;
 land and landscape impacts from;
o drill rig and well pad
o storage ponds or tanks
o access roads
 impacts arising during construction and pre-production:
o noise/light pollution during well drilling/completion;
o local traffic impacts;
 seismic impacts

Health Risks and Benefits of Cycling in Urban Environments (Spain) Compared with Car Use

Objective 

To estimate the risks and benefits to health of travel by bicycle, using a bicycle sharing scheme, compared with travel by car in an urban environment.

Design 

Health impact assessment study.

Setting

Public bicycle sharing initiative, Bicing, in Barcelona, Spain.

Participants

181 982 Bicing subscribers.

Main outcomes measures 

The primary outcome measure was all cause mortality for the three domains of physical activity, air pollution (exposure to particulate matter <2.5 µm), and road traffic incidents. The secondary outcome was change in levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

Results 

Compared with car users the estimated annual change in mortality of the Barcelona residents using Biking (n=181 982) was 0.03 deaths from road traffic incidents and 0.13 deaths from air pollution. As a result of physical activity, 12.46 deaths were avoided (benefit:risk ratio 77). The annual number of deaths avoided was 12.28. As a result of journeys by Bicing, annual carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by an estimated 9 062 344 kg.

Conclusions 

Public bicycle sharing initiatives such as Bicing in Barcelona have greater benefits than risks to health and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.


The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study
David Rojas-Rueda, Audrey de Nazelle, Marko Tainio, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen

BMJ 2011;343:doi:10.1136/bmj.d4521 (Published 4 August 2011)

Click here to go to the open access article

See also two interesting responses here and here and the study authors' reply.

Is it too late to stop dangerous climate change?

This is the question that has inspired Friends of the Earth to undertake a year-long research project made up of three research reports.

The first report considered the latest science findings, concluded that global temperature increases must be kept below 1.5 degrees to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change, and identified what this means for future emissions. It found that the EU would need to reduce its emissions by 60% by 2020 from 1990 levels, the United States would need to make even deeper cuts and China would need to peak its emissions by 2013 and then reduce them by 5% per year. These are clearly eye-watering reduction targets.

The second report used an adapted DECC 2050 pathways model to see if it's possible for the UK to live within its share of remaining emissions space - what we call a carbon budget. It also considered whether it was possible to do so in a socially just way. It concluded that even with Herculean efforts across all sectors the UK cannot meet its reduction goals without deploying technologies that take carbon out of the air, so-called negative emissions technologies. It did however conclude that reductions could be made without disproportionate impact on poorer households - although it would require a very determined effort to do so.

The final report is a technical analysis of the different potential negative emissions technologies currently being researched. It found that many of the technologies are at a very early stage of development, some bring significant risks, and that the most promising technologies are likely to be extremely expensive - certainly far more costly than action to reduce carbon emissions in the first place. It also found practical limits to the contribution that negative emissions technologies can make - at best, they can only provide a supporting role to emissions reductions. It concluded that dangerous climate change can only be averted if much-accelerated carbon emissions reductions are made across the globe in addition to negative emissions.

Click here to go to the Friends of the Earth website to download the reports.

Hidden Heat: communicating climate change in Uganda

As HIA practitioners, we often assume that everybody knows about and understands what climate changes is and has a view on it just like we do. Most often this is not the case.

This is one of the few reports to examine the communication challenges in a low/middle income country. Through a series of 30 interviews with key climate change communicators, this

report identifies some of the challenges and opportunities of communicating climate
change in Uganda.

Click here to download the full report.

Key messages

• Central to the fight against climate change in Uganda is effective communication and public engagement.

• There is a major lack of co-ordination in the communication of climate change information in Uganda. Although several governmental and non-governmental bodies are potentially in a position to act as a central hub for climate change information and engagement, currently they are poorly funded and have a low public profile. Perhaps the most urgent priority for effective communication of climate change in Uganda is the development of a central co-ordinating body that can engage with all sectors of society.

• The media is not fully engaged in covering climate change – certainly not to the extent warranted by the seriousness of the threat. Training programmes to assist both journalists and editors are essential, but civil society organisations must also improve the way they engage with the media, packaging information in a clear and simple way and actively attracting media attention.

• Local languages lack terms for many key concepts involved in climate change –including ‘climate change’ itself.  Communicators should attempt to explain climate change using terms that already exist, using graphic examples of local environmental problems and innovative communication methods (e.g. dramatisation) to get the message across.

• At a national and international level, politicians are not being held to account for taking action on climate change – but this is partly because there is such little awareness of the international causes of climate change. Raising awareness about the role of industrialised nations in causing climate change, and pressuring national politicians to make greater progress at international negotiations is critical.

• At the local level, politicians tend to be poorly informed about climate change, yet local government structures represent a crucial opportunity for reaching large numbers of ordinary citizens. Sensitisation campaigns should focus on local politicians as a key constituency that can catalyse action on climate change.

• Indigenous knowledge about land management and the environment is incredibly valuable when trying to engage people on climate change – but it must be supplemented with scientific information about the causes and consequences of climate change. Climate change represents a significant challenge to indigenous ways of understanding the weather and farming – and so people must be supported with additional knowledge and information wherever possible, including the improved dissemination of meteorological information through local radio stations.

• National politicians have the task of developing a model of sustainable development that provides a higher standard of living for Ugandan citizens, but does not compromise the environment for future generations. This is a major challenge, but one in which as many different sectors of society as possible should be given a voice in. 

• What does a sustainable Uganda look like? Articulating a positive vision of sustainable development for Uganda will provide a major tool in effectively communicating the message of climate change – what is the alternative?

• Finally, awareness must be raised about the emerging carbon trading sector. There is the potential for carbon trading to deliver much-needed income to ordinary Ugandan citizens, but there are also major risks. An honest and open dialogue about the risks and benefits of carbon trading for Uganda is an essential first step to accessing the financial advantages that carbon trading may bring.

Hat tip: SDRN Network UK