Toxic Emission Spikes at Fracking Sites Are Rarely Monitored, Study Finds

by Lisa Song and Jim Morris (InsideClimateNews.org) Gas drilling facilities have sporadic emission spikes that spew toxins harmful to human health, but states rarely monitor these fleeting events.
People in natural gas drilling areas who complain about nauseating odors, nosebleeds and other symptoms they fear could be caused by shale development usually get the same response from state regulators: monitoring data show the air quality is fine.
A new study helps explain this discrepancy. The most commonly used air monitoring techniques often underestimate public health threats because they don't catch toxic emissions that spike at various points during gas production, researchers reported Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Reviews on Environmental Health. The study was conducted by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit based near Pittsburgh.
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Stuart Batterman, an environmental health sciences professor at the University of Michigan, said the study underscores the need for specialized monitoring programs that target community health.
But creating these programs is difficult, Batterman said, because scientists don't fully understand the emissions coming from natural gas facilities. Air pollutants ebb and flow based on equipment malfunctions, maintenance activities and the weather. They're released from storage tanks, compressor stations and pipelinesduring every step of the process: drilling, hydraulic fracturing, production and processing.
"Unfortunately, the states don't have much in the way of discretionary funds," to add monitors, Batterman said. "Their programs have been cut back because most legislatures are not funding their environmental agencies generously."
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Many federal and state-run monitors average their data over 24 hours or take samples once every few days. It's a technique that's been used for decades to assess regional compliance with the Clean Air Act. But natural gas facilities have sporadic emission spikes that last just a few hours or minutes. These fleeting events, which release particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and other harmful toxins into the air, can quickly lead to localized health effects. When averaged over 24 hours, however, the spikes can easily be ignored.
The averaging technique is "useless" for detecting pollution spikes, said Neil Carman, clean air director of the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter in Texas. "If the police had to use 24-hour averaging for enforcing speed limits, nobody would ever speed. It would average out."
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The limits of air monitoring are especially apparent when regulators respond to citizen complaints near drilling sites.
"The plume touchdowns or emission events are often quite short, and by the time anybody comes out there and sets up their monitoring [equipment], there's nothing to measure," Batterman said. "I have some sympathies for the regulated community because it's very difficult to validate these exceedances that certainly occur."
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The guidelines have another flaw: They don't fully consider what happens when people are exposed to many chemicals at once, as is common near gas and oil production sites. READ MORE and MORE (Biomass Magazine)