Why Are The Powers That Be Apparently So Afraid Of A Wee Bit Of Pilot Epidemiology?

FrackingFor
DollarsVille


So.

Don't know about you, but I noticed an item in a Postmedia print organ last week that started like this:

A team of Université de Montréal researchers looking at a small sample of 29 women living near major natural-gas well sites found high levels of toxins in their urine.

Researchers found they had 3.5 times more benzene byproducts in their urine than the average person in Canada. But in nearly half the participants, 14 of them Indigenous women, the levels were six times higher...


Gosh.

That's interesting, not to mention potentially important, I thought, so I read further:

...The study was initially sparked by interest expressed at a Canadian symposium on toxicology, (researcher Elyse) Caron-Beaudoin said.

“We had heard that some communities in Peace River Valley in northeastern British Columbia were worried about the health impacts of living near fracking,” she said. “There was no bio-monitoring (for toxic chemicals) done in this region despite it being one of the most intensive hydraulic fracking regions in the country.”...


All of which sent me searching for the kicker, which is that the researchers should do a larger, more detailed study to determine what if any the association of this is with, well, you know...

...Researchers suggest the higher levels of benzene exposure in B.C. is coming from the fracking.

“But we don’t know for sure,” Caron-Beaudoin said.

Benzene is also found in cigarettes, petroleum products including motor fuels and solvents, as well as in drinking water. The study did not measure benzene in the participants’ environments, for example, in their tap water or in the air in their houses.

“The key message here is that we have a red flag,” she said. “We think there is higher benzene exposure in this region, and it’s particularly seen in the Indigenous participants, who already face social and health inequities. We need to look into this further and correct for the limitations we had in this pilot study.”

In her next study, Caron-Beaudoin expects to investigate the medical data of about 6,000 babies born in the region in the past 10 years...

****

Now...

You might have missed this story because it came out in the Montreal Gazette, presumably because the study, while done in BC, was carried out by researchers from the University of Montreal.

The thing is, it would appear that the folks at the Gazette may have missed a CAPPish-type memo or three.

Because two days later, seemingly out of nowhere, the Province ran an Op-Ed by Mr. Kenneth Green of the Fraser Institute titled "Attack On Fracking by BC Activists Ignores Science That Practice Is Safe". 

Now, as you might have predicted, the piece by the good Mr. Green included statements like to the following to support his thesis which closely matched the title of his piece:

...With regard to air pollution, a 2014 study conducted for the B.C. Ministry of Health found that short-term exposures to air pollutants were low enough that they did not pose a significant risk of adverse health effects in people living in the area, while long-term exposures to air pollutants from hydraulic fracturing were generally associated with a low potential for adverse health effects...


Hmmmmm...

Do you see what Mr. Green did there re: the phrase: 'generally associated with'?

Regardless, surprisingly (or not), Mr. Green made no mention of the scientific U of M study cited above.

Furthermore, Mr. Green's piece also did not make mention of any of the following bits of unsettling science noted by Andrew Nikiforuk in the Tyee (in a piece on the U of M study that was published on the very same day as Mr. Green's Province Op-Ed):

...In Pavillion, Wyoming, a region of intense hydraulic fracturing activity, researchers have detected elevated benzene concentrations in air near homes located close to well pads. They have also found high muconic levels in urine as a result of benzene exposure...

{snip}

...In 2015 researchers at Johns Hopkins University reviewed the records of nearly 11,000 births between 2009 and 2013 in heavily fracked rural areas of north and central Pennsylvania.

The researchers discovered that expectant mothers living in the busiest areas of shale gas activity were 40 per cent more likely to give birth prematurely (before 37 weeks of gestation).

In addition women were thirty per cent more likely to have a “high risk pregnancy” in heavily fracked landscapes.

And in 2014 as U.S. federal study found that pollution from the mining of natural gas in rural areas can increase the incidence of congenital heart defects among babies born to mothers living close to well sites...


Gosh.

Me thinks someone has been spooked enough to set their peer review-free deflector spike spin phasers to eleven for the duration.


_________
The U of M's press release on the study is....Here....The actual peer-reviewed scientific publication is...Here.
Interestingly, the title of Mr. Green's non-peer-reviewed piece published on the house organ's website was slightly different than the title of the identical piece published in the Province. To wit: "Attacks On Hydraulic Fracturing In BC Defy Settled Science"
Separate from specific health hazard matters, check out the following bit of obfuscatory bait-and-switcheroozapalooza from Mr. Green when it comes to earthquakes: "On seismicity, the Canadian Council of Academies found that although hydraulic fracturing operations can cause additional seismicity, most of the earthquakes felt by the public are not caused by hydraulic fracturing itself, but by the underground injection of waste water"...Feel better now?
Norm Farrell also noted the U of M study on the Twittmachine on the weekend.

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