Fracking, leukemia, and a mother’s promise to protect her child

On a cold November day in 2009, a doctor told me that my 3-year-old son had leukemia. My world crashed. Three years later, when Carson finished his last round of chemotherapy, I made him a promise: I would do everything in my power to protect him from ever having to go through the nightmare of cancer treatment again.

My son is lucky. He survived leukemia. He is a thriving high school athlete, whose most pressing current health concern is how his recent hip surgery will affect his lacrosse season.

But I worry about more than the hip surgery. Last week, a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that Pennsylvania children who lived near oil and gas fracking wells are at a higher risk for leukemia.

Researchers from Yale found that children in our state who live near unconventional fracking wells are up to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of 2 to 7 than those who did not live near wells. The study looked at 405 children diagnosed with leukemia between 2009 and 2017, and included 2,080 controls matched by birth year. Children who lived within two kilometers, or about a mile and a quarter, of a well faced the highest risk of leukemia, but the study suggested that children living up to 10 kilometers, or about six miles, from a well still had an elevated level of risk. Pennsylvania law only requires a 500-foot setback between fracking wells and homes.

My son may have been among the hundreds of cases included in the study.

Our family lives in Southwestern Pennsylvania on top of the Marcellus Shale. The two homes that my son has lived in all his life are surrounded by the very same oil and gas wells that the researchers analyzed. The closest wells are approximately a half a mile from my children’s school campus, where there are more than 3,200 students in attendance.

In 2014, when I first learned about the plans to frack near my sons’ school in the Mars Area School District, I became concerned. I scoured medical journals, met with researchers, and attended community meetings to learn more. I learned that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a drilling method that involves injecting fluid that contains sand, water, and chemicals underground in order to stimulate the flow of gas or oil. This process can both use and release chemicals that have been linked to cancer. As a cancer survivor, Carson is at a higher risk of having cancer again. While the form of leukemia he had as a kid has a relatively high survival rate, it can lead to additional health problems later in life.

It is my job as his mom to be vigilant about any possible environmental exposures that could increase that risk.

At the time, there were scant studies about the impacts to people from oil and gas operations. Researchers were only just starting to uncover the public health implications of these industrial operations located near homes, hospitals, and schools. Ultimately, our community wasn’t able to stop those gas wells from being drilled near the Mars Area schools.

There are now fracked gas wells and a network of gathering pipelines scattered throughout the school district. Like thousands of other communities, we were left with unanswered questions about an industry that has never been proven safe to operate near where children live, learn, and play. The oil and gas industry emits a cocktail of harmful volatile organic compounds such as benzene, a known risk factor for the type of leukemia in the study — the same cancer that my son had.

The Yale study adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that there could be serious public health impacts associated with being in close proximity to oil and gas operations, and that we need more protective policies as a result. Across our nation, more than 3 million children go to school within a half mile of oil and gas operations.

Last year, at the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule to cut methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing oil and gas operations. Parents from across the country came out in support of the rule, but we also asked the EPA to make it better.

» READ MORE: An environmentalist grapples with John Fetterman’s views on fracking

Currently, the EPA is working on a draft oil and gas methane rule proposal, and we need it strengthened to better protect families. A strong and comprehensive methane rule will cut climate-warming methane pollution and have the benefit of reducing associated harmful volatile organic compounds such as benzene.

The EPA’s methane proposal must further address oil and gas pollution by eliminating routine flaring (the burning off of methane and associated gases), requiring regular inspections at small wells, mandating community air monitoring programs, and demanding the use of equipment that does not emit methane pollution.

The EPA must propose a strong rule this summer to cut pollution from oil and gas operations. There is no time to waste — both for my son, and for millions of other families.

Patrice Tomcik is the senior national field manager for Moms Clean Air Force, where her work focuses on protecting children’s health from air pollution and climate change.