By Jodi Rave
Publisher of Buffalo’s Fire

I was recently on vacation with my 11-year-old granddaughter when her nose started to bleed on two separate occasions. I talked to her dad about it. I could tell he was looking to me for assurance she was all right and that nosebleeds might be a common occurrence for a little girl. I told my son his daughter would be OK.

Jodi Rave

But
I am concerned. My son and his family live on the Fort Berthold
Reservation about three-quarters of a mile from Marathon Oil fracking
operations and natural gas flares. Our family lives in the Bakken oil
fields where flares burn night and day in western North Dakota. In a
lengthy fracking review five years ago, the New York Department of
Health found environmental problems that could adversely affect public
health.

New York health professionals also discovered that people living around fracking areas had symptoms of skin rash, nausea or vomiting, abdominal pain, breathing difficulties, cough, anxiety, stress, headache, dizziness, eye irritation, throat irritation and nosebleeds. In the interest of state citizens, New York banned fracking in favor of further review.

But I am concerned.
My son and his family live on the Fort Berthold Reservation about
three-quarters of a mile from Marathon Oil fracking operations and
natural gas flares. Our family lives in the Bakken oil fields where
flares burn night and day in western North Dakota. In a lengthy fracking
review five years ago, the New York Department of Health found
environmental problems that could adversely affect public health.

New
York health professionals also discovered that people living around
fracking areas had symptoms of skin rash, nausea or vomiting, abdominal
pain, breathing difficulties, cough, anxiety, stress, headache,
dizziness, eye irritation, throat irritation and nosebleeds. In the
interest of state citizens, New York banned fracking in favor of further
review.

Today, a comprehensive 361-page report titled, “Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking”
relies on 1,500 studies, government reports and investigative
reporting. The report is blistering and bleak: “All together, the data
show that fracking impairs the health of people who live nearby,
especially pregnant women, and swings a wrecking ball at the climate,”
said Sandra Steingraber, co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of
New York. “We urgently call on political leaders to act on the
knowledge we’ve compiled.”

Meanwhile,
unconventional oil shale production rages on as does the burning of
natural gas at well sites. Satellite images show natural gas flares
lighting up the Bakken like a monotone Christmas tree. Oil companies
burn less lucrative natural gas in the Bakken typically because oil
production outpaces the infrastructure needed to transport the gas.
Globally, flaring increased by some 3% in 2018 to 145 billion cubic
meters. That’s the equivalent of total annual gas consumption of Central
and South America, according to the Global Gas Flaring Reduction
Partnership, a World Bank-led industry-government coalition.

The global increase in flaring was
associated with increased oil production in the United States where
flaring rose by about 48% from 2017 to 2018 and oil production jumped
33%. Shale oil production in the Bakken increased by about 29%.

While
state, tribal and corporate coffers get fat locally and nationally, the
health of 17.6 million Americans is at risk when they live within a
mile of an active oil or gas well. That number includes 1.4 million
young children and 1.1 million elders, according to the compendium
released by the Nobel Prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York.

North
Dakota’s Three Affiliated Tribe’s leaders, state politicians and oil
companies – all so eager to drill – are playing Russian roulette with
people who live near and work in fracking areas. Their exposure to
chemicals needs to be tracked. “We desperately need biomonitoring data
from these people,” said Susan Nagel who led a study reported in the
compendium. “What are people actually exposed to? What are the blood
levels of people living in these areas? What are the levels in the
workers?”

Jodi Rave is the executive director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance. She is a Nieman Fellow of journalism at Harvard. This story was first published as a special to the Forum News Service.