By Amy Lubik, Ben Parfitt and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

Just two days before B.C. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall announced a completely inadequate “independent scientific review” of fracking in our province, an international team of scientists issued a stark warning about the human health risks associated with the natural gas industry’s rampant use of this brute force technology.

“Our examination…uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health,” concluded the scientists, who were affiliated either with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Tellingly, the scientific review just announced by the B.C. government will expressly not investigate the human health impacts of fracking.

Fracking involves pressure-pumping immense quantities of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that earthquakes are frequently triggered. Northeast B.C. has the dubious distinction of being home to some of the most powerful fracking operations on earth, and much of the resulting damage occurs on Indigenous territories.

The evidence reviewed by the scientists included nearly 1,300 peer-reviewed articles. That fact alone tells you something. The “science” on fracking is already in.

And here’s just a smattering of what it says:

People living near gas drilling and fracking operations are more prone to asthma. Pregnant women living near drilled and fracked gas wells face elevated risks of giving birth to newborns with congenital heart defects. Workers servicing gas well sites are exposed to high levels of silica, diesel exhaust, and volatile organic compounds that raise concerns about higher incidence of occupational lung diseases, including silicosis, asthma, and lung cancer.

For Indigenous people living in fracking zones, the impacts of fossil fuel industry operations only add to the disproportionately poor health statistics they already face.

A preliminary scientific study published this January by health scientists at the University of Montreal, for example, found that pregnant women in northeast B.C. have elevated levels of benzene metabolites (benzene is a carcinogen) in their blood. The 15 pregnant Indigenous women in the study had levels six times higher than the Canadian average.

For these reasons and others, the organizations we represent and 14 others last fall called for a full public inquiry into all aspects of fracking operations in our province. We made that call because of abundant evidence that fracking in northeast B.C. was intensifying and that B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, was failing to provide reasonable checks on fossil fuel industry excesses.

In issuing our collective call we said then — and we restate now — that a scientific “review” will not deliver meaningful changes. The people who live in the northeast, who drink the region’s water, who breathe its air, deserve nothing less than a full public inquiry into all aspects of fossil fuel industry operations.

It must also fully addresses the question of free, prior and informed consent, a cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Michelle Mungall and all her Cabinet colleagues are tasked by Premier John Horgan to implement.

Now, sadly, we have even more reason to oppose a “scientific review.” Here’s why.

The review will be extremely narrowly focussed. Minister Mungall has tasked three scientists to look at water usage in fracking operations, examine earthquakes triggered by such operations and determine what methane may be vented into the atmosphere during fracking operations themselves. The panel is to make “recommendations” on how to “minimize” environmental risks.

Troublingly, at least one senior member of Mungall’s ministry (an assistant deputy minister) communicated with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) well before the panel was struck. Consequently, the association, which represents the very companies that are fracking in the province, received generous forewarning that the review would not look at the human health impacts associated with fracking or at the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning greenhouse gas emissions.

(A recent study in Alberta found emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, were 15 times greater than what fossil fuel companies operating in the Red Deer area were reporting to the provincial government).

Not only was CAPP forewarned about the limited B.C. fracking review, but it was encouraged well in advance of anyone else to get going on lining up its “expert” witnesses.

The public interest is clearly not being served here. Instead, the interests of an industry with a vested stake in maintaining the status quo are.

In just two years, Encana, one of the major companies drilling and fracking for natural gas in northeast B.C., says it will double its natural gas production and quintuple its gas liquids output, much of which will be destined for Alberta’s tarsands. That translates directly into increased health risks for the region’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.

British Columbians deserve better. What’s needed are comprehensive changes to public policy. A full public inquiry could provide a needed roadmap. The government’s science panel most certainly will not.

Amy Lubik is a health researcher with the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

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When the B.C. government announced its promised review of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, earlier this month, it came as a shock to many that it wouldn’t examine human health impacts.

The announcement coincided with the release in the U.S. of the most authoritative study of fracking’s threats to human health ever published, which found “no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health.”

For Caleb Behn, the government’s announcement marked a loss of hope in the less than one-year-old NDP government.

“They’ve shown themselves ready to sacrifice us and the unborn who will come after us in this territory,” Behn told DeSmog Canada.

Behn is Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree from Treaty 8 in northeastern British Columbia, the epicenter of B.C.’s fracking operations. He was the focus of the 2013 documentary Fractured Land.

Since 2010, the B.C. government has authorized the drilling of 4,772 new wells. There are approximately 25,000 wells in B.C., 12,771 of which are reported as active.

We spoke to Behn about his experience of fracking on and near his traditional territory. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The fracking review announced by the NDP last week won’t involve health impacts. What was your reaction to that?

First thing I’ll say, for the NDP to exempt a review of fracking from any health-oriented research is — I don’t know if I have strong enough words — I feel as if it’s criminal hypocrisy.

To give this problematic industry and this problematic technology a pass on health because you’re pro LNG puts Indigenous and rural populations at risk.

Data gaps and knowledge gaps have been acknowledged in every piece of research ever conducted on this issue in British Columbia. The type of research that has been done up to date in B.C. has been entirely inadequate. That’s well known.

The vast majority of original research on fracking — 84 per cent of which has been conducted in the last four or five years — indicates health risks are present or strongly indicated.

More recently I helped facilitate a pilot study looking at muconic acid, amongst other compounds, in the urine of pregnant Indigenous women in northeast B.C.

Muconic acid is a marker of benzene exposure.

The findings are intense.

In essence, rural woman in northeast B.C. have three and a half times the national average of this marker that is likely, but not guaranteed, benzene metabolization.

What’s interesting is Indigenous women within that cohort have six times the national average.

This is the first original research into the potential human health impacts of fracking in northeast B.C. and I’m surprised it hasn’t raised some red flags. It took over two years to conduct.

To avoid addressing these health impacts in a fracking review is hypocrisy of the deepest and most dangerous kind. And it is evident it’s of a very strategic benefit to the LNG industry.

Can you describe the impact fracking has had on your territory and on your people?

Here’s the problem, you’re dealing with chronic or sub-chronic cumulative exposure illnesses that have long latency periods.

In some ways it’s easy to identify certain risks, like a rig blew up and a worker was killed or a rig caught fire and did some damage.

The really troubling bits are the long latency illnesses like cancer, asthma and gestational problems, so things associated with in utero exposure.

As a person with a major birth defect, I am uniquely sensitive to that issue.

It’s things like increased risk of pre-term birth.

Research now indicates that those who live near active gas wells are 1.5 to four times more likely to suffer asthma attacks than those living further away, with the closest groups having the highest risk.

There’s a 2017 study which analyzed birth certificates for infants born in Pennsylvania that found indicators of poor infant health, in this case lower birth weight for babies, born to mothers living near fracking sites.

You combine that finding with our pilot study in northeast of B.C. looking at the markings of benzene exposure in air of pregnant women, you understand why it’s important to use a precautionary approach to these developments.

Is it that we’re poor and colonized that children do poorly in the northeast or is it the consequence of living in a benzene plume? Again without the science and without research, how can we even approach that question?

I can tell you life is hard in the north, kids don’t do well up there. There’s a lot of crime, a lot of abuse. A lot of that comes from colonization, a lot of that comes from racism, from dysfunction in communities.

But what level of that comes from the ambient hydrogen sulfide, ambient benzene?

We don’t have quantifiable numbers.

We also hear about the social impacts, especially for Indigenous women and children, when it comes to industrialization.

Taylor Roades \ DeSmog Canada

What is your experience of those social impacts?

There’s one major issue I can speak to specifically: violence against women.

My aunty has a very successful business in Fort Nelson, working in the oil and gas industry.

It’s confirmed there’s a rise in crime, sexual violence and the trafficking of Indigenous women during booms in the industry.

Research from in 2015 found there is a linear relationship between highly paid shadow populations in industrial camps, a highly masculine culture and a rise in crime and sexual violence and trafficking of Indigenous women.

Fort St. James data from local RCMP shows a 38 per cent increase in sexual assaults in first year of the construction phase of industrial projects, as well as an increase in sex work in areas where there’s increase in industrial traffic.

What I can tell you is that in my experience, it’s a violent, aggressive and competitive world when these industries come in, subject to boom and bust cycles.

The northeast has been made into a sacrifice zone.

The NDP recently announced some big incentives to entice the LNG industry to come to B.C. Combined with a fracking inquiry that won’t study health impacts, what does that new announcement signal to you?

Many of us in the Indigenous community in northeast B.C. in particular had hope in the NDP. But they’ve shown themselves ready to sacrifice us and the unborn who will come after us in this territory.

That is what is on the table, and that’s why it’s really hurtful to hear them exempt public health from the fracking inquiry.

But we do know the NDP assistant deputy minister did inform the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers over a month in advance of them announcing this review, that health would be exempted.

Of course health is the key issue because with health comes massive financial liability. There’s significant power for doctors and medical health advisors in the Public Health Act.

And what you’re seeing in my view is an affirmation that marginal populations far away from the Lower Mainland don’t matter all that much.

In the Indigenous community we don’t have the research dollars to parse out which of this is due to upstream contamination from logging and mining, versus upstream contamination of our air plume by oil and gas.

I think as an Indigenous person from northeast B.C. that is familiar with these issues, that’s why the exemption is so criminally hypocritical.

The current government frequently evokes Indigenous rights and climate change action in the announcements they make, some of which seem at cross-purposes. What is it like to hear government use that language?

It’s eco-imperialism. Because here is what the NDP is doing — they’re adopting the same crass double think politics that the BC Liberals and the federal Liberals have adopted where they mouth the words but even a superficial analysis of their positions and policies identifies the outright lies.

So to claim that somehow Kinder Morgan is going to lead to protecting the coast — it’s not disingenuous, it’s literally double-think.

So in my view as someone from the sacrifice zone, it’s the saddest manifestation of what is worst in the modern colonial state, to not only colonize the land and the water and the children but also the ideas of decolonization.

To take the very terms that were supposed to ameliorate and begin to try to do better and use those terms like reconciliation and decolonization and UNDRIP and the doctrine of free, prior and informed consent, to sully their aspirations with this crass manipulative rhetoric is the saddest reflection of what our province is becoming and what our country is becoming in my view

I really hope your readers think long and hard about the absolute inconsistency with the NDP’s position on Kinder Morgan and fracking and LNG and Site C.

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Families forced to evacuate their homes in Peace River, Alberta due to toxic fumes from bitumen development have finally received official recognition of their plight.

This week an Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) panel released a report confirming the odours released from a Baytex Energy Corp. oilsands processing facility may have been the cause of health complications, including chronic coughing, disorientation, nose and throat irritation, fatigue, weight loss, gray skin, and the formation of growths, that forced the families from their properties.

Oilsands deposits in the Peace River region are extracted using a relatively new method called Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand or CHOPS. The process involves pumping heavy oil from the ground to heated surface-level tanks that produce emissions plumes.

“The Panel’s main finding in this section is that odours from heavy oil operations in the Peace River area have the potential to cause some of the symptoms experienced by residents; therefore, these odours should be eliminated,” the report states.

The panel also noted a lack of clear communication concerning air monitoring to local community members.

Residents of the Peace River area have raised concerns regarding the fumes for nearly three decades but became more suspicious of the link to health complications in recent years and most notably after Baytex drilled new wells in 2011. The Alberta government does not monitor the Peace River region's air for anything but sour gas and sulphur dioxide and has previously claimed there is no scientific evidence to connect the Baytex emissions to the community’s symptoms.

In March of 2013 Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes visited the region and subsequently turned down Baytex’s application to add new drill sites.

“What I could detect was that there was something in the air that was different than the rest of Alberta,” Hughes said. “This kind of development was experiencing different emissions, and different air quality problems.”

As outlined in the recent AER report, Baytex now has four months to install pollution-control devices on its tanks. The report also calls for further studies into the connection between oil emissions and negative health impacts and recommends Alberta Health “ensure[s] that appropriate avenues exist to link local physicians with specialists in environmental health.”

During a recent AER public hearing in the area medical doctors admitted they hesitated to voice their suspicions about the fumes because of the potential consequences of appearing critical of industry. Some doctors refused to provide care for residents claiming their medical problems were directly related to the emissions.

Resident Karla Lebrecque told the panel her doctor called a local politician before agreeing to perform a blood test.

In an open letter to Baytex Energy Labrecque wrote “I am not a tree hugger, environmental activist or anti-oil activist. Quite the opposite; I fully appreciate the prosperity that our region has experienced thanks in no small part to Alberta’s thriving oil and gas industry.”

She added, “while I believe that Alberta is rightfully an energy superpower, I’m also a mother tired of my family being poisoned by Baytex Energy’s emissions and the Alberta Government allowing them to do so. I also believe it is possible for Baytex Energy to extract oil from the ground responsibly while simultaneously growing their company and that the same time protecting the health of those that live near and around their sites.”

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema says what’s happening in the Peace River region highlights the uncertainties surrounding the extraction and processing of bitumen.

The “troubling thing the report showed was that the government has a huge information gap when it comes to the impacts of tar sands development. The report shows that tar sands impacts will be different given differences in things like geology and wind patterns and regulations should, but don’t, currently reflect that. It also shows that, once again, Alberta’s monitoring system is inadequate,” he wrote.

Image Credit: StopBaytex.ca

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