Unsafe Exposure

A new study has found unsafe levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), linked to cancer and respiratory illness, near fracking sites in Carroll County, Ohio. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, was conducted by a research team headed by Drs. Kim Anderson of Oregon State University and Erin Haynes of the University of Cincinnati. The first author was Blair Paulik, an OSU graduate student. The article is gated, but secondary sources, including an OSU press release, give what appears to be a complete, though non-technical, description of the study.

Carroll County, 70 miles southeast of Cleveland, has 30,000 residents, lies on the Utica Shale formation, and had 421 natural gas wells at the time of the study, February 2014. (It now has 480.) The study was initiated by concerned citizens who contacted Dr. Haynes.  

Air samplers were placed on the properties of 23 volunteers who lived within 3 miles of gas wells. The monitors contained treated materials that absorbed contaminants. They were sealed in airtight bags and shipped to Dr. Anderson's lab for analysis. Volunteers were trained in proper collection and handling of the data.

PAHs are hydrocarbons (compounds of carbon and hydrogen), seven of which, i.e., benzopyrene, are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as carcinogenic. Prenatal exposure is also associated with lower IQ and childhood asthma. Based on their data, the authors calculated that the lifetime cancer risk for those living closest (.1 miles) to the wells is 2.9 in 10,000. This is almost three times the EPA's acceptable level of 1 in 10,000. Levels of PAHs declined 30% at a distance of three miles—still well above the acceptable limits. Levels were about 10 times higher than a rural Michigan county containing no gas wells.

Researcher Blair Paulik in front of an air sampler
(© Oregon State University)

In googling the study, I found an article in Marcellus Drilling News, a pro-fracking website, calling this a “sham study.” Some of their objections were silly, i.e., that the OSU authors were “a long way from home,” and that the article “sneaks in the c-word.”  (Estimating cancer risk was the point of the study.) I found three possibly substantive criticisms: that there were too few data collection sites, that they were not randomly distributed throughout the county, and that the data were collected by “untrained volunteers.” The third objection is false, but if the samples were carelessly handled, it's likely they would have captured fewer, not more, contaminants. Since neither the gas wells nor the human population are randomly distributed within the county, I doubt the value of including data from locations that are far from either gas wells, people or both (although it certainly would have diluted the findings).

Future studies should randomly select fracking sites and collect more samples at varying distances from the wells, including some more than 3 miles away, to establish the physical boundaries of the contamination.

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Is Fracking Safe?

Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

Fracking Up Baby

Is Fracking Safe?

It May Depend on What You Mean By "Fracking"

A new study by Thomas Darrah of Duke University and four colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academcy of Sciences, suggests that there has been significant contamination of the ground water from natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania and Texas, but this contamination is not due to the process of hydraulic fracturing itself. Rather it is caused by leakage of methane, the primary ingredient in natural gas, and other chemicals near the surface due to faulty construction of the well.

The researchers took 133 water samples from drinking water wells—113 of them from along the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and 20 from the Barnett Shale in Texas. Through chemical analysis, they were able to tell whether each sample was contaminated, and if so, from where the contimation had come. I'm not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to understand the testing that was done, so I rely on the fact that this was a peer-reviewed journal.

They found eight clusters of contaminated wells—seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas. The cluster in Texas consisted of five of the twenty samples they took. They don't say how many samples were included in the seven Pennsylvania clusters. From eyeballing their charts, it looks like about 20-25% of their samples were contaminated. However, the wells were not randomly selected. The researchers had focused on areas where contamination was suspected.

The chemical analysis indicated that four of the eight clusters were due to leakage around the cement used to seal the outside of the well, three were due corroded or poorly joined steel tubing used to drill into the ground, and the last was due to “underground mechanical well failure.”

Diagram by Howarth and Engelder (2011)

In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, fracking fluid is forced into the shale at high pressure in order to release the natural gas contained in it. The concern is that fracking might create breaks in the undreground rock formations, through which either natural gas or fracking fluid might leak upward and contaminate drinking water. None of the contamination came from far enough below the surface to indicate that this type of contamination had occurred.

Unlike last week's study of the correlation between fracking sites and health problems, this study received generous coverage by the corporate media. The general spin seemed to be that “fracking is safe.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a McClatchy article about the study on the front page. Two days later, they reprinted a Bloomsberg op-ed entitled “Fracking is not the threat.” The threat, it seems, is drilling company carelessness, which can be avoided through government regulations, regular inspections, and fines for poor performance.

The coverage is superficial in at least two respects. First, while there is no evidence that fracking in the narrow sense--that is, hydraulic fracturing, per se--has caused contamination, fracking in a broader sense--the fracking boom--is certainly responsible for ground water contamination. Regulation and oversight of the drilling industry will not be accomplished easily, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, where the state government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry.

Secondly, the absence of evidence of leakage due to fracking, per se, does not necessarily mean that there is none and the process is safe. Methane and fracking fluid from deep in the shale may simply take a longer time to reach the surface than chemicals that leak from at or near the surface. Maybe decades. The Darrah study may simply have been done too soon.

Meanwhile, there is accumulating evidence of another problem caused by natural gas drilling. A new report published in the Bulletin of the Siesmological Society of America shows a significant increase in earthquakes in the Raton Basin of Colorado and New Mexico since 2001. Fracking began there in 1999. As in previous studies, most of the earthquakes are located within 5 kilometers of waste water injection wells, rather than near sites where hydraulic fracturing has taken place. I guess that means that fracking is “safe,” but it doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the waste water.

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Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

Fracking and Public Health, Part 2

La Terra Trema

Fracking and Public Health, Part 2

The Coverage

Please read part 1 about the Rabinowitz survey of fracking and health.

With the exception of USA Today, the response of the corporate media to the Rabinowitz study has been a collective yawn.

Since Washington County is part of the area served by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one might expect the survey to be front-page news. On the contrary, the study was buried in a short article on page 4 of the local section, with what seems like a deliberately uninformative headline, “Study looks at gas wells, health.” Three of its nine paragraphs were devoted to rebuttal from Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group.

© All rights reserved by jeffs4653

In an unusually harsh attack on the integrity of the researchers, Mr. Windle stated, "This study, done in partnership with a local activist group, was designed to put selective and unproven data behind a predetermined and biased narrative." The activist group is presumably the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, which is opposed to fracking. They are credited with assistance with the survey; specifically: "The survey was pre-tested with focus groups in the study area in collaboration with a community-based group and revised to ensure comprehensibility of questions." If this is all they did, they played only a limited role in the study.

Pittsburgh's avowedly right wing newspaper, the Tribune-Review, offered an unusual take on the Rabinowitz study. First of all, they claim that this study is balanced by a “confllicting” 2014 study by Penn State geologist Terry Engelder and colleagues. This study found no evidence that fracking fluids, injected deep underground into the Marcellus shale, were migrating toward the surface and contaminating the ground water. Rather than conflicting, the two studies are actually irrelevant. Rabinowitz attributed the symptoms he discovered to air pollution, pollution of ground water from fluids leaking from around the drilling site, and stress. Migration of deep underground fluids, if it occurs, is presumably a problem for future generations to deal with, long after the drilling companies have taken their money and run.

The Tribune-Review also suggested that both studies are biased due to their source of funding. The Engelder study was supported by the Marcellus Shale Coalition and included an employee of Shell International as one of its co-authors. The primary supporter of the Rabinowitz study was the non-profit Heinz Foundation. The Heinz Foundation underwent a turnover of its executive staff beginning in August 2013, which is widely interpreted as a shift toward opposition to fracking. Previously, Heinz had been a member of the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, a coalition of environmental and industry groups that was supposed to establish voluntary safety rules for drilling. However, the Rabinowitz study was completed in 2012, while Heinz was still friendly with the drilling industry.

It's clear that we need an improved vocabulary for talking about real or imagined conflicts of interest in research, one which, at a minimum, distinguishes between financial and ideological conflicts of interest. If your research is supported by a for-profit corporation and its results are contrary to corporate interests, two consequences are likely. First, the research results will never be made public, and second, you will never again receive financial support from that corporation. Those outcomes are unlikely when your research is supported by a non-profit foundation.

The Tribune-Review seeks to expand the category of conflicts of interest to include those cases when the researchers or their sponsors have an opinion about the research topic. But this is unrealistic, since investigators almost always have opinions about their research, opinions which often explain why they were interested in the topic in the first place. Even when the research topic is completely non-political, scientists are often professionally committed to their research hypotheses. Good research design ensures that the researchers' expectations, and those of their financial supporters, do not influence the results.

I can't comment on the design of the Engelder study because I lack expertise in geoscience. I described the Rabinowitz study in some detail because it seems to me that the authors have done a good job, under the circumstances, of minimizing researcher bias and evaluating alternative explanations. Right now, the best advice to people on both sides of the issue is replicate, replicate, replicate. For example, studies of fracking and health are in progress at the Geisinger Health Center in central Pennsylvania. Ultimately, whether researchers have successfully eliminated bias is an empirical question. If studies are replicated often enough, it should be possible to determine through systematic reviews whether researchers with different sources of funding have obtained inconsistent results.

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Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

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Motivated Reasoning

Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

An Important First Study is Published

Corporations that engage in mining and manufacturing are extremely fortunate that Americans cannot be randomly assigned to places of residence. This prevents researchers from doing true experiments--that is, randomly assigning people to experimental and control groups to study the effects of air, water and soil pollution on public health. As a result, when epidemiologists, who study the spatial distribution of health and illness, find evidence of illness concentrated in the vicinity of sources of industrial pollution, it its always possible for corporations to claim that something else—known or unknown—is responsible. Correlation does not mean causation.

On Wednesday, what is to my knowledge the largest scientific study relating proximity to natural gas wells to human health, conducted by a team led by Peter Rabinowitz of the Yale School of Medicine, was released online by the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Previous evidence of an association between natural gas drilling and illness had come either from case studies or convenience—that is, nonrandom—samples.

Photo by Ruhrfisch

The study was done in Washington County, south of Pittsburgh, which had 624 active natural gas wells, 95% of which utilized hydraulic fracturing. A set of 38 contiguous rural communities were selected for study, to avoid urban areas unlikely to have ground-fed wells. Within these communities, 760 geographic points were randomly chosen and the nearest residence was selected for study. Some sites were excluded due to duplication, because there were no homes nearby, or because the house did not have a ground-fed well. This left 255 eligible households, 180 (71%) of which agreed to participate. Forty-seven households refused to participate, and researchers were unable to contact residents of the remaining homes.

Participants were interviewed in their homes in the summer of 2012 by trained survey researchers who followed a prepared script. The survey made no reference to natural gas drilling. Researchers were unaware of the home's proximity to the nearest gas well. (Of course, this precaution failed if a drilling rig was visible from the front porch.) An adult member of the household was asked questions assessing the health status and symptoms of each member of the household—a total of 492 people. Participants were paid $25. Participating households were divided into those within 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of a natural gas drilling site, those between 1 and 2 km, and those more than 2 km from the nearest site.

Respondents were asked about six types of health problems: dermal, upper respiratory, lower respiratory, gastrointestinal, neurological and cardiovascular. The following variables were statistically controlled: age, gender, education, occupation, the presence of smokers or pets in the home, and awareness of nearby environmental hazards. Statistically significant results were obtained in two of the six health areas, dermal and upper respiratory.

• Upper respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, itchy eyes and nosebleeds, were reported by 39% of those living within a km of a drilling site but only 18% of those who lived more than 2 km away. Both the near and intermediate groups reported significantly more upper respiratory symptoms than the far group.
• The number of people suffering from dermal problems was smaller, but the association was stronger. Thirteen percent of those living nearest to a gas well suffered from skin problems, such as rashes, itching and burning, but only 3% of those living the farthest away. The near group reported significantly more dermal symptoms than the far group.

The authors do not claim that their data show a causal relationship between drilling and health problems. However, they speculate that, if natural gas drilling is responsible for these skin and respiratory issues, it could have happened through three pathways: (1) pollution of ground water, including the water in their wells; (2) air pollution from the drilling site; and (3) stress due proximity to a drilling site. Noise is a particularly potent stressor. Supporting the stress hypothesis is the fact that those who were aware of nearby environmental hazards reported more skin and respiratory symptoms, although the relationship between proximity and symptoms was still significant when the effect of awareness was statistically removed.

Whenever a relationship between industrial pollution and illness is found, the most likely alternative explanation is the indirect involvement of social class. Locations that are close to sources of pollution are usually undesirable places to live. Property values are lower and people living nearby have lower incomes. We know that, for a variety of reasons, lower income Americans are in poorer health. However, this explanation is weakened somewhat by the fact that almost all the natural gas wells in Washington County were drilled within the last 5-6 years. This allowed less time for migration to occur and for pockets of poverty to form around the drilling sites.

Because the researchers relied on self-report data, it's possible that people living close to drilling sites exaggerated their symptoms—although they might also have had reasons to minimize them. The fact that the results were still strong when awareness of environmental hazards was controlled argues against this interpretation. Future researchers should consider conducting actual medical examinations of the participants. This would of course be much more expensive and logistically challenging.

The 71% completion rate is well above average for surveys. However, it might be argued that people experiencing illnesses that they attributed to local drilling were more anxious to tell their story, and that this contributed to an overestimation of the percentage with health problems. However, the refusal rate did not vary significantly with distance from the nearest drilling site.

The health problems detected in the study were among the least serious included in the survey. Since most of those surveyed had only been living near a gas well for a short time, the authors say they were not surprised that diseases with longer latencies, such as heart conditions or cancers, were not yet associated with proximity to a drilling site.

The research was supported by a grant from Pittsburgh's Heinz Foundation, along with four other non-profit sources. The authors thanked the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project for “assistance with the community survey.” They conclude by calling for further research, including “longitudinal assessment of the health of individuals living in proximity to natural gas drilling activities, medical confirmation of health conditions, and more precise assessment of contiminant exposures.”

To be continued in Part 2.

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Fracking Up Baby

This study has not been peer-reviewed. It was presented at a meeting of the American Economic Association on January 4. It has also not been posted anywhere, to my knowledge. I am relying on an article written by reporter Mark Whitehouse for Bloomberg News. (I will update this post if I get further relevant information.) The credibility of the study seems to be quite high. The researchers are Janet Currie of Princeton, Katherine Meckel of Columbia, and John Deutsch and Michael Greenstone of MIT, who have previously published studies of the health effects of pollution. The study was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the MacArthur Foundation.

The authors used Pennsylvania birth records to compare the health of newborn infants living within 2.5 kilometers (slightly over 1.5 miles) of natural gas fracking sites to a control group of infants living elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Public records allowed them to pinpoint the exact latitudes and longitudes of the gas wells and the mothers' homes. Those babies whose mothers lived near a fracking site had a 9% probability of low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds), compared to 5.6% in the control group.

Photo by AP/Keith Srakocic

Low birth weight is an important predictor of infant health and survival, and is associated later in life with inhibited growth, lower educational attainment, and chronic diseases. There is growing evidence that one of its causes is exposure to environmental toxins. The fracking group also had a 5% chance of a low Apgar score, double the control group. The Apgar score is given by the doctor, who evaluates the child's heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflexes and skin coloring at the time of birth. A low score indicates problems in one or more of these areas.

This is not the first study to find that fracking is associated with infant health problems. Faith Hill, a Cornell undergraduate, found that Pennsylvania children born near fracking sites had lower birth weights and lower Apgar scores compared to a control group of infants born near permitted sites prior to any drilling. However, this study could have been confounded by migration away from the site after drilling began and a reduction in property values in the vicinity. The net result is that people living near drilling sites may have lower socioeconomic status or other characteristics that could explain their children's poorer health.

The Currie study attempts to deal with this problem two ways. It corrects statistically for geographical differences in maternal health. More importantly, it looks at a subsample of mothers who gave birth both before and after drilling began. These mothers serve as their own control group, which eliminates most alternative explanations. Of course, the mothers were older after the onset of fracking, but lower birth weight is typically associated with younger maternal age.

How does fracking result in poor infant health? The authors claim that water pollution is probably not the cause, since there were no differences between mothers who used public water systems and those who obtained their water from private wells, which are more likely to be contaminated by fracking. This leaves air pollution as the most likely possibility. Pollution may be due to leakage of gases from around the well or from open frackwater waste pools, which are allowed in Pennsylvania. 

Whitehouse ends his article with the following odd bit of false balance:

The study doesn't necessarily tell us whether or not fracking is worth doing. There may be offsetting health benefits related to the added jobs fracking creates, to lower energy prices or to the reduced use of coal or other fuels as more natural gas becomes available.

Seriously? Are children to be sacrificed for lower energy prices? The comment ignores the possibility that Pennsylvania could impose stricter regulations to reduce air and water pollution near fracking sites, if its state government were not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry. 

Fracking is exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other federal anti-pollution regulations. So far, government has largely ignored the precautionary principle when it comes to fracking. The burden of proof has been placed on opponents of fracking to demonstrate health problems after the damage is done. If the drilling companies want to claim health benefits of fracking, I hope they will show us their data.

As of this morning, none of Pennsylvania's major newspapers have reported the study.

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His Master's Voice

La Terra Trema

I've Seen the "Promised Land" . . . (And It Was Disappointing)

I saw the film four weeks ago, but I've been waiting for it to close in the Pittsburgh area. I can't discuss it without revealing its surprise plot twist, but there are rumors that fracking interests have been leaking the ending in an attempt to discourage attendance. We know they've been running pro-drilling ads and passing out industry leaflets at showings of the film.

The gas companies needn't have worried. People on both sides of the fracking debate will find some things to like and some not to like about Promised Land, but anyone expectating a serious discussion of the environmental and public health risks of fracking will be disappointed. But how could it be otherwise? It seems likely that co-stars and co-writers Matt Damon and John Krasinski and director Gus Van Sant were required to present a “balanced” view of fracking in order to secure studio financing. To do otherwise would have resulted in an unprofessional looking movie and might have damaged their careers. The resulting film is better described as anti-corporate than anti-fracking.

A few plot basics. Damon plays the role of a representative of “Global Power Solutions,” who, with his colleague Frances McDormand, is expected to offer as little money as possible to the poverty-stricken farmers of a Western Pennsylvania town in return for the natural gas drilling rights on their land. He's challenged by a high school science teacher (Hal Holbrook) who is familiar with fracking's risks, and by a friendly and persistent environmentalist (Krasinski), whose persuasiveness frustrates and confuses Damon.

There are some things to like about this film. It dramatizes the real economic plight of rural America. ("You wouldn't be here," one farmer says, "if we weren't poor.") Damon's drilling salesman is a borderline psychopath, willing to say almost anything to get signatures on contracts. The film nicely captures the contrast between the respectful and friendly way he treats these landowners and the demeaning way he talks about them behind their backs. I particularly liked the scene in the diner which a local politician approached Damon for a bribe. It was taken for granted that Global would pay him off, but Damon did his job, talking him into reducing his price by threatening to leave town. Finally, every community should have role model like Holbrook, who had done his homework, and who quietly and patiently stands up against group pressure.

On the other hand, some aspects of the film were totally unrealistic.

• The centerpiece of the plot is a referendum in which the entire community gets to vote on whether to allow fracking in the town. The truth in Western Pennsylvania is quite different. When communities have placed restrictions on fracking, it's been done by their elected officials. But the natural gas companies know it's far too risky to leave such decisions up to the people who are actually affected by them. So in Pennsylvania we have Act 13, which preempts all local zoning laws and substitutes a statewide standard endorsed by the drillers. This encroachment on grassroots democracy is currently being contested in the courts.

• How likely is it that an environmentalist would be allowed to give an anti-fracking demonstration—a rather inflammatory one, at that—to elementary school children?

• Then there's the scene in which a group of anti-fracking folks enter a bar, pick a fight with Damon, and beat him up. Those nasty environmentalists! They're such bullies! Was this a crude attempt to “balance” the film's message?

SPOILER ALERT!!!

• The final twist comes in two parts. Surprise #1. On the eve of the referendum, Global provides Damon with evidence that Krasinski is a fraud. He's lied about his farming background, and the “evidence” he's been using are photos of cows who died for reasons unrelated to drilling. This, of course, totally reverses the momentum leading up to the referendum. Surprise #2. He's not even a legitimate fraud. He's an employee of the drilling company who was planted in the town for the sole purpose of being exposed, for the impact this would have on the community's vote.

There is no evidence that I'm aware of that any drilling company has ever done anything quite like that, and the implausibility of this scenario totally undermines the credibility of the film. Was that the intention, or are we to assume that it was just an inept attempt to malign the drilling companies?

Ironically, there is a sense in which the film is basically correct. Many of our best-known environmental and conservation organizations have been infiltrated by corporate interests whose purpose is to undermine their political influence, but the way it was done is more subtle than the plot of Promised Land. At one time, environmental groups were funded by their members and occasional wealthy supporters. But their leaders have discovered a new source of revenue—corporations that are among the world's worst polluters. Not only are these organizations funded by corporate donors, their Boards of Directors are dominated by corporate executives.

But these donations come at a heavy price. Have you heard about the deal between the Sierra Club and Clorox bleach? Between IKEA and the World Wildlife Foundation? Between BP and the Nature Conservancy? Environmental groups now engage in commodity certification—putting their green stamp of approval on environmentally-unfriendly products. More importantly, their leaders dismiss necessary solutions—such as the limit of 350 ppm of CO₂ in the atmosphere that is needed to stabilize the climate—as “unrealistic,” and endorse disastrous “compromise” agreements. It could be argued that the real purpose of these “environmental” groups is to deceive their members into accepting the slow but inevitable destruction of our environment.

But that's not as easy to dramatize as the plot twist at the end of Promised Land.

His Master's Voice

The banner headline in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette proclaims, “County, Consol strike $500M gas drilling deal.” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald announced the terms of a contract that will allow Consol Energy to frack on county land—the 9,236 acres surrounding Pittsburgh International Airport. The $500 million figure is pure speculation. The county gets $50 million up front, but whether we get the remaining $450 million depends on how much gas is found and the future price of natural gas. But buried deep into this story is the most interesting part—when and where Fitzgerald chose to make this announcement: At a public hearing on proposed legislation to allow fracking at the Pittsburgh Airport. Fitzgerald's statement no doubt was a surprise to most of the overflow crowd of 300 citizens attending the meeting, especially to the 77 who registered to speak. It was particularly shocking to members of Marcellus Protest, a local anti-fracking group that showed up in force for the meeting. Guess what, citizens? Nobody cares what you have to say.

The article reminded me of an experiment.  Unfortunately, I've previously written about it, but it's particularly a propos here. Let me explain.

Social psychologists study two types of justice norms. Distributive justice refers to the fair allocation of social outcomes (rewards and punishments). Procedural justice refers to the fairness of the processes for arriving at those outcomes. For example, in a classroom, the distributive justice question is whether the grades fair. Procedural justice refers to questions like whether the tests are relevant to the course, or whether the teacher is free of bias. Even a good decision doesn't feel right if it was not arrived at by fair procedures.

One variable that influences people's procedural justice judgements is voice—the opportunity to express yourself or present your views. People who have some input into the decision process are more satisfied with a decision than others in the same circumstances who are not given a voice. This is especially true when the outcome goes against their self-interest. But this raises the possibility that authorities will attempt to manipulate citizens' satisfaction with a decision by trying to convince them that they have more influence than they actually do.

 All rights reserved by BBurnie82

How often have you heard this scenario? The county (or city, or state, or federal) government is about to make an important decision affecting all of our lives. But before they decide, they will travel around and hold several public hearings on the issue. Citizens who have an opinion on the question are invited to attend one of the meetings and present their views. The question of course is this: Are the decision-makers really listening to your views, or have they already made up their minds, and are they simply going through the motions of soliciting public input? Maybe public hearings are just another way of “cooling the mark out.” The right to be heard is, after all, not the right to be heeded.

Social psychologists Allan Lind and Tom Tyler have found that voice makes a difference in satisfaction even when it's objectively unlikely that the speakers will have much influence on the decision. To test the limits of this “voice effect,” Lind, Kanfer and Earley did a study in 1990 in which student participants were allowed to present evidence to a decision maker. For some of them, their presentation was delivered before authorities had decided what to do—the usual situation. But other participants were told that the decision had already been made, and then invited to present their views. A third group was given no voice. The results showed that people who got to speak before the decision were more satisfied than those who didn't speak until after the decision. But even under the absurd circumstance of presenting evidence after it was too late, participants with voice were more satisfied with the decision than those who were not given an opportunity to express their views. The authors had speculated that there might be a frustration effect leading to more dissatisfaction with the decision in the after condition, but there was not.

Before this study, the accepted explanation for the voice effect was that people optimistically believed they might persuade decision makers to accept their point of view. The Lind study suggests that people also value voice for self-expressive reasons. Maybe getting to present your views is an indication that you are respected by the community, although you might think that self-respect would be reduced by the knowledge that the intended audience is not paying any attention. Are people really that easily fooled by manipulations of voice? Maybe all authorities have to do is pretend to listen to our views and we are more satisfied with their decisions.

Even a casual newspaper reader can't help but notice that the timing of this announcement was a rude and arrogant gesture on Fitzgerald's part. His statement was followed by pro-fracking speeches by three Consol executives and a parade of elected officials. I'm told that those people who came to present the case against fracking were furious. To their credit, they resisted the impulse to fling feces at Fitzgerald. Even though it took more than an hour before the first citizen got to speak, they politely played their part in this theatre of the absurd, delivering their prepared speeches even though it was futile. This can be partially justified by the fact that the county council has not yet ratified the decision, although approval is almost certain.

I don't mean to imply that the members of Marcellus Protest were ever naïve enough to think they could convince the county not to drill on airport land. I also don't mean to suggest that they are in any way “satisfied” with the decision. These are well-informed, committed activists, whose views are not going to be turned around by one incident. They are more likely to show a frustration effect than Lind's participants. In fact, I'd be surprised if this experience doesn't have some effect on their cynicism about government and their willingness to participate in future public hearings.

Judging from my email box, the Pittsburgh area is awash in public hearings. Does all of this activity translate into more democratic decision-making? One way of looking Thursday's events is that Rich Fitzgerald let his side down—his side being his fellow politicians. He has laid bare their guilty secret for everyone to see. Public hearings are a sham. They are just a way of keeping the suckers occupied, while the real decisions are made behind closed doors.

Motivated Reasoning

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order than by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate.

Francis Bacon

Monday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette contains two articles about drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale by the method known as fracking. One of them reports that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is beginning a new lobbying effort in order to persuade the citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia not to annoy the natural gas industry by enacting new taxes or environmental regulations. The Chamber will spend “millions of dollars” on this campaign. (The actual amount is not stated.) Gene Barr, president of Pennsylvania's Chamber of Business and Industry, said, “You can call it advocacy or lobbying, but I use the word education.” Presumably, the campaign will be at least as educational as those slick Range Resources commercials that tell us how much a few of our fellow citizens have profited from natural gas royalties.

It would seem that this campaign is a waste of money here in Pittsburgh, since the state of Pennsylvania is already a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry, and has given it the most industry-friendly legislation in the country. I guess if you're drilling for natural gas, you can never be too careful.

Elsewhere in the same newspaper, under “National Briefs,” I found an op-ed masquerading as a news article that might easily have been part of the Chamber of Commerce's new campaign. Under the headline, “Experts dispute fracking critics,” it carefully selects paragraphs from the beginning and near the end of this Associated Press article. The original article is already very pro-industry, using selective citation of research to brand several claims made by opponents of fracking as false. The edited version removes what little balance the original contained by removing the last two paragraphs, which report false statements by the natural gas industry.

What caught my eye was a reference to social psychology in order to justify the claim that fracking opponents have fallen victim to self-delusion. Political scientist Mark Lubell attributes the problem an “an actual psychological process” called motivated reasoning, in which people “insist on believing things that aren't true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views.” 

As a psychological term, “motivated reasoning” is frustratingly vague. It tells us almost nothing about process. But it is true that, since Leon Festinger published A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, social psychologists have conducted thousands of studies showing that people are more likely to accept information that supports their prior beliefs than information that contradicts them. Clearly this is something that we all do a lot of the time. Here's journalist Chris Mooney explaining motivated reasoning and explaining one of the processes involved.

Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler did four studies designed to test whether media reports can be expected to correct false beliefs. Participants read two mock news articles—a false claim, followed by an article which corrected it. For example, one study presented President George W. Bush's false claim from after the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction, followed by an article about the Duelfer Report that refuted that claim. All four studies found evidence of motivated reasoning, in that the corrections did not significantly reduce the original misperceptions in their overall sample.

More importantly, two of the studies found evidence of a “backfire effect,” in which the correction increased belief in the original false claim, among certain subgroups. Subjects were asked to classify themselves on a 7-point scale of liberalism-conservatism. In the WMD study described above, the liberals and centrists either corrected their false beliefs or were unchanged, but the conservatives became more extreme in their belief that WMDs had been found. However, this backfire effect failed to occur when the study was repeated.

The backfire effect was replicated, however, in a second study in which participants were first told that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and increase government revenue, and then told that research had shown this claim to be false. Again, it was the conservatives who increased their belief in the efficacy of tax cuts after being shown studies that found them to be ineffective. The fourth study was conducted in order to try to find a backfire effect among liberals. Subjects were falsely told that President Bush had completely banned stem cell research, and later correctly told that he had only banned federally-funding research, but allowed privately-funded research to continue. In this case, participants once again persevered in their original beliefs, but no backfire effect was found.

Here's Brendan Nyhan discussing this research and making some suggestions as to how journalists can correct their audience's false beliefs.

The Nyhan-Reifler studies seem to suggest that conservatives are more likely to engage in motivated reasoning than liberals. In fact, after reviewing the entire literature on this subject, Chris Mooney comes to this conclusion. However, we need to be extremely skeptical before accepting this hypothesis. It's certainly possible that liberals would show a backfire effect if the study involved an issue that was more central to their political ideology.

Here's the problem with the fracking article. It's far too easy to read the motivated reasoning literature selectively and use the concept as a weapon to attack your political opponents, thereby engaging in motivated reasoning about motivated reasoning. The claim of motivated reasoning should only be used when the argument someone is defending has been clearly refuted by the evidence. The AP article fails to distinguish between claims that are false and those that are merely unsubstantiated. A claim can be unsubstantiated if it has not been conclusively tested, or if the available evidence is mixed.

While it is certainly true that some opponents of fracking have made false or irresponsible accusations, the claims that fracking will contaminate the air or ground water, or that it will expose people to cancer-causing chemicals, are plausible and serious enough to justify independent—that is, not industry-funded—research at multiple locations. The argument that natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal has been questioned by highly competent research. This debate is further complicated by the fact that it may take decades for conclusive evidence of some harms caused by fracking to emerge.

Meanwhile, we should not be surprised if our corporate media, which are heavily dependent on advertising by the fossil fuel companies, treat industry propanganda as if it were unbiased and accuse those who question it of motivated reasoning.

Fracked Again

HB1950, Pennsylvania's natural gas impact fee bill, is 173 pages long and we are gradually learning what it says. An ethical as well as a public health issue associated with the bill has been raised by Dr. Bernard Goldstein of the Pitt School of Public Health and his colleague Jill Kriesky. You've probably heard of the Halliburton loophole—the federal law that allows drilling companies to keep the formula for fracking fluid secret, even though it is known to contain toxic elements. HB1950 preserves that secrecy, and requires physicians to violate medical ethics in order to maintain it.

A physician treating a patient suffering from toxic exposure can request the proprietary formula for fracking fluid, but must sign a legally binding nondisclosure agreement. He or she can use it only to treat the specific patient for whom the information is requested. A physician may not use the information to treat another patient suffering the same symptoms, or to warn neighbors of the danger. Above all, doctors may not reveal the industry's secret formula in order to alert the general public to a public health hazard—which is almost certainly what the industry is most concerned about.

Imagine that one of your family members dies because a physician was forbidden to warn them about a known carcinogen in your drinking water. I guess that's the public health policy we can expect when our state government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry.

La Terra Trema

I can remember a time when, if you raised the possibility that fracking might cause earthquakes, the natural gas industry treated you as if you were a nutcase. But now it's official. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has confirmed that a series of a dozen earthquakes in the Youngstown, OH area, includinging a December 31 earthquake on that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, were caused by the underground injection of fracking wastewater at the Northstar 1 disposal well. So if you felt the earth move on New Year's Eve, you weren't drunk, you had just been fracked.

While wastewater had been presumed to have caused earthquakes in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Great Britain, the evidence in this case is much stronger. After the first few quakes, ODNR hired seismologists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to investigate. When seismographs were placed in the area, the geologists determined that the epicenters of subsequent quakes were within .8 kilometers of the injection site at the same depth (3 km), and were caused by slippage along a previously unmapped fault.

Operations at the well have been stopped, and ODNR has issued new rules in Ohio. They have banned injections below 8,000 feet. They will require pressure and volume monitoring, and automatic shutoff systems. Finally, they will require electronic tracking of wastewater entering from outside the state. Presumably, there will be no attempt to fine D&L Energy, the owner of the well. Nevertheless, a D&L released a statement disputing the findings, claiming that ODNR opted for “a politically expedient preliminary report that sacrifices true understanding for haste.”

Defenders of fracking were quick to point out that wastewater injection is not the same as fracking, the process by which natural gas is extracted, which also involves underground injection of fluids at high pressure. They said that fracking takes less time than injection of wastewater. Is time the critical variable? Other possibilities would seem to include the volume of fluids deposited in the ground, the depth of the drilling, and the pressure required to do it.

Although disposal of wastewater is only one of many public health problems associated with fracking, it is one of the most serious. There are approximately 144,000 gas wells in the U. S. producing 2 billion gallons of wastewater every day. Wastewater consists not only of fracking fluid, which contains known carcinogens and toxins, but also material brought up to the surface from the shale, including radioactive heavy metals.

There are three options for disposing of wastewater. (1) What they call “recycling” involves diluting it with fresh water and reusing it for subsequent fracking. However, eventually toxins accumulate and it can no longer be reused. (2) At this point, it could be sent to water treatment plants, but most existing plants are inadequate to treat these toxins. Wastewater sent to Western Pennsylvania treatment plants produced measurable increases in bromides, which are linked to cancer and birth defects, in the Monongahela River. (3) That leaves underground injection.

These earthquakes occurred in part because there was an “unmapped”—that is, unknown—fault in the area. What percentage of faults are known? That's unknown. (Duh.) Researchers say the only way to prevent future earthquakes is to do a seismic survey of the area prior to constructing the wastewater facility. Such a survey would cost $10 million per well. I'm sure the industry will be happy to oblige.

Pennsylvania, unlike Ohio, does not even monitor wastewater disposal facilities, but relies on the Environmental Protection Agency to handle permits for these facilities. An EPA spokesman, Jon Capacasa, said this could not have happened on their watch because they require companies seeking permits “to identify known faults . . within a mile of a proposed well site.” (Italics mine.) But of course this fault was unknown. I guess he didn't read the report.