Doctors Prevented from Warning Patients of Fracking Chemicals?

Scene from the documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire.

Barely one day after the news of a 10,000+ gallon toxic spill near Parachute, Colo., threatening the spring mountain runoff into the Colorado River and the state's water supply, the news that Colorado doctors have been muzzled came as a shocker. According to a Denver Post article yesterday (‘Colorado Docs Chafe at Secrecy Oath Required’, p. 4A) doctors in our state must now sign a “confidentiality pledge” in order to obtain information on chemicals used for fracking by the oil and gas industry. This is information they may need to take care of their patients and protect the public health, i.e. from rampaging carcinogenics which we may already may be drinking (after 555 toxic spills the past two years, most within 1500’ of ground water supplies)

As the Post article notes:   “A state requirement that doctors sign Form 35, developed last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, aims to protect industry trade secrets while also letting doctors fulfill duties.

But the Colorado Medical Society contends the form does not protect doctors from punishment for sharing information about chemicals with other medical professionals and public health authorities. No doctor has signed the form.”

And why should they when it’s obviously a blatant muzzle? A device to protect the toxic polluters in the fracking industry so they're allowed to run amuck in our state, poisoning our already dwindling water supplies as they use them up (with 5 million gals. wasted per fracked well). The fact that two state departments, ostensibly with the mandate to protect the public welfare, are working in collusion with the gas –oil industry is an abomination enough. Hickenlooper, the governor, and all his clones ought to be ashamed of themselves!


But now to add insult to injury and try to muzzle doctors is beyond even the level of atrocity. As one doctor (Michael Pramenko of Grand Junction) quoted in the piece put it:

“I would have very mixed feelings about signing a form that tells me I could not be proactive about sharing this information with the Health Department.”

He went on to add

“To me, if there’s a chemical in the environment and there are potentially other people being exposed it does not make sense from a health standpoint to not be sharing that information.”

Then there is the very likely scenario, as noted by a Medical Society attorney (ibid.), that one or more patients could be presenting symptoms attributable to an unknown toxic chemical. Perhaps a rash that won’t abate, vomiting, dizziness …who knows? Who can forget the horrific California pollution story on which the film ‘Erin Brockovitch’ was based. Brockovitch, in that story, finally turned up the chemical (hexavalent chromium) that was causing hundreds of cancers in a small town. Of course industry wants to keep such things secret! That’s their warp and woof!


In a way this latest 'Form' 35 maneuver is evocative of the ploy used by the toxic sludge fertilizer industry when they attempted to halt publication of the book  'Toxic Sludge is Good For You' - the handbook for recognizing all PR meisters and hacks. Especially, the mutants that want to try to convince the average American that putting shit mixed with benzene, dioxins etc. all over crops is good for them. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, the authors, noted the efforts of the sludge industry to try to get them to back off, insisting that all the materials in the sludge were "organic" waste, not toxic. But when the authors investigated they found out differently!  Not only was the sludge laced with hundreds of unpronounceable toxic industrial chemicals, but sewage as well. And they exposed the fact the producers were attempting to use it as a cheap way to get rid of waste-effluent. Hey, why not? If you can make $$$ from it! Never mind the ten thousand kids that get gastro-enteritis!

Look, folks, we have a mounting battle with these vermin as cancer rates ramp up across the nation. We need to force our political hacks, wherever they reside, to back off from promoting the poisoning of us all, as well as adding to our costly health care burden. Don't do it for me, do it for yourselves, your kids, their kids...

If nothing is done, and we just sit back and allow these industrial energy maggots to crap all over us, what do you suppose the world will be like in 10 years? In 20? Do you want your kids suffering from enormous liver tumors, or pancreatic cancer? THINK about that! And then find out if fracking is going on in your state and if it is pull out the stops to halt it. And while you're at it,. make sure to keep pressure on Obama not to sign that Keystone XL pipeline deal either. It's the ONE thing he can do without the need for a congressional vote.

But it does take balls.

The Keystone XL Pipeline Must Still Be Stopped!

The primary problem with resorting to rhetoric alone when it comes to warning of the costs of climate change, is that at some point you will be called upon to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. In the case of President Obama, despite his inspiring declarations (at his Inaugural and the SOTU) on halting the climate catastrophe before us, the time has now come for single-handed action on his part. That means nixing the Keystone XL pipeline - all the critics and naysayers be damned.

As noted in an earlier blog: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/bill-mckibbens-prediction-of-nightmare.html

Climate scientist Bill McKibben has developed models disclosing mathematical limits showing we have roughly 550 gigatons (gT) left of carbon we can deposit anthropogenically into the atmosphere before earthly Hell is unleashed. That “hell” includes the runaway greenhouse effect, to turn our planet into an endlessly burning pile of ash and refuse. Give a current 30 gT/year deposition rate - and assuming we don't add to it, don't increase its rate - that leaves us roughly 18 years- give or take a fraction, before we end up in a likely runaway greenhouse world. It's a world no one or their offspring would want to inhabit.

Prof. McKibben in his November appearance on Chris Hayes’ UP', noted the major contributor to push us into this hothouse hell is none other than implementation of the Keystone XL pipeline because of the concentrated carbon it will unleash over years. To remind readers, this pipeline will deliver tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to Gulf Coast refineries for export to an international market. The pipeline would have an initial capacity of 830,000 barrels per day and would leave a carbon footprint equivalent to building more than seven new coal-fired plants. By the time it reaches full capacity the enhanced carbon deposition will be nearly 3 gT/yr. In other words accelerating the timeline to reach the 550 gT maximum carbon load the planet can bear.


Despite misleading claims of “benefits” by TransCanada, the downsides of this ill-conceived project remain the same and include:

1)  Building a future of dirty energy,  hastening our pace toward an uninhabitable world. The fact is the Keystone XL is a massively detrimental dirty energy project that would open a major export artery for toxic tar sands oil across the U.S. for at least 50 years. In that interval, massive spills and contamination of our water supply (already threatened by fracking) will accelerate cancers and other endemic health problems.

2)  It’s an unnecessary risk. The U.S. itself doesn’t need this crap oil especially since we’ve reduced our oil consumption by nearly two billion barrels per day over the past five years. This stat will continue to improve with the growing number of electric and hybrid cars.

3) Water pollution: A planned Keystone XL pipeline would pass through Nebraska’s Sandhills region, endangering the Ogallala Aquifer, which forms the drinking water for millions as well the water source for one third of American agriculture. In other words, a massive tar sands oil spill could pollute not only the water but crops used for food consumption. During the tar sands oil extraction process, vast amounts of water are needed to separate the extracted product, bitumen, from sand, silt, and clay. It takes three barrels of water to extract each single barrel of oil. At this rate, tar sands operations use roughly 400 million gallons of water a day. Ninety percent of this polluted water is dumped into large human-made pools, known as tailing ponds, after it’s used. These ponds are home to toxic sludge, full of harmful substances like cyanide and ammonia, which has worked its way into neighboring clean water supplies.


4) Higher gas and food prices: TransCanada has admitted one of its goals is to raise oil prices in 12 midwestern U.S. states thereby increasing revenue to the Canadian oil industry by $2b to $4b. Meanwhile, U.S. farmers, who’ve already spent $12.4 b on fuel (in 2009) could see expenses rise to $15b  if the pipeline goes through,  a cost which will surely be passed on to Americans as higher food prices.

5) Increased respiratory disease and cancer: The pollutants released by mining and refining tar sands will incept acid rain, smog and haze as well as other effects associated with lung disease and cancer. The solid or semi-solid waste, embedded in the toxic sludge, will unleash astronomic rates of kidney, breast, colon, pancreatic and liver cancers by the ingestion of the water soiled by the tailing ponds.

6) Climate disaster: Any future tar sands development – say via Keystone XL- will mean “game over” for the planet according to NASA climate scientist James Hanson. I already noted earlier how much extra load of carbon will be added and how it impinges the 550 gT critical threshold.

To his credit Obama has so far nixed this odious deal, which will only bring jobs for the very few (maybe 21,000 if that) and major hellacious environmental costs that would be a hundred times greater than the Exxon Valdez disaster if major leaks occur. Now, Obama must use his full authority (which no repug can stop) to kill this project once and for all.

Just WHO is pushing this abomination on us? Giant oil corporations invested in Canada's tar sands and who have, as Bill Moyers stated last April in on Bill Maher's Real Time, already contributed more than $47 million of campaign donations to Repukes and lobbying money to try to make it so. They are hoping that Americans will be too dumb or dense to see the hidden (and not so hidden) costs that will be extracted.

If Obama’s recent rhetoric on climate change and global warming mean anything, then he has no other option than to kill the Keystone pipeline once and for all.

Still, It's up to all of us to do everything we can to urge President Obama to reject Keystone XL. To do your part, readers,  Will you pick up the phone today, and make a quick call to the White House?

Be polite, but be firm: NO Keystone XL deal!