Climate Corner: The Ohio Valley has a radiation problem

Jan 18, 2025

Randi Pokladnik

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

During the 60s, I remember the government conducted Civil Defense drills in my school. We were told to climb under our school desks, duck down, and cover our heads. We might have survived a bomb blast but the radioactive fallout could not be stopped. The nuclear disasters at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have taught us that the radiation emitted during an accident or bombing will travel across the planet via prevailing winds and the jet stream and distribute some radiation to all of us.

Decades later, while pursuing my masters degree, I had the opportunity to visit Los Alamos, N.M. This city was built to house scientists secretly working on nuclear weapons and was the setting of the 2023 movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb.” He was an American theoretical physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed.

I saw streets lined with barbed wire fencing, cameras mounted on every telephone or power pole, and guard stations at every corner. During our time there, we learned about the many experiments conducted by the federal government on unknowing citizens. When they detonated the Trinity bomb “officials chose not to evacuate the area, nor to warn residents of potential health effects.”

Native Americans who worked in Uranium mines died from radiation exposures. “From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands.” Officials knew the mines (which were often located near or on reservations) exposed entire communities to radiation, but they failed to alert the workers and the families living in the region.

On Jan. 6, 2025, “The Environmental Protection Agency and Navajo Nation finalized a plan to transport one million cubic yards of waste from the Quivira Mines site to a disposal cell near Thoreau, N.M. The Quivira Mines are one of the largest and most high-risk uranium mine sites on the Navajo Nation” and according to EPA spokesman Michael Brogan, have high concentrations of Radium-226 and Uranium. The Safe Drinking Water Act sets the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for Radium-226 in drinking water at 5 pico Curies per liter (pCi/L).

Unfortunately, a similar scenario has been occurring in Southeastern Ohio. Since 2012, when fracking for oil and gas started in earnest in the tri-state area, communities, citizens, and oil and gas workers continue to be exposed to brine and fracking sludge that can contain alarming amounts of radioactive isotopes like Radium-226 and Radium-228. Every day, brine trucks that are lacking any warning placards or Material Safety Data Sheets, drive along our roads and through our towns transporting oilfield wastes from fracking well pads to Class II injection wells. In addition to bromine and chlorine salts, these trucks can also carry toxic chemicals, pit waste, refuse water, sludge, and even used frack sand along with water soluble Radium-226.

Justin Nobel’s book, “Petroleum 238” is an excellent source of information detailing how the oil and gas industry has been allowed to spew radiation across the United States in the form of billions of gallons of oilfield wastes. Oil and gas exploration and production wastes (brine and drilling muds) were exempted from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle C in 1978. They are also exempted from Ohio’s hazardous waste regulations. This isn’t because the wastes are safe, in fact, officials admit the wastes could indeed be harmful to human health and the environment.

The primary reason for the exemption was “if the immense volume of oil and gas wastes were regulated as hazardous it would economically harm the industry.” When the law was revisited in 1980 under President Reagan, the Environmental Protection Agency kept the exemption, saying regulations would “cause a severe economic impact on the industry and on oil and gas production in the U.S.” Basically, as far as politicians and regulatory agencies are concerned, industry profits supersede any concern for the health of our communities.

A big fear is that the radiation from Radium-226 (which has a half-life of 1600 years) and Radium-228 (half-life 5.75 years) will be poisoning the tri-state region long after the fracking boom is over. Radium isotopes have been shown to cause bone, liver, and breast cancer in humans. “The Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) has set environmental discharge limits for Radium 226 and 228 at 60 pCi/L each,” yet it is not unusual for brine trucks to carry fluids testing above 3,000 pCi/L, with some as high as 7,300 pCi/L, according to the Buckeye Environmental Network brine factsheet on conventional and horizontal well brines; both contain Radium isotopes.

In 1985, Ohio’s General Assembly approved the use of vertical well oilfield brine to be used on roadways as a deicer and dust suppressant. In 2004, Ohio passed HB 278, “which took away local control on oil and gas regulation and granted Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) sole authority,” meaning local communities cannot stop an injection well from being constructed. There is an injection well less than ten miles from my home. Ohio has over 234 Class II injection wells and accepts wastes from out-of-state. Each day, countless brine trucks loaded with toxic horizontal well wastes travel along Tappan Lake, a drinking water source for Cadiz, Ohio.

We cannot depend on the ODNR or Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to safeguard our communities from oil and gas wastes. Several grassroots groups have taken on the task of educating the public about this radioactive nightmare. One of these is the Ohio Brine Task Force. “The Brine Task Force is a group of thoughtful and committed Ohioans interested in stopping the hazardous practice of brine spreading in our communities.”

The Buckeye Environmental Network is hosting a Statehouse Symposium at the State Capital- “Spreading Oilfield Brine on Ohio’s Roadways” on March 6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. where attendees will hear from workers affected by oilfield brine contamination and scientific experts on why this is an urgent issue to address.

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Randi Pokladnik, Ph.D., of Uhrichsville, is a retired research chemist who volunteers with Mid Ohio Valley Climate Action. She has a doctorate degree in environmental studies and is certified in hazardous materials regulations.