Climate Corner: Ban the brine

Mar 15, 2025

Rebecca Phillips

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

On the increasingly rare occasions when this old lady has to drive in the winter, I try to wait until after the road-clearing crews and salt trucks have done their work. Since moving to Ohio more than forty years ago, I have developed a true appreciation for these winter warriors who do so much to make the roads safer for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, in Ohio, some of those road-clearing trucks may well be spraying oilfield brine. Plain brine, of course, is salt water, and we are all familiar with salt’s ice-melting properties. Oilfield brine, unfortunately, is not just salt and water. This byproduct of oil and gas drilling contains a number of toxic substances, and spraying it on Ohio roadways has been legal since 1985.

The brine sprayed on roadways does not come from fracked wells (that waste going instead into the injection wells causing earthquakes in Washington County), only from conventional vertical wells. When the law permitting the use of oilfield brine was written, waste from conventional wells was believed to be less toxic than that from horizontal (fracked) wells. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Studies commissioned by various state agencies over the last forty years have found that all oilfield waste brine contains a toxic stew of, among other things, benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene, and our old friends, the “forever chemicals” PFOA and PFAS. In addition to these substances, oilfield brine contains radium brought up from the underground regions where it normally resides.

Radium is one of the most worrisome materials found in oilfield brine. Its two most common isotopes (Radium-226 and -228) have a half-life of more than 1600 years, making it yet another “forever chemical” in human terms. Radium-226 dissolves in water and is “bone-seeking;” that is, the body mistakes it for calcium and stores it in bones, which can lead to bone cancer.

Both 226 and 228 decay into lead, a known neurotoxin, and radon, the second most common cause of lung cancer. Many MOV residents already need to seal their basements against the naturally-occurring radon in our soils; we do not need more exposure. Our cancer rates are already high; they do not need to be higher.

Radium exposure is cumulative. A 2021 Ohio Department of Health study of AquaSalina, a brine product then available for residential use, found that a single driveway application would expose the home’s residents to a year’s worth of background radiation. Because of radium’s half-life, that exposure would be repeated with every use of the product, endangering children in particular and increasing their risk of a variety of cancers. ODH recommended against its residential use, and the product is no longer sold in our big box stores; ODOT, which had been purchasing it for several years by the time of the study, discontinued use. Unfortunately, other varieties of oilfield brine are still being used on roads in Ohio and other states. Even though the material is not available to spray on our driveways, runoff from melting snow and ice contaminates roadside soils, increasing exposure anytime we or our children are in these spaces. Additionally, runoff finds its way into groundwater, endangering not only drinking water for humans but all the wildlife that depends on natural water sources. And we are not exposed only in winter: brine is sprayed as a dust suppressant during summer dry spells and finds its way onto our cars and into their ventilation systems. If you have ever driven on a dusty Ohio back road, you have probably inhaled a fair amount of radium.

Fossil fuel companies argue that this brine is “natural,”and it is true that many of the substances found in drilling brine–like radium and arsenic–are naturally occurring. It is also true that all of us are exposed to natural background radiation every day of our lives–but the brine coming up from production wells exceeds all recommended radiation exposure limits. Ohio’s legal limit for radium per liter of oil and gas waste allowed in landfills is 0.005 picocuries. One batch of processed brine tested in 2021 contained 9,602 picocuries per liter, or NINETEEN THOUSAND TIMES the legal limit for landfills, and brine from production wells all over Ohio has been found to contain elevated levels of radium. Do we really want this substance on our roads, our tires, and our garage floors? ODOT no longer uses oilfield brine, but the Ohio Revised Code allows local governments to apply for permits to use this dangerous substance, and the ODNR website contains an application form. When a bill that would have prohibited brine spreading statewide was introduced in the Ohio legislature in 2022, it died in committee and has not been reintroduced. Safer ice melts are readily available. For the long-term health of our children, we need to write our legislators and urge a permanent statewide ban on oilfield brine spreading.

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Rebecca Phillips is a longtime Ohio resident and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.