11:17 AM CST on Thursday, January 28, 2010

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
rloftis@dallasnews.com / The Dallas Morning News
s Wendy Hundley and Elizabeth Souder contributed to this report.

Nearly one-fourth of the sites monitored in North Texas’ Barnett Shale natural-gas region had levels of cancer-causing benzene in the air that could raise health concerns, state regulators said Wednesday.

They emphasized, however, that gas companies have fixed the worst emission problems and are working on less-serious sites where the state still wants benzene levels to come down.

“We don’t have a widespread air-quality issue, at least according to the data,” said John Sadlier, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s deputy director for compliance and enforcement.

Mayor Calvin Tillman of the tiny Denton County town of Dish criticized the study for not including enough tests in residential areas or enough long-term sampling.

The town commissioned its own monitoring last year that found extremely high benzene levels.

“I don’t think they want to find anything in a populated area, and I think their sampling reflects that,” Tillman said.

The commission report follows public worries over air and water effects from the Barnett Shale drilling boom, which has seen more than 12,000 wells drilled in metropolitan Fort Worth and areas to the north, west and south since about 2005. With wells come compressor stations and pipelines.

Earlier this month, the commission said three days of air tests from Fort Worth found no cause for concern. It gave Flower Mound a similar report. Wednesday’s study covered the entire Barnett Shale region.

In the state’s latest tests, two of the 94 places checked for airborne toxic chemicals had extremely high benzene levels – in one case, as much as a person might breathe in at a gasoline nozzle during a fill-up.

Both were in eastern Wise County, about six miles west of Dish. State officials said new tests after companies fixed leaks showed negligible benzene in the air.

At 19 other Barnett Shale sites – in Tarrant, Johnson, Hood, Parker, Wise and Denton counties – tests found benzene levels that were lower but still high enough to require reductions. Those sites are all being addressed, Sadlier said.

The other 73 sites in the commission’s investigation had benzene levels that were below the commission’s long-term effects screening level. Below that level, said commission chief toxicologist Michael Honeycutt, a lifetime exposure for 70 years would not be expected to harm a person.

“Right now, based on the data we’ve seen, there’s no need for widespread alarm,” Honeycutt said.

How study was done

The commission took air samples at 73 of the 94 sites. At the 21 others, it used infrared cameras to find airborne chemicals – the same practice that led to criticism of its Fort Worth report, in which most sites were sampled with cameras instead of actual air tests.

The site with the highest benzene level was a wellhead owned by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. Benzene was one of 35 airborne chemicals leaking at the well in amounts above the environmental commission’s level for short-term effects, signaling the potential for health problems with only brief exposure.

The benzene level at the well, 15,000 parts per billion, was more than 83 times the short-term effects level of 180 ppb. After repairs, benzene dropped to about 0.25 ppb, the commission said.

“Essentially, somebody left a valve open,” said Honeycutt. “Hopefully, there’s not a lot of people leaving valves open.”

When that happens, he said, “they’re losing a lot of money.”

Devon Energy spokesman Chip Minty said an employee doing routine checks found a relatively small leak at a valve on a new well. The company fixed the valve before the state gave Devon the benzene test results, he said.

The other site with the highest level – 1,100 ppb – was Targa North Texas LP’s Bryan Compressor Station. The company made repairs after the state provided the test results. Follow-up tests found levels of about 0.25 ppb.

Sadlier, the environmental commission’s chief compliance and enforcement officer, said the state agency’s recently enhanced presence in the Barnett Shale had spurred companies to watch their operations more closely.

So far, however, enforcement has not been part of the state’s strategy. None of the companies that had been emitting high benzene levels has been fined, Sadlier said, since the state is relying on a “find-and-fix” program that encourages voluntary compliance.

That leniency only has a few months left before enforcement could start, he said, although he added that the maximum fine of $10,000 per violation per day might have little effect on a multinational corporation.

EPA role

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with the state and is conducting its own independent inspections in the Barnett Shale to ensure compliance with federal law, EPA spokesman David Bary said. The EPA wants to make sure the state’s emissions estimates for gas operations are accurate, he said.

Flower Mound resident Tammi Vajda, whose town has been divided over a gas company’s requests to expand operations, said she doesn’t oppose drilling but wants better practices.

“Every day I lose more faith in the TCEQ and feel the standards they use to test for benzene are way too high,” Vajda said. “I feel it’s time for the EPA to step in.”

Chris Tomlinson praised the report as “solid as a rock” and said it should ease concerns.

“It clearly identified some areas as having problems, but the vast majority were safe,” said Tomlinson, who holds gas leases on his property in western Flower Mound.

He said the state commission is “doing their job of protecting the people of Texas.”

Chesapeake Energy, among the biggest Barnett Shale drillers, issued a statement saying it was pleased that the state confirmed that its production “does not negatively impact the ambient air quality.”

Devon Energy’s Minty said his company wasn’t doing anything differently under increased government oversight.

“Actually, we haven’t changed our practices because we’ve been quite proactive in our operations up to now,” he said.

Staff writers Wendy Hundley and Elizabeth Souder contributed to this report.

What’s next?

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality plans to:

•Investigate residents’ complaints within 12 hours under newly instituted guidelines for oil and gas production areas.

•Install two new monitors at Dish and Eagle Mountain Lake to get a better understanding of long-term air conditions.

•Continue surveys in the area, using both ground- and air-based monitors, and conduct a special emissions inventory, including a gas analysis from each site.

•Investigate sites for proper permit authorizations and require testing of sites with continued excessive emissions.

•Review permitting rules to ensure that authorizations and permits are enforceable and protect public health.

•Continue to provide compliance assistance to small operators.

SOURCE: Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

read full article online

By WENDY HUNDLEY / The Dallas Morning News

State health officials will launch an investigation to find out if there is an unusually high number of childhood leukemia cases in Flower Mound.

“We will do a statistical analysis to determine if there’s anything statistically significant compared to rates throughout the state,” said Allison Lowery, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The investigation is expected to begin at the end of the month, when the state agency receives 2007 data from the Texas Cancer Registry. It should be completed in February.

The study will focus on two ZIP codes – 75022 and 75028 – that cover most of the southern Denton County town. Investigators will look at childhood leukemia cases between 1998 and 2007, the most recent year with complete data, Lowery said.

The agency decided on the study after several residents contacted the agency in December, Lowery said.

Some residents are concerned about the health effects of gas drilling. The issue came up at recent public hearings about a company’s request to expand its operations.

full article

# # # For more information:

WFAA-TV story: Health officials to investigate cancer cases in Flower Mound.

Flower Mound Citizens Against Urban Drilling
Our Mission: To work in a legal, ethical, and civil manner to stop urban gas drilling in the highly residential areas of North Texas. We are not against all gas drilling, but rather that which will adversely affect the public safety, the enjoyment of our homes, and our overall quality of life. We support the need for better regulation and accountability of the Oil & Gas Industry in rural and urban areas of Texas.

Sun, Mar. 16, 2008

Scientists take exception to report

By SCOTT STREATER

Star-Telegram staff writer

http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/531348.html

A public health consultation that played down the risks of air pollution in Midlothian is misleading, biased and riddled with technical flaws and inaccuracies, according to reviews of the report by four scientists.

The comments were submitted this week to the Texas Department of State Health Services, which conducted the Midlothian health consultation in partnership with federal health officials.

Midlothian health consultation The report

Released in December, the consultation found dangerous chemicals such as benzene, arsenic and lead at levels exceeding the most conservative health-screening limits. But it concluded that more study is needed to determine “the extent of the public health hazard.”

The reviews

Four scientists who reviewed the 131-page report for Sal and Grace Mier, the Midlothian couple who organized a petition drive and persuaded the federal government to study pollution there, suggested that the study’s conclusions were vague for a reason.

“It appears that [state health officials] set out to prove that there were no health issues in Midlothian, Texas,” Dennis Cesarotti, an engineering technology expert at Northern Illinois University, wrote in a six-page critique.

Stuart Batterman, chairman of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan, was even more direct in a four-page critique.

“The health consultation is biased,” wrote Batterman, who conducted research in the mid-1990s on the health effects of industrial pollution in Midlothian. “It contains overarching statements that discount all indications that emissions from local industry and environmental conditions might or do pose a health concern in the community.”

Debra Morris, a toxicologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, faulted the study for estimating exposure risks to people based on air-monitoring data instead of studying health effects in the population.

Peter deFur, an environmental consultant in Richmond, Va., said the report “attempts to marginalize or disregard data that indicate that compounds produce human health risks.”

What’s next

Federal and state health officials are working on the second part of the consultation, which will deal with the health effects from ozone, lead, particulate matter and other pollutants. That report is not expected until this year, at the earliest.

State/federal reaction

The Texas Department of State Health Services declined to answer specific criticisms, saying only that the evaluation was “intended to be an initial look at existing air-monitoring data for Midlothian,” agency spokeswoman Emily Palmer said. Jennifer Lyke, a regional representative in the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Dallas office, also declined to address specific comments. But Lyke said the agency will review all the comments and consider revisions before the report is released in its final form this year.

On the Web

A copy of the consultation is available at: www.dshs.state.tx.us/epitox/midlothian/midlothian.shtml.

sstreater@star-telegram.com
SCOTT STREATER, 817-390-7657

Does mill have role in Zavalla’s health?
Some environmentalists say dioxin may have leaked from paper mill; company says waste process is clean

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

http://www.lufkindailynews.com/hp/content/news/stories/2008/01/6/abitibi.html

State agencies study Zavalla health, environmental concerns

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

http://www.lufkindailynews.com/hp/content/news/stories/2007/12/15/zavalla.html

‘It’s in the water:’ Local doctor believes diseases afflicting Zavalla-area residents are being caused by toxins or pollutants

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Two children in two years time develop the same rare brain cancer. Numerous cases of other forms of cancer, thyroid conditions and fibromyalgia syndrome appear to plague the people of Zavalla and other communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

Is it merely a small-town coincidence, a statistical fluke as suggested by Dr. Sid Roberts, director of the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center in Lufkin, and earlier cancer cluster investigations that found nothing unusual?

Or, is it an indication of a poison in the environment that is causing so many people to manifest similar illnesses?

“It’s in the water,” said Dr. Alexander Orlov, a Lufkin-based doctor who steadfastly agrees with the Zavalla community’s first instinctive suspicion toward the common denominator — the water.

Orlov practices what is called “functional medicine” in which doctors try to determine the underlying cause of illnesses. Often, the cause is toxins, heavy metals or persistent organic pollutants in the environment that have stockpiled in a patient’s body, he said. Once rid of these agents, the body’s natural healing systems recover, he said.

To reassure the concerns of panicked parents expressed to the school superintendent, the school board and the city council, a regimen of tests were conducted on the city’s treated and pre-treated water. The tests, taken Nov. 27, are currently being assessed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Zavalla draws its water from a different aquifer than Lufkin, the Yegua-Jackson minor aquifer which has a recharge zone running east-to-west across Angelina County, according to the Texas Water Development Board Web site. Recharge zones refer to the site where rainwater quickly infiltrates through the soil into the sandy underground water storage zones known as an aquifer — sometimes hundreds of miles north of the wells, as in the case of Lufkin’s water.

Residents at the city council cancer Q&A last month claimed occurrences of brain cancer in children and male adults began decades ago. Residents discussed a realm of causes other than water. Most recently, however, city secretary Donna Marshall said folks are now tying the tumors, thyroid issues and other health concerns with the break-up of space shuttle Columbia over East Texas.

Orlov disagrees.

“It is tempting to find an event to blame,” he said.

One rather recent event isn’t likely to be the driver of such pervasive, ongoing symptoms and diseases, he said. Nor is Zavalla the only community affected, he said.

The water

From the time he opened his practice in Lufkin 15 years ago, Orlov said he began noticing an epidemic of cancer and fibromyalgia cases in the rural communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

At first, Orlov said he attributed it to being characteristic of a rural community where people are less educated about diet and the prevalence of smoking — agreeing with Roberts, who maintains it is the prevalence of smoking in Angelina and surrounding counties that accounts for record lung cancer rates.

“Before you address the toxins, you have to address the nutritional deficiency,” Orlov said. “We are a nation of overfed, undernourished people.”

After several years, however, Orlov began studying the relationship between human health and environmental health. And he took a second look at his patients and where they lived.

“What is it that is harming them?” he asked. “I believe our drinking water is polluted.”

Whether it is the lake or the groundwater, Orlov is convinced the causes for these health issues are in the water.

“I am 100 percent convinced it is in the water,” he said.

Possibly, he said, the contaminants were originally airborne and flushed back to earth by the rain which recharges the aquifers and fills the rivers that feed the lake. Or, the toxins may have originated from an industry upriver, like the paper mill, and washed downstream, finally settling in the lake or old river bed. The one thing he sees these communities having in common is the water. What it is in the water, Orlov says, he hasn’t figured out yet.

Usually when concerns about water arise, the first thing people think of is consumption for drinking and food. However, Orlov says bathing, showering and swimming in the water all provide a faster and more concentrated route of entry to the body as water is absorbed through the skin and bypassing the GI tract.

Orlov says he encourages all his patients to filter their water, showers included.

Canaries in the mine

So then, why doessn’t everyone exposed to the water become ill?

Health is a multi-faceted issue that includes one’s environment, diet and genetic makeup, he said. Simply put, not all people are physiologically able to process the toxins absorbed or ingested into their body in the same manner, he said.

There are those “stout” individuals, Orlov said, who are known to drink, smoke and eat unhealthy but live long healthy lives. Then there are those whose bodies choke up at the slightest exposure to toxins. This is because those in the latter group lack the ability to process out the bad stuff, which means the heavy metals and other poisons accumulate in the body where they wreak all kinds of havoc.

Like canaries once lowered into the coal mines to test for healthy oxygen levels, he said, people prone to flare-ups of fibromyalgia symptoms could be a modern-day litmus test for the presence of poisons in the environment,

Heavy metals usually don’t appear in regular blood or urine sample unless the person was recently exposed, Orlov said. He uses a test that draws the metals out by introducing them to a molecule that attaches to the heavy metal molecules and carries them out of the person’s system.

Through similar methods, most toxins can be purged from a person’s system, he said. By removing the toxins and preventing their re-entry, with filters in this case, people have options in how to treat their chronic illness, he said.

Treatments like this are options to pills that only treat the symptom, acting as “a Band-aid,” he said.

“I consider it to be my duty as a physician to address these topics because I think it is the only meaningful way for people to improve their health,” Orlov said.

After practicing “orthodox medicine” for 10 years, Orlov said he realized improving a person’s health was impossible without addressing the cause.

“We are a product of our environment. You have to address the underlying illness which is based in the environment and toxicology,” he said.

The community needs to take action in determining what toxin is responsible for the illnesses and where the toxin is originating, Orlov said.

“I really believe that we are in the midst of a health care crisis; it is because we only address symptoms,” he said. “I believe in the next few years there will be a paradigm shift in the way we practice medicine.”

When and how that happens will be up to the industry that drives medicine, not the patients or the physicians, he said.

Orlov says he plans to attend the special community action group meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at Zavalla City Hall. Roberts said he will be unable to attend.

Panel questions failure to study tainted water

A House committee says an agency lapsed by not assessing health damage from solvent pollution in Southern California aquifers.

By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 26, 2007

A House committee is demanding to know why federal regulators failed to assess potential public health damage from extremely high levels of a toxic industrial solvent found in Southern California drinking water before the mid-1980s.

Trichloroethylene, widely used in the defense industry, was discovered in aquifers under the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, which supplied drinking water to nearly 2 million residents. Across the nation, the chemical is one of the most widespread water contaminants. Continue Reading »

More diagnoses spur Monday night Q&A on brain cancer

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, November 18, 2007

After another child has been diagnosed with brain cancer in the county’s southern end, Zavalla city leaders have decided to host a special Q&A on the topic during their 7 p.m. city council meeting tonight.

“Parents are panicked,” said City Secretary Donna Marshall. “They are scared.”

Neither the city council nor school superintendent want to cause a public scare, they say, so much as to address growing concerns about city water possibly causing cancer or tumors in school children. However, no medical doctor has been asked to attend or respond to concerns at this point, said Marshall.

Dr. Sid Roberts, director of the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center, said he has no firsthand knowledge of the issue but has found that determining whether a perceived cancer cluster is actually statistically significant is, in general, very difficult.

“Ten to 15 years ago, we looked briefly at a few brain tumor cases in Diboll, I believe, and determined that there was actually no higher incidence than would be expected in that population,” he said. “Statistics in small towns are sometimes misleading as well. Once you start applying rare tumor statistics to small populations, you can really get into trouble. Even one or two cases can skew the numbers.”

The latest diagnoses of a first-grader with brain cancer has left many parents asking what could be to blame, she said.

“Of course the first thing that every one assumes is that it is caused by the water,” she said, adding that students have begun carrying bottled water to school. “Like any other public water supply, our water is tested monthly, annually and more in-depth tests are run every two to three years. We really don’t think it is the water.”

The city is taking their concerns seriously and responding pro-actively with plans to test the well where Zavalla school water is drawn later this month, said Zavalla Superintendent Kathy Ray. The test will determine the presence of organic volatile compounds, synthetic volatile compounds and radio-chemical compounds, Ray said.

“We felt we needed to address those concerns,” Marshall said.

In addition to testing the well, Zavalla city council members felt it would be a good idea to hold a Q&A on the issue, Marshall said.

“Last year we lost a 9-year-old to brain cancer and recently another second-grader was diagnosed with leukemia,” she said, adding that there have been other cases of cancer and tumors occurring in children in recent history.

“Zavalla is a small close-knit community; when one family suffers, we all do. We feel their pain and want to do whatever we can to insure that it doesn’t happen to another family. We may not ever find the reason for the children’s illnesses, but for sure we need to do whatever we can to rule out any environmental cause,” she said.

The desire to pinpoint the cause, is natural — especially when coping with bad things happening to good people, Roberts said.

There are dozens of different types of brain tumors in children whose causes still elude the medical community, he said.

“Most cancers just happen, and that isn’t a very satisfying answer,” he said. “Perceived clusters should be investigated — if for no other reason than to reassure the public and the families.”

As a first step, Roberts suggests submitting an inquiry to the Texas Cancer Registry for an investigation into potential clusters.

“That gets an independent third party involved,” he said. “It is much too soon to contemplate community action, water testing, or laying blame for what is certainly a tragedy for very real families. Get the Texas Cancer Registry to look into the numbers first to help determine if a problem really exists.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services investigated four potential cancer clusters in Angelina County between Oct. 1, 2003 and Sept. 30, 2007 — two of the cases involved Zavalla patients, according to the Texas Cancer Registry Web site. One of these examined childhood brain/central nervous system cancer subtypes and others occurring between 1995-2004 was completed in April 2007. According to the summary report, the rate of these cancers were within the expected range.

“The vast majority of brain cancers happen for no apparent reason and are not associated with anything which the child or parent did or didn’t do, or anything that child was exposed to in the environment,” the report states. “The only established risk factors for brain cancer are ionizing radiation and family history.”

According to the epidemiology study, three males and zero females were recorded as having brain cancer or central nervous system cancer in the Zavalla area between 1995-2004 compared to an expected occurrence of 1.5 cases.

The other investigation examined breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, bladder, corpus/uterus, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases occurring between 1995-2003. The results of this study indicated that the occurrence of lung and bronchus cancer were higher in Zavalla area men, but because it could not be determined whether smoking was a nonfactor, further investigation of a cluster was unnecessary.

Summary case report numbers may be found athttp://www.dshs.state.tx.us/tcr/clusters.shtm, and calling 1-800-252-8059. The Cancer Registry will e-mail specific case summaries to requestors.

Zavalla City Hall is located at 838 E. Main St. in Zavalla.

http://www.lufkindailynews.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/11/19/zavalla_meeting.html