“ I’ ve been working on issues related to the health effects of oil and gas development for the past decade,” Quist said.“ But this project is just starting this summer, and so the work in Licking County is just starting this summer.”
This work will involve collecting data in unconventional ways: through gathering toenail clippings, naturally shed baby teeth and soil samples. Adults who have lived in Licking County for the past 12 months are eligible to donate their toenail clippings. If they are donating a baby tooth, the child who the tooth is from must have lived in the county for the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and during their first year of life. The researchers are offering gift cards for participation.
Oilfield brine is not just an issue in Licking County. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources studied brine from 107 wells across 26 different counties and 10 different formations in Ohio. All of them were considered too radioactive to discharge into the environment, according to the Ohio Administrative Code.
Quist helped to create an interactive map that used an AI pipeline to sort through data on where oilfield brine is spread on roads across the state.
Chronic exposure to high levels of radium, like that found in wellfield brine, can“ result in an increased incidence of bone, liver or breast cancer,” according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Radium is chemically similar to calcium, meaning that our bones absorb it as if it was calcium.
As radium decays, it creates radon, a colorless, odorless gas that is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the country. Licking County is considered“ ground zero” for radon in the United States, according to a 2025 investigation from The Columbus Dispatch.
The radium doesn’ t just disappear after the brine is spread.
“ The rain can wash it into people’ s gardens where they grow food to feed their kids,” said Jacque Morgan, a concerned Licking County resident who has been heavily involved in advocacy work to ban oilfield brine on roadways.“ It can move down to the streams, get into our water. But it doesn’ t dissipate.”
Spreading radioactive oilfield brine has been legal in Ohio since 1985. Since the late 1800s, more than 100,000 conventional wells have been drilled in eastern Ohio, according to ODNR. Because wellfield brine is considered waste material that well owners must dispose of, some offer it free to municipalities, counties and townships willing to take it for use on the roads.
Activists like Morgan and those at the Buckeye Environmental Network are fighting to change that.