Did you know that the gas industry spreads their radioactive waste on our roads?
Protect PT's Environmental Policy Advocate Tom Pike Testifying before the PA State House Energy Committee regarding the practice of road spreading.
Due to a creative interpretation of State regulations, the conventional gas industry exploits a loophole that allows them to sell their waste to municipalities for use as a de-icer and dust suppressant. Gas waste has been shown to be ineffective at both of these tasks, as compared to commercial products, but some rural municipalities buy it anyway because it is cheaper. They should consider why it is cheaper: it is someone else’s garbage.
Road spreading is extraordinarily dangerous to human health. The process of gas drilling brings radioactive material from underground to the surface. These are known as TENORMs, or technologically-enhanced naturally-occurring radioactive materials.
What are TENORMS?
Radon, which decays much faster than some of the other TENORMs, but is still the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States.
Radium 226, which has a half-life of 1600 years. To give you an idea of how long this will linger, if the Romans had disposed of gas industry waste on their roads, Italians would still be breathing in radium 226 today.
Uranium 238, which has a 4.5 billion year half life. To give you an idea of how long that lingers, 4.5 billion years ago, the earth was formed.
Thorium 232, with a half-life of 14 billion years. The universe is 13.7 billion years old.
When the industry takes these chemicals out of the ground and puts them on roads, they’re going to stay with us for a very long time.
It would be cheaper for anyone to dispose of their waste by dumping it in the roads, but when residents do that, they are fined. The same standards should apply to heavy industry.
Protect PT and our allies, including Earthworks and Better Path Coalition, achieved major wins against road spreading in 2024. Gas industry brine was removed as a legitimate co-product category from the DEP’s waste reporting system. What that means is that it will become harder for the industry to get away with road spreading of waste.
We also provided data and testimony to legislators which resulted in a bill that would ban the road spreading of waste definitively, and enforce violations with fines.
Source: https://www.protectpt.org/oil-and-gas-waste
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