Pennsylvania’s new radiation guidance is a regulatory smokescreen

After nearly two years of revisions, and five years since the release of the state-funded study on Technically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (TENORM), the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is in the final stage of updating a “technical guidance document” to establish rules for safely handling TENORM from oil and gas waste.

If you’ve missed the series from Public Herald on TENORM, it’s a massive amount of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) in shale formations that’s unearthed by oil and gas operations, concentrated and “technically enhanced” which has gone under the radar since fracking took over the country in 2008.

Though DEP’s document only makes recommendations based on existing regulation — it does not set new policy — the technical guidance is still important to analyze. This type of document is where the commonwealth reveals under current law how it prioritizes and protects the public from carcinogenic and toxic materials from an industry that is intricately woven into the physical, legal, social and political landscapes. Pennsylvania is the place that’s home to the world’s first commercial oil well and is the second-largest natural gas producing state in the United States, where 75% of the natural gas extracted is exported to other states. So, when it finally starts to speak up about radiation, we better start listening to what they’re saying.

As you might imagine, and as Public Herald has uncovered in ten years of investigations, Pennsylvania has a love affair with the oil and gas industry. From buying politicians on both sides of the aisle to the revolving door of staffers who work inside both industry and the government, from open attacks on transparency and protections for the public to converting large swaths of forested public land for industrial use, from ripping prodigious amounts of freshwater out of the state’s water supplies to poisoning drinking water, from DEP being called out by Pennsylvania’s own Auditor and Attorney Generals for prioritizing its relationship with industry more than public health and safety, to unearthing mountains of radioactive waste – the evidence is in Pennsylvania’s actions.

Though we certainly did not expect the DEP’s guidance to address all the problems with the industry’s waste, like the dumping of the industry’s radioactive materials into rivers via reclassification loopholes, we remained open to the chance that improvement was possible. But after reviewing DEP’s technical guidance, we lament the continued absence of scientific integrity. Despite a growing body of data that reveals just how ‘hot’ the industry is, or simply the state’s own TENORM study, Pennsylvania remains blasé about the dangers of the radioactive threat of oil and gas waste.

The revised technical guidance document is clear. Though DEP reiterates that “there are multiple waste streams that may contain TENORM from [oil and gas] wells, including sediments, drill cuttings, filter socks, hydraulic fracturing flowback water, and other wastes…”, the guidance also states that “DEP may require long-term monitoring of leachate and groundwater” at facilities that handle “large volumes” of TENORM.” It goes on to state that the DEP “may require providing appropriate justification and/or pathway analysis for modeling potential radiation exposure to the public and facility or O&G well site staff…” [Emphasis added.]

The DEP’s language in the guidance document is a far cry from their 2015 press release regarding their own TENORM study that misleadingly stated “There Is Little Potential For Radiation Exposure From Oil & Gas Development.” The headline, repeated by nearly every major news outlet in the state, failed to cite or share conclusions in the study which identified places where radiation had already escaped into public waterways.

In essence, at the 30 landfills we’ve identified storing large amounts of oil and gas TENORM, the DEP will, after a decade or more of inaction, consider additional requirements for monitoring whether radioactive materials are migrating into groundwater or local waterways. There are no guarantees, and the potential for un-detected contamination continues, business-as-usual.

Pennsylvania State Representative Sara Innamorato said any such loopholes in regulatory guidance that do not require consistent testing are counter to what the goal of regulation should be: to protect the health of everyone involved, as well as the surrounding environment.

“That’s why we’re pursuing a legislative change so that this material, this leachate, is tested to assist the health and safety of the workers, of the people who live in the area,” Innamorato told Public Herald. “It’s centered in the way that we administer regulation, because that’s the point of them. The point isn’t bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake; it’s regulation to protect the health, safety and long-term wellbeing of local economies and residents and workers.”

As with most things in life, when dealing with radioactive…anything…it’s the details that matter. How is testing and monitoring conducted? Using what equipment? Who is really in charge?

In the case of oil and gas waste, are protocols accurately detecting and managing TENORM’s no. 1 issue: radium-226?

Public Herald investigations have shown that while the DEP may test or monitor leachate coming out of facilities handling TENORM and affected groundwater, the type of testing used at landfills or sewage plants to monitor for ‘hot’ loads of waste isn’t capable of producing accurate measurements for radium unless it’s measuring with gamma spectroscopy in a 21 day window.

An entirely new monitoring system would need to be required at the state level in order to accurately measure radium in TENORM. But the guidance document fails to even consider this essential change, leaving the public with years of inaccurate data on the risks of radium exposure.

Furthermore, DEP is often negligent in informing the public or legislature of the dangers being created by the radioactive material. The DEP’s own TENORM study recorded radioactivity measurements of up to 26,600 pCi/L of radium-226 in wastewater from landfills processing TENORM waste, many magnitudes higher than the EPA’s limit of 5 pCi/L in drinking water.

Radium-226 is a cancer-causing element with a half-life of over 1,600 years.

The study also revealed soil samples at the waste discharge points of nine wastewater treatment sites contained radium concentrations of up to 508 pCi/g, 500 times the DEP’s stated radium limit at the state level and over 100 times the EPA’s stated limit at the federal level. Yet, DEP’s public position following the 2016 study claimed no need for concern, “there is little potential for harm to workers or the public from radiation exposure due to oil and gas development.”

DEP’s “new” technical guidance comes well after their 2016 TENORM study that found chronic implications of TENORM on the environment and human health accrued since the onset of fracking.

According to a statement to Public Herald by the (DEP), the main contribution of the technical document is to help oil and gas companies create Radiation Protection Actions Plans (RPAPs) if they’re processing oil and gas waste on a well pad. Previous versions of the guidance had not provided RPAP plan development recommendations for oil and gas waste operations working on well pads, as RPAPs were not previously required at those locations by state regulations. The guidance “applies to all solid waste processing and disposal facilities, including oil and gas well sites where fluids or drill cuttings that have been generated by the development, drilling, stimulation, alteration, operation or plugging an oil or gas well are processed onsite.”

The guidance document recommends that oil and gas operators create a system for “monitoring and detection of gamma radiation” using standard gamma spectroscopy methods to assay waste prior to transport on public roads…” However, this de-emphasizes a major element of danger in TENORM –  radium-226 — because it emits alpha, not gamma, radiation.

When we told Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, a soil scientist and adjunct professor for Ohio State University, about DEP’s landfill tracking system for TENORM, she said, “Pennsylvania is counting on smoke and mirrors for protection because they’re not using the right test and they’re not using the right equipment. They don’t know what they put in that landfill. They think they do, but they don’t.”

Two detectors described in the guidance — geiger-muller counters and zinc sulfide scintillation detectors — can be used to detect beta, gamma and alpha decay radiation in oil and gas waste, but the testing emphasis is placed on gamma radiation.

Pennsylvania is relying on a system that tries to quickly detect levels of gamma, whereas radium is emitting high levels of alpha. According to experts like Dr. Weatherington-Rice, the only way to accurately detect alpha-emitting radioactivity levels is with a different system of testing that landfills, sewage plants, DEP, and oil and gas industry representatives are not required to perform.

The DEP admits difficulties with alpha testing. Geiger-muller counter probes must be held close to the surface of the material because “instruments cannot detect alpha radiation through even a thin layer of water, dust, paper, or other material,” and using scintillation detectors to monitor alpha emission “is often conducted in laboratories rather than field settings.” Additionally, non-zinc sulfide scintillation detectors cannot be used to read alpha emissions.

Andrew Gross, the former head of an oil & gas radioactivity company, called Pennsylvania the regulatory “Wild West.”

“Pennsylvania is definitely the Wild West when it comes to radiological health regulations — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Gross. “And for me, especially being a guy from Louisiana, that really strikes me as odd, that we’re so much better off down here than all the people who are so smart up there.”

DEP’s draft guidance document was presented to the Radiation Protection Advisory Committee on June 10, and the Solid Waste Advisory Committee on June 17. It will be presented to the Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board on Sept. 9. Following the presentations, it will move toward finalization and official publication.

While the requirement by DEP of oil and gas well pad operators to develop Radiation Protection Action Plans may be valuable for internal industry accountability to its workers, it is a regulatory smoke-screen in terms of public and environmental health. Without requirements for effectively  monitoring alpha radiation, these systems and public notifications for known and studied dangers are concealing the risks.

All of this leaves the window for continued fracking with regulatory negligence wide open.