Doctors Urge California Residents "Leave Now...While You Can" As Gas Leak Fears Grow

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2016 16:55 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-08/doctors-urge-california-residents-leave-nowwhile-you-can-gas-leak-fears-grow

Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,

California Governor Jerry Brown finally declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, concerning the ongoing, currently unstoppable methane gas leak spewing from Aliso Canyon that has created a nightmare for residents of Porter Ranch.

“I will tell you, this goes well beyond Porter Ranch. We’ve had complaints from as far as Chatsworth, Northridge, and Granada Hills,” emphasized Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander during a Porter Ranch town hall meeting on December 28. “Apparently this plume of toxic chemicals and whatever it might be, doesn’t know zip codes […] This is the equivalent of the BP oil spill on land, in a populated community.”

Aliso Canyon sits less than two and a half miles from Porter Ranch and less than 30 miles from the city of Los Angeles — the second most populous city in the United States — whose outlying total statistical areaincludes nearly 18 million residents, as of 2013.

Brown has been widely criticized for lack of decisive action on the leak, which is erupting from its underground storage area with all the force “of a volcano.” Under Wednesday’s declaration, “all state agencies will utilize state personnel, equipment, and facilities to ensure a continuous and thorough state response to this incident.”

Porter Ranch residents have been evacuating the area for some time, though SoCalGas’ rather maladroit handling of the relocation procedure has been a nightmare — and the cause for a mounting number oflawsuits, including one from the L.A. city attorney’s office.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a civil lawsuit last month concerning the massive methane leak’s impact on area residents’ health and damage to the environment — which alleged failure by SoCalGas to prevent the leak and further exacerbation of “the effects of that failure by allowing acute odor and health problems faced by the community to persist for more than a month, to say nothing about the indefinite time it will persist into the future.”

Pediatrician Dr. Richard Kang gave an ominous warning during the Porter Ranch meeting, saying, “Unfortunately, the only real way to get away from the symptoms is… you have to relocate — you have to get away from the environment.” Health complaints include severe headaches, nosebleeds, respiratory issues including increasing cases of asthma, and a number of other issues.

SoCalGas, in the meantime, stated they were “providing air filters for people’s homes,” but though “the odor added to the leaking gas can cause symptoms for some, the gas is not toxic and county health officials have said the leak does not pose a long-term health risk.”

But, as the Los Angeles Daily News reported on December 25, “Los Angeles County health officials said prolonged exposure to trace chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens, can cause long-term health effects.” Nevertheless, they also “cautioned that levels examined so far here are not believed to be associated with long-term health problems.”

“The gas company says, ‘This is just the smell you’re reacting to, it’s just temporary, it’s not a problem, it’s not serious’ — these people aren’t stupid,” said attorney Rex Paris. “How could somebody possibly say that? We have children whose noses are bleeding every day, we have people who suffer from chronic headaches [and] are nauseous every, single day. How does that not become a serious issue? Why are they saying something nobody here believes? […] They’re trying to convince everybody that it’s all in our heads. It’s a trick.”

In fact, as Erin Brockovich pointed out, “no one really knows the long-term side effects of benzene and radon, the carcinogens that are commonly found in natural gas.”

Additionally, area house pets seem particularly vulnerable — possibly acting the part of unwitting canaries — as veterinarian Dr. David Smith described in the town hall meeting. Noting he has seen dozens of sickened animals, Smith said, “I’ve seen dogs, cats, birds, pocket pets… the primary symptoms I’ve seen are gastrointestinal vomiting […]These are not things you should be inhaling.” He added, “We have seen dermatological issues as well, some very unusual bacterial infections in dogs,” including one case in which a dog had such an infection on its face, and “the client developed almost the exact same kind of symptoms soon after that […] their physician thinks it’s related [to exposure from the gas leak] and so I tend to think these correlations are real.”

Though the declaration of emergency states “the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources shall continue its prohibition against Southern California Gas Company injecting any gas into the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility,” it does not make that moratorium dependent on stoppage of the leak; rather, only “until a comprehensive review, utilizing independent experts […] is completed.”

Physician Dr. Brooks Michaels, addressing the town hall meeting, gave the sternest advice to those still in the area surrounding the unprecedented leak:

“If you have a chance to leave, if you’re able to leave… if you have a chance to relocate, do it now. I’m telling you, it’s really critical.”

Understandably, Brown’s state of emergency seems almost too little, too late for many.

evels of global-warming gas methane exceed government estimates, new study contends

The amount of the heat-trapping gas methane in the atmosphere is considerably great­er than government estimates, a problem significantly fueled by leaks from the U.S. natural gas system, according to a study released Thursday.
The leak rate probably is large enough to negate the value of converting buses and trucks from diesel to natural gas, as governments and private companies have done to help slow the warming of the planet, the scientists concluded.

Graphic

At least 1.5 percent of natural gas escapes into the atmosphere.

High methane levels detected

• View the map of natural gas leaks

But even with the current leaks, burning natural gas instead of coal is producing less heat-trapping gas and will slow the rate of climate change over 100 years, the researchers said in their study, published in the current issue of the journal Science.
They also determined that the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for gas trapped in rock formations is “unlikely to be a dominant contributor” to total methane emissions.
“If natural gas is to be a ‘bridge’ to a more sustainable energy future, it is a bridge that must be traversed carefully: Diligence will be required to ensure that leakage rates are low enough to achieve sustainability goals,” the team wrote.
Fortunately, the researchers added, that task is achievable, because a large share of the leaked gas comes from a tiny number of “super-emitters,” devices or other parts of the gas and oil system that are allowing disproportionate emissions.
The scientists, from universities, national laboratories and government agencies, reviewed more than 200 studies with conflicting methodologies in what a news release called the first comprehensive look at North American methane emissions. They considered studies that totaled leaks directly from equipment, as well as research that measured the gas in the atmosphere, using aircraft and towers. The research was led by Adam R. Brandt of Stanford University.
Although methane is much less common in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming, it is much more effective at trapping heat — perhaps 30 times as potent, the researchers said.
Natural gas is composed mainly of methane. As natural gas is extracted from the earth, processed and transported through pipes to consumers, about 1.5 percent of it escapes, the researchers concluded. Some natural gas is released intentionally by drillers. Oil exploration also releases methane.
The study concluded that estimates of methane in the atmosphere by the Environmental Protection Agency, begun in the 1990s, are probably 50 percent too low, for a variety of reasons. In a telephone news conference, the researchers said they are working with the EPA to reconcile the differences.
“We are in discussion with EPA as scientists who have tried to synthesize the available evidence, and they are very interested in hearing” the researchers’ views, said Garvin Heath, a senior scientist with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and one of the authors of the study.
The researchers could not pinpoint the natural gas system’s leakage rate. They did not offer an estimate of how much the transition from coal to natural gas in sectors such as electricity generation is slowing global warming.
Livestock also emits substantial — and probably undercounted — amounts of methane, and more comes from natural openings in the ground above gas and coal deposits, the researchers noted.
Nathan G. Phillips, a Boston University researcher who was part of a study, published in January, that found nearly 6,000 methane leaks in the District of Columbia’s aging natural gas system, said one of the new study’s conclusions provides reason for optimism.
“If we can fix relatively few big problem spots, we may have a relatively large payoff in terms of stemming the total leak problem, at least with respect to greenhouse gas emissions,” he said in an e-mail.
Phillips’s colleague Robert B. Jackson, who teaches at Duke and Stanford universities but was not part of the group whose research was released Thursday, said in an e-mail that “most oil and gas operations leak a little bit, but once in a while I find one that leaks a thousand times faster. Those are the leaks that need to be identified quickly and fixed.”
The conclusion about fracking is based on methane totals before the boom in that method of extracting natural gas, and on counts of methane at fracking sites.
“This is a lot of methane. It’s not trivial, but it’s not considered a main contributor,” Brandt said at the news conference. “The math just doesn’t work out.”
The switch from diesel to natural gas in heavy vehicles, the researchers said, probably has not been worthwhile in slowing climate change, even if it has helped to improve air quality.
“Fueling trucks and buses with natural gas may help local air quality and reduce oil imports, but it is not likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even running passenger cars on natural gas instead of gasoline is probably on the borderline in terms of climate,” Brandt said in a news release.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/global-warming-gas-methane-exceeds-government-estimates-new-study-contends/2014/02/13/e4182008-9420-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html