Letter to Governor Shapiro
Governor Shapiro:
We write to you today as physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals committed to protecting the health of laborers, our patients, and communities from increased mortality and morbidity and climate change-related harm from fossil fuel infrastructure. We are deeply concerned about the health impacts of hydrogen blending and urge you to stand against any efforts to blend hydrogen into residential and industrial gas pipes in Pennsylvania.
Hydrogen blending with hydrogen made from methane would exacerbate the harms that your Grand Jury Report on the Oil and Gas Industry described four years ago. In the years since the report, not only have your recommendations not been adopted, but more Pennsylvanian families have been impacted by gas industry malfeasance and negligence:
More communities, like New Freeport, have suffered water contamination events due to fracking since 2020. After fifteen years, the town of Dimock is still without safe drinking water while local fracking operations have been allowed to resume. Individual families have faced the same emergency with less community support, like the Cardins, who moved to the countryside for Kaleb Cardin to heal from his deployment-related PTS but due to a fracking contamination must now buy bottled water for everyday needs like brushing their teeth. Families like the Norrids in Washington County have seen their well water become contaminated with methane when fracking operations interacted with historic gas wells on their property. Based on the challenges these and other families experienced getting their water tested, it is likely that there are more contamination instances than the already high number of 435 oil and gas-related incidents reported by the DEP since 2008.
Adults and children near gas infrastructure are exposed to radiation that is not being properly removed from fracking facilities. A joint study by researchers from Duquesne University and University of Pittsburgh found that 800,000 tons of oil and gas waste from Pennsylvania oil and gas wells is unaccounted for between records of what oil and gas operators reported they’d sent to landfills and what the landfills reported receiving. Not only does radioactive fracking waste increase cancer risk for those in close proximity, but it increases background radiation across entire regions. Neighbors are at high risk; workers are constantly exposed, often with little to no protection, and bring contaminants home on their clothing. Just as the problem of newly abandoned unplugged gas wells exacerbates the problem of leaking historic gas wells, our radiation crisis continues to deepen: 1 trillion gallons of fracking waste from US operations is added to our already improperly-handled radioactive stockpile each year.
In 2022, Equitrans was responsible for a leak emitting 1.037 billion cubic feet of gas. In a single event, 106 tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 223 tons of carbon dioxide, and 27,040 tons of methane were released into the air. Beyond the exposure of Cambria residents to significant air pollution, this one incident had a massive climate impact, representing 10 percent of the total recorded methane emissions in Pennsylvania that year.
Hydrogen is smaller than methane, more explosive, and more likely to crack and erode metal; because many Pennsylvanian gas pipes are old, they are even more at risk than newer pipes for leaking and explosion. Upgrading our old pipes, as would be needed in order to blend hydrogen, is a poor ratepayer investment considering our need to end gas use. Blending blue hydrogen made from fracked gas into gas pipes would also increase and extend dependence on gas as a fuel, which must be quickly phased out wherever possible due to these health impacts and the significant global warming impact of methane.
However, explosion risk would still worsen even if gas companies additionally burdened customers with expensive new pipeline projects because where residential gas pipes are at the greatest risk for home explosion, that is, inside the home, gas companies would not be responsible for upgrades. Families are responsible for their own pipes, and too many already cannot afford to upgrade their pipes appropriately and have unaddressed leaks. Thus, hydrogen blending would increase gas-related home explosions that we already see, like the one that killed six people in Plum Borough last year.
Moreover, blending would further multiply costs that are already increasing for ratepayers as some gas customers leave the grid over global warming and to save money with solar and electrification. As people who are able to afford to electrify their homes do so, the remaining customers left on the gas grid will be paying a greater share of operating costs, even though they are more likely to be lower income and energy burdened households.
We are concerned that the regulations that have failed to protect Pennsylvanians from health impacts of gas and oil operations will also fail to protect Pennsylvanians from hydrogen-related harm. Additionally, the timeline of hydrogen technology and projects is parallel to the permitting process, or, in some cases, technology is behind permitting, so legislators may not have the correct data to create appropriately protective regulations. PHMSA also has statutory limitations, so even though data might not be available when the project is built, PHMSA would not be able to go back and regulate it appropriately later. In terms of in-home hydrogen use, gas pipeline companies would not be responsible at all, even though this is already a main source of deadly home explosions. Again, communities and workers would be at risk.
Finally, in addition to many health concerns, hydrogen blending would increase rather than decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen is itself an indirect greenhouse gas, and climate-impacting emissions from blue hydrogen are greater than from simply burning natural gas. Green hydrogen, as an expensive and rare resource, should be reserved first for the hardest to decarbonize industries, which disqualifies easy-to-electrify home uses like cooking and home heating.
You yourself called for “stronger laws to hold these companies accountable and protect Pennsylvanians’ health.” We need you to close loopholes that are already allowing harm, not open more doors for “greedy executives” leaving “pollution and contamination” behind. We need you to take a stand for our communities against hydrogen blending and any other industrial expansion that irresponsibly increases our dependence on fracking and results in methane emissions.
Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, “Kaleb and Rebecca Kardin, Montrose.” Youtube, 1 Nov 2024, https://youtu.be/yzhrZU3N1Ds?si=RDmytIiGdFeL37_h.
Water Supply Determination Letters, Department of Environmental Protection. Last updated 21 Oct
https://files.dep.state.pa.us/oilgas/bogm/bogmportalfiles/oilgasreports/determination_letters/regional_dete rmination_letters.pdf
Lauren M. Badertscher, Memphis J. Hill, Tetiana Cantlay, John F. Stolz, Daniel J. Bain. “Elevated sediment radionuclide concentrations downstream of facilities treating leachate from landfills accepting oil and gas waste.” Ecological Indicators, Volume 154, October 2023, ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.110616.
Nobel, Justin. Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It. Karret Press, 2024.
Howarth, Robert W., and Mark Z. Jacobson. “How green is blue hydrogen?” Energy Science & Engineering, vol. 9, no. 10, 12 Aug. 2021, pp. 1676–1687, https://doi.org/10.1002/ese3.956.6“Ag Shapiro Charges Mariner East Developer with Environmental Crimes.” Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General,
www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/ag-shapiro-charges-mariner-east-developer-with-environmental-cr imes/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.
Josh Shapiro on Action 4 News. “Abandoned Oil And Gas Wells: Who’s on the hook to pay.” WTAE Pittsburgh. 31 Oct 2023,
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