Tell DEP: No Spreading of Radioactive Wastewater on Roads

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

Eleven million gallons of oil and gas wastewater filled with radioactive radium, toxic lead, and other heavy metals were spread over Pennsylvania’s roads in 2016. That wasn’t a result of some catastrophic accident. This toxic cocktail was intentionally spread over roads for the supposed purpose of keeping dust down as a cheap way for industry to dispose of the waste.^{1 2}

And a new study by researchers at Penn State found just how widespread this dangerous radioactive water is: four times more radium was spread on roads than was released from wastewater treatment facilities, and 200 times more than from spills at drilling wells.²

It seems like this should be obvious, but we shouldn’t be spreading radioactive waste over our roads. Tell the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to ban this practice immediately at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=27098.

Of course these toxic and radioactive contaminants don’t just stay on the roads where they’re dumped. They can wash off the road and into drinking water supplies, or get inhaled by nearby residents when the dried dust gets kicked up by cars, posing real risks to the health of surrounding communities. And while dust from dirt roads is a real air quality concern that should be controlled, the only research available suggests oil and gas wastewater does not seem to even do that any more effectively than regular water.²

The DEP recently admitted it shouldn’t have so freely allowed this drilling wastewater to be sprayed on roads in rural Pennsylvania and is reconsidering how it will permit this usage in the future. But with such clear risks of radioactivity and other health threats, it’s clear the Department should ban the use of oil and gas waste on our roads entirely. Our air and water are already threatened by drilling across the state. We don’t need to go out of our way to spread it even further over our roads.

1. Reid Frazier, “Study finds health threats from oil and gas wastewater spread on roads,” StateImpact, May 31, 2018.
2. Kristina Marusic, “Radium has been widely spread on Pennsylvania roadways without regulation: Study,” Environmental Health News, May 30, 2018.