To the editor:
This is an open letter to Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman.
Not long after writing letters to the then Free Press editor many years ago, complaining about the burning at the Lac la Hache dump site, a man from the British Columbia government called me and asked me what I wanted.
Well, I wanted the burning to stop, since burning plastics release deadly carcinogens. Thank God they listened and soon we witness the remodeling of dump sites without burning.
Of course, I am not taking all the credit, since certainly many other people with social conscience must have been complaining, too.
Today, a deadlier danger hovers over all of us and our land: fracking. Make no mistake, the [province] tells us absolutely nothing about the deadly dangers associated with their LNG ambitions!
In order to produce fracked gas, a colossal amount of our fresh water (five million gallons per project) is rendered toxic. Soon this will put in peril our freshwater resources.
What the government withholds is fracking releases radon, a radioactive carcinogenic gas that attaches to peoples’ homes near fracking sites. Researches from John Hopkins University tested radon readings in 860,000 suburban and rural buildings (mostly homes) from 1989 to 2013 and found that homes close to fracking sites had a radon concentration 39% higher than suburban ones.
Last February, the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives compared results of Pennsylvania’s state-wide radon testing and found a significant connection between unusually high levels of radon in buildings (mostly homes) and the fracking projects in certain areas of the state.
Fracking uses around 40,000 gallons of chemicals per project including carcinogens and toxins, such as radium, lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, methanol, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.
Later, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out to contaminate our groundwater with so far thousands of proven cases of sensory, respiratory and neurological damage.
Similarly, it is proven that fracking causes earthquakes, such as the one in Oklahoma and in the northeast B.C. last August.
We must care for each other and our land: speak out and protest against fracking.
Alexander Zamorano
108 Mile Ranch
