{"id":68477,"date":"2018-03-21T10:36:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T14:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=68477"},"modified":"2022-10-21T16:00:06","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T20:00:06","slug":"the-problem-with-cooking-with-fracked-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2018\/03\/21\/the-problem-with-cooking-with-fracked-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Cooking with (Fracked) Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CAS\/ENG prof among researchers studying potential for health consequences<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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By Megan Woolhouse, BU Today<\/a>
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Of the 108 volatile organic compounds (substances that easily become vapors or gases) found in gas from four Massachusetts municipalities tested, 27 are considered hazardous by federal standards, and 12 are suspected carcinogens. Photo courtesy of iStock\/artisteer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Natural gas that has been derived from hydraulic fracking is now the most commonly used fuel in gas fireplaces and kitchen ranges. It rose to that level over the past 15 years, with little examination of the health risks of the chemicals that are used in fracking and released when the gas is burned.<\/p>\n

\u201cFew if any people have actually tested for what else is in this gas,\u201d says Nathan Phillips<\/a>, a College of Arts & Sciences earth and environment professor and\u00a0Systems Engineering affiliated professor,<\/span>\u00a0one of the country\u2019s foremost experts on natural gas leaks and explosions in the United States. \u201cIt\u2019s 90 to 95 percent methane, but what else?\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips and a team of researchers from several universities and nonprofits are finding out, and they are concerned. Of the 108 volatile organic compounds, or substances that easily become vapors or gases, found in gas from four Massachusetts municipalities tested, 27 are chemicals that are considered hazardous by federal Clean Air Act standards, and 12 are suspected carcinogens.<\/p>\n

Phillips\u2019 early findings were presented at the symposium Natural Gas Infrastructure and Public Health, from Local to Global<\/a>, held January 30 at the Photonics Center. Although the full study has not yet been finalized or submitted for publication, Phillips talked to BU Today<\/em> about questions raised by his study and the problems with fossil fuel dependence.<\/p>\n

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Nathan Phillips (Easrth & Environment, Systems Engineering) Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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BU Today:<\/em> How do hazardous substances get into natural gas during fracking?<\/h3>\n

Phillips:<\/strong> It\u2019s a combination of stuff that was already in the ground and stuff that is part of that cocktail or mixture, the proprietary compound. Different companies have their own recipes of substances that they don\u2019t in many cases have to reveal. We\u2019re having to sleuth and reverse-engineer this weird mix of stuff. Stuff that\u2019s nasty going into the ground and nasty coming out of the ground. It\u2019s complicated to pull it apart.<\/p>\n

What happens when a hazardous substances get into natural gas during fracking?<\/h3>\n

Phillips:<\/strong> It\u2019s a combination of stuff that was already in the ground and stuff that is part of that cocktail or mixture, the proprietary compound. Different companies have their own recipes of substances that they don\u2019t in many cases have to reveal. We\u2019re having to sleuth and reverse-engineer this weird mix of stuff. Stuff that\u2019s nasty going into the ground and nasty coming out of the ground. It\u2019s complicated to pull it apart.<\/p>\n

What happens when a hazardous substance or carcinogen gets burned on a person\u2019s kitchen range?<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear, but generally speaking, organic compounds will tend to be combusted when burned. Benzene, for example, doesn\u2019t combust fully. Incomplete combustion is a problem in homes when 100 percent of the gas isn\u2019t burned.<\/p>\n

Study coresearcher Curt Nordgaard, a Boston-based pediatrician who presented at the symposium, has not gotten to what human exposure means. Right now, we\u2019re talking about the potential for health consequences, but in terms of how much and in what situations people are getting exposed, that\u2019s a follow-up study.<\/p>\n

Did the results surprise you? Alarm you?<\/h3>\n

Yes, because I had been assuming that there was a robust filtration process of some sort.<\/p>\n

Also, the stove study tested gas in Massachusetts, and in fact, all gas is not the same gas. It comes from different areas. I\u2019d be careful to not assume that what we found in Boston corresponds to California or other areas. It\u2019s like sourcing food: all spinach is not the same and you have to think about where it came from. Gas has a provenance\u2014it comes from a certain place, and that makes studying it challenging.<\/p>\n

Where does Boston\u2019s natural gas supply come from generally?<\/h3>\n

Increasingly, much of it is coming from the Marcellus Shale<\/a>, which stretches from upstate New York south through Pennsylvania to West Virginia and west to parts of Ohio. A lot of this is coming from there and blended with conventional gas from a variety of places, including Canada and Texas.<\/p>\n

How much of the natural gas piped into greater Boston is fracked?<\/h3>\n

More than half. Probably up to about 80 percent. It started to rise in the mid 2000s when the rise of fracking started to take off.<\/p>\n

You typically study gas leaks, including the \u201cmother of all gas leaks<\/a>\u201d last year in Porter Ranch, Calif., where residents there suffered nosebleeds and headaches.<\/h3>\n

That definitely inspired this work. What really struck me was when I saw California health officials inform the residents that the health impacts that they were experiencing on the streets were due to the gas, and I realized that the levels of concentration on the streets and sidewalks in Boston can be as high<\/a>. Even outside, there are issues that we need to be concerned about involving the health impacts of gas leaks.<\/p>\n

What could a concerned cook do to mitigate problems in the kitchen?<\/h3>\n

Ventilation is important. Sometimes fans don\u2019t exhaust the air to the outside; they trap it or sometimes it doesn\u2019t go anywhere.<\/p>\n

What do you use to cook in your home?<\/h3>\n

In my home, we\u2019re on an electric range. We do have gas in my home that heats our water, but we cook on an electric range.<\/p>\n

I understand that we can\u2019t change everything overnight\u2014that it\u2019s got to be a process. We have to move expeditiously to the cleaner energy systems. At some level, we\u2019re all complicit as consumers.<\/p>\n

One of my areas of research is moving forward on alternatives. There are excellent alternatives that are becoming more and more viable. They\u2019re cleaner and they outperform gas. Cooking with induction<\/a> is an electrical form of cooking and superior to cooking with gas, and it\u2019s cleaner and much more efficient. It takes a third the amount of energy to heat up water as gas does.<\/p>\n

Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mgwj@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phillips (affiliated SE professor) and a team of researchers from several universities and nonprofits are finding out, and they are concerned. Of the 108 volatile organic compounds, or substances that easily become vapors or gases, found in gas from four Massachusetts municipalities tested, 27 are chemicals that are considered hazardous by federal Clean Air Act standards, and 12 are suspected carcinogens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1409,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[239,910],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1409"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131360,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68477\/revisions\/131360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}