He said the redactions in the documents were mandated by a statute protecting confidential business information. spokesman, said that the chemicals in question were approved a decade ago, and that amendments to laws since then now required the agency to affirm the safety of new chemicals before they are allowed into the marketplace. “This isn’t something I was aware of,” said Tony Choate, a Chickasaw Nation spokesman. Nine of those wells were in Carter County, Okla., within the boundaries of Chickasaw Nation. Because not all states require companies to report chemicals to the database, the number of wells could be higher. But the FracFocus database, which tracks chemicals used in fracking, shows that about 120 companies used PFAS - or chemicals that can break down into PFAS, the most common of which was “nonionic fluorosurfactant” and various misspellings - in more than 1,000 wells between 20 in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
There is no public data that details where the E.P.A.-approved chemicals have been used. (Chemours did not exist until 2015, though it would have had the responsibility to report chemicals on behalf of its predecessor, DuPont.) document shows that a chemical with the same E.P.A.-issued number was first imported for commercial use in November 2011. data and identifies Chemours, previously DuPont, as the submitter. However, an identification number for one of the chemicals issued by the E.P.A. Even the name of the company that applied for approval is redacted, and the records give only a generic name for the chemicals: fluorinated acrylic alkylamino copolymer. documents describing the chemicals approved in 2011 date from the Obama administration and are heavily redacted because the agency allows companies to invoke trade-secret claims to keep basic information on new chemicals from public release. In 2008, a scientific paper published in an oil-industry journal and led by a DuPont researcher referred to the “exceptional” water-repelling and other characteristics of types of chemicals that include PFAS, and called the chemicals an “emerging technology” that showed promise for use in oil and gas extraction. identified serious health risks associated with chemicals proposed for use in oil and gas extraction, and yet allowed those chemicals to be used commercially with very lax regulation,” said Dusty Horwitt, researcher at Physicians for Social Responsibility.įor fracking to work, the energy industry has an appetite for chemicals that, when pumped underground at high pressure, can coax oil out of the ground most efficiently. Those tests were not mandatory and there is no indication that they were carried out. scientists recommended additional testing. scientists pointed to preliminary evidence that, under some conditions, the chemicals could “degrade in the environment” into substances akin to PFOA, a kind of PFAS chemical, and could “persist in the environment” and “be toxic to people, wild mammals, and birds.” The E.P.A.
In a consent order issued for the three chemicals on Oct. The records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by a nonprofit group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, are among the first public indications that PFAS, long-lasting compounds also known as “forever chemicals,” may be present in the fluids used during drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The E.P.A.’s approval of the three chemicals wasn’t previously publicly known. in 2011 approved the use of these chemicals, used to ease the flow of oil from the ground, despite the agency’s own grave concerns about their toxicity, according to the documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times. For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS - a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife - according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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