American Lung Association Contradicts Its Own Mission on Fracking

- by Ronald Saff and Mau­ra Stephens, May 22, 2014, Source: Truthout

The Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion has acknowl­edged that frack­ing caus­es mas­sive amounts of can­cer-caus­ing air pol­lu­tion, and has urged stronger reg­u­la­tions, but after receiv­ing hefty dona­tions from a frack­ing com­pa­ny, the ALA switched to false­ly pro­mot­ing gas as “clean­er than oth­er fos­sil fuels.”

“Sober­ing Sta­tis­tics Tell Sto­ry About Real­i­ty of Wom­en’s Lung Can­cer” was the head­line of a May 15 blog post writ­ten by Harold Wim­mer, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion (ALA), for the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Wim­mer was tout­ing the ALA’s recent­ly announced ini­tia­tive “to make lung can­cer in women a pub­lic health pri­or­i­ty, dri­ve pol­i­cy change and increase research fund­ing.” Busi­ness­es and orga­ni­za­tions around the coun­try are spon­sor­ing events to sup­port this campaign.

These well-inten­tioned groups, and the pub­lic, deserve to know the shame­ful truth about the ALA. The orga­ni­za­tion claims to work to reduce lung dis­eases, yet part­ners with the sin­gle worst con­trib­u­tor to air pol­lu­tion (and glob­al cli­mate dis­rup­tion) — the fos­sil fuel indus­try, which actu­al­ly caus­es res­pi­ra­to­ry and oth­er illnesses.

The ALA “sup­ports the increased use of nat­ur­al gas” as a “tran­si­tion­al fuel.” Yet the offi­cers and board of the ALA know full well that “nat­ur­al” shale gas* is now pri­mar­i­ly obtained by the dan­ger­ous process of frack­ing.

To frac­ture shale rock and extract the gas (methane) with­in, frack­ing com­pa­nies mix mil­lions of gal­lons of fresh water with numer­ous chem­i­cals — includ­ing car­cino­gens, neu­ro­tox­ins and endocrine dis­rup­tors — and blast the mix­ture at high pres­sure into wells they’ve bored into the rock. Sil­i­ca, the cause of the lung dis­ease sil­i­co­sis, is includ­ed in the tox­ic stew, to prop open cracks so the gas escapes.

Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have shown that the cra­dle-to-grave pro­duc­tion of fracked gas con­tributes as much pol­lu­tion as — and pos­si­bly even more than — oil and coal exploita­tion. Methane is a much more potent green­house gas than even car­bon diox­ide, the worst con­tributer to cli­mate dis­rup­tion. Plus, the frack­ing process releas­es nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring radioac­tive mate­ri­als that include radi­um-226 as well as radon-222, which is sec­ond only to tobac­co smoke as a cause of lung cancer.

The neg­a­tive health impacts of frack­ing are firm­ly estab­lished in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture. Yet the indus­try, and its part­ner politi­cians and cor­rupt orga­ni­za­tions, insist it is “safe.”

This Is a “Health” Organization?

The ALA has acknowl­edged that frack­ing caus­es mas­sive amounts of can­cer-caus­ing air pol­lu­tion, and urged stronger reg­u­la­tions. But after receiv­ing hefty dona­tions from frack­ing com­pa­ny Chesa­peake Ener­gy to fund its “Fight­ing for Air” ad cam­paign, ALA switched to active­ly pro­mot­ing gas as “clean­er than oth­er fos­sil fuels.”

Shock­ing­ly, ALA’s Col­orado board chair, Doug Hock, is an exec­u­tive with Cana­di­an frack­ing cor­po­ra­tion Encana, which is reg­u­lar­ly cit­ed (and sued) for envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions. And the ALA’s pro-gas pol­i­cy change will increase wom­en’s like­li­hood of devel­op­ing lung cancer! 

“When women learn the truth about lung can­cer — espe­cial­ly the shock­ing mor­tal­i­ty facts,” wrote Wim­mer, “they are more like­ly to take action.  … [E]veryone has a role to play [in] rais­ing awareness.”

We agree. So we called Wim­mer and oth­er nation­al ALA offi­cers about their hypocrisy in sup­port­ing frack­ing while know­ing it caus­es cat­a­stroph­ic health prob­lems. We showed how this con­tra­dicts ALA’s mis­sion “to save lives by improv­ing lung health and pre­vent­ing lung dis­ease.” By sell­ing itself to Big Oil/Big Gas, the ALA makes a mock­ery of its core rea­son for existing.

But, just as tobac­co exec­u­tives did for decades to physi­cians and oth­ers sound­ing the alarm about smok­ing, Wim­mer and the board dis­missed our well-ground­ed criticism.

The cor­po­rate ties that bind are obvi­ous­ly very tight.

Local chap­ter ALA lead­ers, staff and vol­un­teers can be just­ly proud of their decades of hard work that have result­ed in sharp cur­tail­ment of mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing and acces­si­bil­i­ty of killer tobac­co, the cleanup of pol­lut­ing indus­tries, and the con­dem­na­tion of breath-steal­ing oil and coal exploita­tion. These cam­paigns have saved tens of thou­sands of lives.

Yet the cur­rent hypocrisy of top ALA lead­er­ship taints the ded­i­ca­tion of chap­ter ALA staff and volunteers.

A respect­ed health orga­ni­za­tion should not play pol­i­tics or be behold­en to fos­sil-fuel push­ers. The only log­i­cal rem­e­dy for ALA is to come clean- by denounc­ing frack­ing as the intol­er­a­ble lung-destroy­ing cor­po­rate activ­i­ty it is.