Petroleum-238

By Peggy Tibbetts on May 8, 2024 • ( 1 )

Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It
By Justin Nobel
Karret Press
April 2024
496 pages

In January 2020, Rolling Stone published America’s Radioactive Secret, the result of Justin Nobel’s 20-month long investigation into the dangerous levels of radioactivity detected in oil & gas waste. The science journalist’s article won the National Association of Science Writers Award.

During his Rolling Stone investigation in 2017, Nobel learned that Lowe’s was selling a product called AquaSalina™ made by Duck Creek Energy, an Ohio-based company that recycles and repurposes fracking brine. The product is sold as a liquid de-icer for home and commercial use. Testing at a state lab revealed that AquaSalina™ samples contained radium at levels as high as 2,491 picocuries per liter.

After his exposé was published, Nobel couldn’t stop there. A question haunted him: How does radioactive fracking brine end up on store shelves marketed as “Safe for Environment & Pets”?

Petroleum-238 is the culmination of his 7-year long exhaustive investigation into the billions of tons of radioactive toxic waste produced by the oil & gas industry, how it’s handled and where it goes. Nobel crisscrossed the country on a hunting expedition to track the multitude of pathways the industry uses to conceal hazardous waste. From Pennsylvania to Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Colorado, Texas, California, Alaska — and more — he uncovered the staggering toll that results from dumping radioactive toxic waste into our environment.

In every oil & gas field, Nobel asked, “Where does the waste go?” Armed with his meticulous research into the players in each region he uncovered the multitude of methods used by industry to hide radioactive toxic waste. He followed waste haulers to learn all their dirty secrets. They spill it, spread it, inject it, dump it, and emit into the air via flaring and venting. They pay local landowners to spray it on crops as fertilizer and they give it away to local officials to spray it on roads as a de-icer. In some communities playgrounds, ball fields and subdivisions have been built on top of the toxic sludge.

To compile the documentation for this book, Nobel talked to residents and oil & gas workers. He spent time with the locals to gain their trust and found they were eager to talk, especially the workers, many of whom are sick. And if they aren’t sick, they know someone who is. They know they are living and working in a radioactive toxic soup that local and state officials all the way up to the federal government, refuse to acknowledge or regulate. But those out of sight out of mind policies are creating a patchwork of monstrous toxic plumes beneath the earth’s surface that threaten our nation’s drinking water, food supply and public health.

The problem of radioactive toxic waste is not news to the oil & gas industry. As they see it, the cost to deal with hazardous waste is astronomical and never ending. They would rather spend whatever it takes to lobby local legislators and officials to make sure the gunk is never regulated.

As a result, countless reports and studies over decades have been buried and covered over just like the oilfield waste. In fact, the EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission have always known the dangers. They just don’t want you to know.

In the end, Nobel never did get the answer to his question.

In 2018, 2019, and 2023, he asked Lowe’s the following:

How many stores sell AquaSalina™?
Do they carry the product outside Ohio?
Is Lowe’s still selling the product?
How much AquaSalina™ have they sold?
Have they ever tested it for radioactivity?

Lowe’s has never replied to his questions.

Reading Nobel’s book, I was reminded of the 1958 sci-fi horror film The Blob. An alien resembling a giant blob of sludge crashes near a Pennsylvania town. The slow-moving gunk devours everything and everyone in its path. The location and plot are eerily prescient. What the film’s creators got wrong is that the blob isn’t coming from outer space. It’s gradually oozing up from beneath Earth’s surface to devour us all.

Petroleum-238 is a modern American horror story.