by Lee Staples
As gases go, hydrogen sulfide isn’t the best of bedfellows. H2S has the distinct honor of being extremely poisonous, highly corrosive, explosive, colourless, and foul smelling. Natural gases imbued with anywhere from trace amounts to high percentages of hydrogen sulfide are referred to as sour and they can pack quite the punch.
Humans are likely to smell the rotten egg associated with hydrogen sulfide well below one part permillion (1ppm).
Ten times that amount will irk the eyes and the lungs, while a hundredfold increase in dosage can be dangerous to say the least. Around 500 ppm the central nervous system is strongly affected, leading to loss of balance, loss of reasoning, unconsciousness and asphyxiation. Exposure to sour gas in excess of 1000 ppm is lethal over any duration.
Common wisdom would expect people to give sour gas a wide berth, but two powerful forces have drawn them inextricably together: wealth and energy. Only the desire to fuel the rabid energy demands of the developing world and the chance to get extremely rich in the process has placed sour gas in the midst of public living.
It is no surprise then that the relationship has been part sweet and mostly sour. Human deaths and illnesses associated with sour gas have been chronicled for centuries; however, it is only in the last century that the numbers have grown dramatically. Where expanding industry and expanding populations meet, problems are sure to follow.
In Alberta, the relationship is readily apparent. Sour gas has been extracted in the province since the mid 1920’s, often times in close proximity to cities and farmland. Alberta’s 20,000 sour gas wells accounted for over 30 per cent of natural gas operations in the province, providing the Klein government with $1.5 billion dollars in earnings last year alone.
Alberta ranchers and farmers sing a different song, claiming sour gas has killed or crippled their livestock and their livelihood since the earliest wells. The industry has, of course, denied such claims for years, citing reports, mostly outdated, that show no correlation between chronic (long term), low level sour gas emissions and the health of humans and animals living nearby.
“It’s a well known fact that higher levels are dangerous,” says Gary Neilson, member of the Advisory Committee on Public Safety and Sour Gas, established in January 2000 at the behest of the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB), which regulates the industry.
“A lot of these reports are (now) dealing with the question: are low level emissions risky?” he adds.
While Neilson’s employer, the EUB, is quick to say no, he is still open to the possibility.
“The lower end of the spectrum, in the parts per billion? Depending on time of exposure, et cetera, it could be dangerous.”
Neilson is also honest about the EUB’s zero tolerance for hydrogen sulfide.
“To say there is going to be zero emissions is untrue,” he says. “There is always a general source of low level emissions.” Considering the 12,000 kilometres of pipeline, the over 300 sour gas processing plants, the thousands of wells, and the highly corrosive nature of the gas itself, it’s no surprise the system is punctuated by pinholes.
The real debate revolves around such ultra-low emissions. Of the hundreds if not thousands of sour gas reports released by government, scientific, and public bodies, few, if any, have adequately studied the long term effects of hydrogen sulfide in the parts per billion. Only now is the question being asked: Are they just as deadly?
“The answer is a definite yes, even in the parts per billion,” emphatically states Martha Kostuch. “All the research has been done at higher levels.”
Kostuch is absolute in her beliefs. While helping compose emission studies in the province, and long before when treating cattle as a veterinarian, she was convinced miniscule amounts of H2S were affecting herds and humans alike.
“There are (thousands of) wells in this province,” says Kostuch. “While they’re not allowed to release H2S, it’s still happening. Even around 10 parts per billion, many are forced to leave their homes.
“The odour itself can cause a reaction,” she adds. “With people (there is) doubt whether it’s psychosomatic or physiological, but there’s no doubt it’s happening.”
The health problems associated with chronic exposure to trace amounts of sour gas are plentiful according to Kostuch. Reactions ranging from nausea, to constant headaches, to respiratory illness are commonplace in her studies.
“It deeply affects your life,” says Kostuch.
Curiously enough, evidence of Kostuch’s claims can be found outside the sour gas industry. Low level releases of H2S are common in pulp mills around the country, and recent findings by olfactory specialist Dr. Alan Hirsch reveal that chronic exposure to odours such as hydrogen sulfide have dire medical implications for mill workers, even in the parts per billion.
“It’s clear odour is more than a nuisance,” said Hirsch at a B.C. Environmental Board hearing in July 1999. “It can cause health effects, neurologic effects, immune effects, respiratory effects, chemosensory effects … and cardiovascular effects. These effects can be permanent and … for the majority there’s no good way of treating them … the best treatment is prevention and elimination of exacerbation and the best way to do it is to get rid of the bad odour, in this instance as a result of the pulp mill.”
Two recent reports may also lend their support to Kostuch’s cause. A 2003 Alberta Environment sponsored study by the University of Calgary’s Dr. Sheldon Roth and Verona Goodwin, titled Health Effects of Hydrogen Sulfide: Knowledge Gaps, illuminated the need for definitive studies of chronic low level emissions often lacking in many past reports, including those reports utilized by the sour gas industry to support their claims.
According to the Roth-Goodwin report: “In the majority of studies that were reviewed, concentration measurements of H2S were not obtained at the time and location of exposures. Published workplace studies have rarely provided good exposure measurements even though a wide variety of monitoring and sampling methods have been available for decades.”
The report also gives credence to the accounts of farmers who believe the bad smell associated with H2S is more than just nose-turning.
“I do believe at low levels the response to odours is real,” says Roth in a later interview. “Until we can evaluate it definitively, perhaps all the facts we have are anecdotal.”
Roth points out another study, this one long-windedly titled The Western Canada Study on Animal Health Effects Associated with Exposure to Emissions from Oil and Natural Gas Field Facilities, which may take the knowledge gap seriously. Sponsored by all four western provincial governments, along with a host of industry and public groups, the massive $17 million study, slated for public release in summer 2005, may ultimately reveal the animal health effects associated with ultra-low doses of hydrogen sulfide.
The Western Interprovincial Scientific Studies Association (WISSA) in charge of the report strongly maintains that hydrogen sulfide is only one component of their study, however.
“This goes far beyond sour gas,” says study manager Michael O’Connell, who sites research about emissions of sulphur dioxide and a plethora of other volatile compounds.
“Our key objective is to determine if exposures from oil and gas emissions affect animal health and, if so, under what conditions.”
O’Connell raises a key issue. While H2S is a volatile figurehead for hazardous emissions, numerous other probable carcinogenic gases are released alongside hydrogen sulfide and sulphur dioxide in relative obscurity. Benzene, benzo(a)pyrene, and acetaldehyde, all byproducts of sour gas flaring, have proved deadly in the parts per million, and in some cases the parts per billion. Perhaps the singular smoking gun of the sour gas industry may in fact be an entire arsenal of chemicals, each producing a host of health effects that scientists have only begun to unravel.
Alongside the 33,000 individual cattle monitored for the WISSA study, the European starling has also been employed as a key indicator species for emissions. Well populated throughout the study region, WISSA is hoping the highly sensitive starling may provide statistical proof, good or bad, of the effects of all low level emissions.
“We’re looking for the canary of the coal mine essentially,” says O’Connell.
The data to be unveiled in the WISSA study will go a long way towards clarifying the issue, but hopefully it is just the beginning. A human health component originally planned for the study may be reintroduced as well, offering front-line opponents of sour gas proof to back their claims. Proof that will ultimately sway the opinion of the greater public, which is currently focused on other topics, such as Mad Cow and softwood lumber.
Yet the public is slowly starting to refocus on sour gas. Calamitous blowouts from wells, pipes, and processing plants have, in the past, had fatal implications for communities in Canada, the United States and around the world. More recent events, such as the one that occurred in China in December 2003, have fixed the public eye on H2S. When a well in that country’s southwest vented toxic sour gas into the region, 200 people were overcome by the fumes, 700 more were hospitalized, and an estimated 40,000 others who were forced to evacuate the “death zone.”
Those opposed to sour gas can take comfort in the recent struggle between the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) and Polaris Resources Ltd. A proposed sour gas well in the heart of the Whaleback wilderness area of southern Alberta, an area as ecologically diverse as any in the country, was turned down by the EUB in December of 2003.
“The landscapes in the Whaleback are extremely sensitive,” says AWA outreach coordinator Nigel Douglas. “The EUB decision recognized the value of the region.”
The AWA is pleased with the unusual EUB verdict but Douglas is concerned the door is still open for companies to operate just outside such protected areas, where he believes even trace amounts of sour gas could do lasting harm.
The debate is still open as well. For proponents of an industry that believes billions in revenue is never enough, and opponents who believe one part of H2S in a billion is far too much, the controversy over sour gas is likely to continue well into the future.
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Lee Staples, a journalism student in Calgary, served as an intern for the Watershed Sentinel this March.