your america i'm your host the right reverend david clark and i'm more than happy to come into your home to day and to declare the blessings god in your own life i know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blessings of god make of the rich and added no sorrow u k make me diana today i know that god is good and that is mercy do it for ever my prayer for you is that god internal purpose will be manifested in your life as you continue to walk where the of the vocation where you need a have been called called out of darkness into this marvelous light call out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light yes my prayer today for you is that to prosper and be in health even as die so all prosper yes i wish above all things that are prosper and be in health hazard i saw prosper in the law yes the law is good and his mercy endur for ever now is the time to call your neighbor to call you are free to call your mama to call your daddy and invite them to observateur watch h a black history achievement awards conference environmental conference monday and they supported me and i will be extremely happy but my guest today is concerned about the health of america and i have a hard line to be sharing health report because she's concerned about the health of america and especially  pittsburgh so i'd like to say i'm so glad that she's here again as we know the world health organization declares that  pollution is a problem of the we're all and that household pollution industrial pollution and environmental pollution is having an adverse effect on people all over the world and i was searching around the internet and i read an article about a company  companies that are polluting our country are polluting the world without any consequences and one company that's doing that is us steel and i'm sure that everybody here in pittsburgh is familiar with u s steel but there were seven companies that are polluting the world without any consequences and us steel when pollution is effectively your business you tend to argue against limitations on pollution across your working area especially state mandates limits on individual pollution us still has been finding attempts to regulate pollution in several  states including indiana where environmental advocates have called for a crack down on the company's operations they know that allowed us to continue discharging harmful materials like mercury into the great lakes causes tremendous environmental health harm and it has had an ample opportunity to clean up i women well so the league of women voters actually was founded in one nine hundred twenty right when women got the right to vote and the idea was at that time people thought that women didn't know enough to be able to vote and so the league of women voters was there to educate women about issues and about candidates so they would know it you know they would be able to form their own opinion now the league of women voters it's voting related work is it and everything that the league does is nonpartisan meaning that we do not support or oppose any particular candidate but what we look at is you know providing information about candidates and also we research and provide information about issues and over time the league has become a trusted source of information not only about candidates but also about issues and so the way we do that is to have lost you know grass roots study of the issues so although shale drilling has been around for quite a number of years as the companies say the drilling in the marcellus shale in this area of the country using high volume lots of water lots of pressure horizontal so drilling in the ground and then having lots of long laterals coming out of one drilling hole that's that's new and the types of shale differ from place to place and even the composition here in southwest pennsylvania were more apt to have what's called wet shale that contains a lot of other chemical components along with the shale gas and so we wanted to our league wanted to study this actually it was the league of women voters of indiana county which is a pennsylvania that decided to do a study started writing study guides examining the various issues the economic impact you know both good and bad the environmental impact walk to taxation structures and so they engage the entire state league in each chapter unit just you know regular people women and some men too like you and me in this not necessarily experts but people who could learn a lot and do a lot of study in a study of shale and then the league also develops positions from which it advocates out of its five a one c four and so the positions were developed out of that study and does issue studies on all kinds of different issues immigration education all you know just to name a few but there are a lot of and so  actually a formation in the earth so there is the oil and gas industry that's the large industry and how do we produce energy in this country that's a subset of the total  y industry which also actually includes renewables and solar there are different ways to produce energy oil and gas being one of them and shale drilling is a subset with in oil and gas industry and the marcellus shale is a layer of shelters like like in geology class where they cut away if you see a hillside cut away and you can see different layers then and they're starting to drill into that and also below that is the utica scale and they're starting to drill into that and are previously there have been you know shallower drilling  that doesn't go down as far into the other layers marcellus is a layer of the earth and i'm not sure why it was named that way while the original it was the general marcellus from actual i mean about nine million gallons worth of water is forced down into these wells at times and the pressure of that along with the chemicals that are used to fracture the earth and actually collect the product back out through the  that's what tends to affect people's drinking water and their air supply you know i noticed that this document public health that was presented at the particular study well while this is so this maybe we can hold it up with this resource guide which actually your viewers can find on the league of women voters website so if you type an h v dot org you'll go to our website and you'll be able to download for yourself a copy of this guide that we did and this was done over a period of a year and there were i of you know citizens but some of them are have expertise not only studying shale but also in public health we have a pediatric endocrinologist a couple  nurses that are volved in this and so we reviewed a lot of the literature and to write this up and things are cited in the back and i think with the forest service this refers to a specific study that was done actually in west virginia where that was looking at the effect of fracking fluid on an area of forest as compared to an area of forest not affected by that fluid and so they found that there was you know with the fluid just kind of spread out on the ground the it did actually start to kill off education and trees and then after a period of time there is a beginning of recovery but that's that research because we wanted to look at we were looking to see what is the impact of the fracturing operations on the food chain yes so how do you know we're we're eating food pennsylvania is a big agricultural state i believe that agriculture is actually in a number one industry in pennsylvania so how does how does you know the hydraulic fracturing which takes place primarily in more rural areas and often on people's farms how is that impacting our food you know that's a question that was raised as part of the broader looking at health impacts in this study and actually there hasn't been i don't know maybe you know of some research tyler's with the southwest pennsylvania environmental health project which is located here in washington county not far from here but i'm we couldn't really find you know we'd like to look for reputable studies and we could really find that but we did find this for a studying in the u s forest service is a very reputable organization and this study that was done about the impact on trees and plants and that type of thing but that's the a role so this was done in west virginia was there anything i mean i notice that in this particular guy a lot of the and they need to pay attention to researchers the health department in pennsylvania and not west virginia or not having to being effective with only was going on in pennsylvania because the property land is different the type of fraction going on in west virginia is not the same as what's going on here because  because we have you rainy and we have all types of minerals down are contaminated by the me and steel mill for an example there's there's a lot of historical industrial activity in this area but the actual process itself  fracking that's that's just one stage of conventional natural gas development and that stage itself is kind of ubiquitous happens all over i mean there's drilling and several other states not just because you can not use but you university and now this is currently in a pilot distribution all over residences in southwestern pennsylvania primarily in washington county and what the user will do will take this sensor is actually a comprehensive testing of your well water so that's what we have for water here for air we actually offer a couple of things here this is our spec air monitor i've had it plugged into the studio here for about twenty minutes and this number at the top here actually registers a particle count and that particle count is very close to particulate matter two point five which is about the human hair commonly that's used as an indicator  for industrial activity as it's kind of a combustion particle now if there's industrial activity occurring in your area say trucks driving to site or flaring or any number of activities in those deep shell layers that are actually below there's a layer where the water table does not permeate that's called the arc which are the shell layers actually below that so if there's any type of activity that fractures that barrier between the layer and the arc with hard then those salts or a lot of other heavy metals would be detected in the water also the actual drilling process if there's a crack in the casing for the well whatever it goes down some of the chemicals  specific things they also spikes they won't tell you where it's from that's that's a downside to this like i said they're currently in the distribution for for testing right now we are putting them out there they're going to be modified and hopefully