Truckers, Tired of Being Exposed to Hazardous Waste, Call on the Feds for Help

The letter charges that oil and gas companies are misclassifying toxic material to make it seem safer than it is, exposing the truckers to toxic, potentially life-threatening substances without proper protections. ​“Some truckloads [that are not marked hazardous] can be more than 2,000 times the threshold for radioactive material under Department of Transportation regulations,” Earthjustice said in a statement. Earthjustice arrived at these numbers by analyzing data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, to which operators must submit reports characterizing their waste.

As the letter points out, DOT already has multiple rules on the books governing the transport of hazardous materials. While there’s a long-standing exception for oil and gas waste under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations around waste disposal, it is still subject to federal rules on shipping hazardous materials. Shippers (the companies who are paying trucking operators to transport their goods or materials) are supposed to classify and mark hazardous materials as such, ensure that the drivers being hired are properly HAZMAT certified, and take specific precautions to ensure that the material is transported safely.

But truckers say that’s not happening. Drivers have described seeing waste marked flammable or radioactive being pumped out of HAZMAT-marked tanks and loaded onto regular, unmarked trucks. Others have smelled or detected the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that’s present in crude oil and natural gas, which is both very flammable and highly toxic.

“At first, I didn’t know a lot of this stuff was hazardous until my H2S monitors started going off,” one driver, who requested anonymity for fear of employer retaliation, told In These Times. Workers with more specialized safety training ​“verified that the majority of the stuff that we’re hauling is just straight up hazardous material.”

“I’ve even said it in conferences with people from oil companies,” the driver continued, ​“and they say, ​‘Well, business is business. We know this stuff is hazardous, but cheaper labor is better for the company.’”

If you ask Truckers Movement for Justice co-founder Billy Randel, oil and gas producers and businesses that handle, process and dispose of oil and gas waste are breaking the rules to save a buck, while endangering truckers’ lives in the process. Carriers are legally bound to insure a HAZMAT-certified load for several million dollars more (for example, $1 million for most flammable or corrosive substances, and $5 million for more dangerous materials like explosives or toxic gases) than a non-HAZMAT load would require.

“The company doesn’t want anybody to know it’s transporting hazardous material, because all of a sudden, the insurance rates are going up, and Billy is going to demand hazardous material pay because Billy knows his life is worth more driving hazardous material than it is driving Amazon freight,” Randel, a loquacious retired HAZMAT driver who co-founded Truckers Movement for Justice to combat economic issues facing truckers, tells In These Times. His faint Bronx accent intensifies whenever he gets fired up about a particular injustice, which is often.

“The feds and the industry, their eyes are closed,” he says. ​“You’ve seen the picture of the three monkeys. Hear no evil, speak no evil. Say no evil. There we go. Everybody’s silent about the real issues.”

But fewer consumers know that truck drivers can also be called upon to transport significantly less wholesome materials, or that those mammoth vehicles rattling through small towns across the country might be loaded up with radioactive oilfield waste. Sometimes the truckers themselves don’t know, either, and only find out later that they’ve been exposed to toxic substances — including crystalline silica and radioactive materials.

Silica sand, or ​“frac sand,” plays a starring role in the hydraulic fracking process, and millions of tons of it need to be transported between sand mining sites, oil and gas wells, and waste disposal facilities. That’s a lot of sand, and unfortunately for the people loading, unloading, and hauling it around, it’s also a lot of silica. Inhaling silica dust can cause irreparable damage to the lungs, leading to silicosis and other chronic pulmonary ailments, including coal workers’ pneumoconiosis — also known as black lung. Coal miners in Central Appalachia are currently experiencing an uptick in black lung cases as a direct result of silica overexposure.

The truck drivers cruising along Western highways aren’t breathing in as much of the toxic dust as the miners, but as Randall notes, a little silica can go a long way. ​“You are breathing that stuff, whether you realize it or not, and you’re going to get sick someday,” he warns.

Randel also emphasizes the potential effect on residential communities. Silica sand-laden trucks often drive through West Texas towns like Midland and Odessa, he says, and overfilled loads that aren’t secured properly can leave loose silica sand all over the highway (or all over the drivers’ clothes). That toxic sand looks awfully similar to its non-toxic counterpart, and it only takes one strong gust of wind to carry it into someone’s front yard.

While communities near silica sand mines have begun to sound alarms about dust exposure, there’s still little definitive public-health research on the issue (although some studies have found elevated air pollution near fracking operations).

Without clear HAZMAT markers, many communities have no idea what kind of potential dangers are passing through their towns, and first responders lack crucial information to analyze the hazards when spills or accidents do happen. As Randall says, ​“We’re talking about desert: there’s sand all over the place, and it’s blowing because there’s always wind, so you don’t know if it’s silica sand or if it’s just desert sand… If you take your 1-year-old baby out for a stroll or to the playground, the baby’s breathing that stuff.”

If the existing regulations were being properly enforced, many of those oil and gas waste-loaded trucks wouldn’t be there at all; HAZMAT material is supposed to be properly packaged to reduce the likelihood of a spill and to avoid residential areas entirely to avoid potential negative impacts.

Another byproduct of fracking contains even more lurking horrors. Brine, a type of salty wastewater generated when oil or gas is pulled up from within a shale deposit that’s also known as ​“produced water,” can contain a host of naturally occurring radioactive chemicals, including cancer-causing radionuclides like radium and radon. As Megan Hunter, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, explained in a Zoom interview with In These Times, these particular elements are also known by a chilling nickname — ​“bone seekers.” Because of their similarity to calcium, ​“they actually get integrated into the bone,” she explained. ​“That’s what happened to the famous Radium Girls who made the watches — they essentially became these tiny nuclear reactors, with radioactivity inside their bodies wreaking havoc.”

“You hear the same story from drivers again and again and again, that they all know the taste of produced water,” Hunter says. ​“And that might sound strange, but you’re dealing with loading and unloading these tanks, and things splash on you, and it gets in your mouth, it gets in your face, they’re not wearing the proper equipment to prevent that. With things like radium, it also can be consumed in much smaller levels and still have really profound impacts.”

The drivers can tell when something is wrong even when it’s not as obvious as a splash of brine to the face. Sometimes all they need to do is take a deep breath. Radioactive materials themselves have no odor, but some other dangerous chemicals do, and they have served as a makeshift early warning system for drivers to identify toxic materials. The trucker In These Times spoke with says they’ve smelled hydrogen sulfide and other hazardous materials in their loads. They liken it to the scent of an old-school perm, and describe the sulfuric aroma of hydrogen sulfide as ​“smothering” and like ​“raw rotten eggs.”

Other truckers, Hunter says, only begin to suspect they’re carrying hazardous loads when they experience extreme nausea and other physical symptoms of exposure that lead them to contact researchers or regulators for more information.

Marcellus Shale Coalition spokesperson Patrick Henderson told In These Times via an emailed statement that the industry observes ​“strict adherence to modern regulatory standards” and follows ​“stringent protocols for handling, managing, and transporting waste — including radioactive screening, characterization, and reporting.” Henderson said there is ​“no greater priority for our industry than worker and community safety.”

Truckers Movement for Justice and their environmental partners are hopeful that their letter will inspire real action. ​“We’re not asking for anything new on the books,” Hunter reiterates. ​“We’re not asking for legislative changes. We are asking for the hazardous material regulations that are there to provide basic protections to also apply when it comes to the oil and gas industry.”

The Trump administration has made its distaste for life-saving safety regulations known (and its Department of Labor is busily slashing a frightening array of them as we speak), but it remains to be seen if the regime’s cozy relationship with the oil and gas oligarchy will work in these truckers’ favor. ​“If they’re pro-oil and gas, they should be pro-oil and gas workers,” Hunter said. ​“They should be ensuring that workers are given all the protections that they’re entitled to under the law, and the same for communities in oil and gas states.”

Hunter told In These Times that the Department of Transportation’s community liaison for PHMSA’s Southwest office had reached out and asked to schedule a meeting upon receiving the letter, so the coalition is crossing fingers to see whether the feds will do the right thing.

“There’s a lot of influence from politics, from politicians, from many influential people in this oil field environment, so it’s worrying because I think that we’re not the first nor the last,” as a driver named José said via a translator. ​“I think many people have had these concerns, but let’s hope today isn’t the exception. Let’s hope that they’ll be more fair to us workers, who are the ones who do all this work.”