July 2026 Networker: The Price of Proximity
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Volume 31 (7), July 2026 |
Table of Contents |
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1. Editor’s Note for July 2026 Networker by Carmi Orenstein
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Editor’s Note for July 2026 Networker |
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For many Americans, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran provided a crash course on the role of oil and gas in the economic workings of this world; at the very least, it added to or tested what we knew. For one thing, the myth that more U.S. oil and gas extraction—including through the fracking frenzy of the last nearly 20 years—would mean lower prices and “energy independence” has been dramatically exposed. Even being a net oil and gas exporter for the last seven years doesn’t change the fact that U.S.-extracted fossil fuels are entangled in global geopolitics. And, according to reporter Umair Irfan, |
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Unlike past crises, the oil price spikes from the US attacks on Iran are a problem of our own making. At the same time, the Trump administration is rolling back fuel economy regulations for cars and trucks and repealing incentives for electric vehicles that would have otherwise helped limit demand. But Trump is instead working to increase fossil fuel production and consumption on all fronts. |
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Given the work of our program Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) detailing the evidence of harm, it is painful to see oil and gas extraction continuing apace anywhere, within any nation’s borders, on land or in the sea. But there is a singular kind of anguish that I’m experiencing as I review the latest studies on birth outcomes from pregnancies that took place close to drilling and fracking. There is substantial evidence that in-utero and early-life proximity to drilling and fracking is linked to impacts including low birthweight, congenital abnormalities, and childhood leukemia. With 17.6 million Americans living within one mile of an active oil or gas well (and with inactive wells releasing pollutants, too), there is a vast amount of harmful exposure to pregnant women and children. One study estimated 1.4 million children 5 years old or younger—“a notable subgroup… because of their vulnerability to environmental exposures”—resides within this distance from fracking operations. This study also found that Texas is the state with the most residents living within a mile of an active well: 4.5 million people. An alarming new report released by the Texas grassroots organization Liveable Arlington released last month shows granular detail on the proximity of Arlington schoolchildren to fracking wells. For example, 44 of the 76 public schools in the district, the data show, are within a half-mile of one or more drill sites. And just last year, the Arlington City Council unanimously approved a new site with 10 wells situated less than a half-mile from three elementary schools, demonstrating what Liveable describes as “the systemic prioritization of fracking expansion over the health and safety of our children.” As part of our commitment to provide technical assistance to frontline communities, CHPNY supported Liveable’s data release with a fully-referenced statement on the science documenting the risks and harms of living near fracking, focusing on infants and children and on Texas-based studies. We share the full statement in this edition of the Networker along with a bit more information about the new data and its accompanying powerful mapping tool, created by our mutual colleague-organization, FracTracker Alliance. All three organizations released the resources with a webinar hosted by Halt the Harm Network on June 23, 2026, which can be viewed here. Sandra Steingraber’s column once again sheds light on the less visible connections of the petrochemical industry to so many of our environmental and public health crises; in this case, the herbicide glyphosate, aka Roundup. As noted in the recent Seattle Statement on Glyphosate and Public Health, the evidence that glyphosate harms human health at levels of current use is strong and “children, infants and fetuses are the most susceptible.” I interviewed Ranjana Bhandari, Liveable Arlington’s founder and executive director in these pages just over three years ago, and we called our interview, “The Moral Urgency of Stopping this Intergenerational Theft.” So much of how Liveable sees and carries out its mission resonates deeply with us, ever more so as we contend with steepening policy challenges. We share the commitment to using science and the law to protect public health, the climate, and future generations. In Ranjana’s words, “The moral urgency of stopping this intergenerational theft keeps us focused on the mission, not on the enormity and difficulty of the task.” Thank you for being with us for the duration, in spite of the enormity and the difficulty of the task. Carmi Orenstein, MPH, Editor |
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New Resources for Understanding the Risks and Harms of Fracking to Arlington, Texas Schoolchildrenby Carmi Orenstein |
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We live in a state that prioritizes the profits of polluters, over protecting its residents and the ecology that nurtures them, in its laws and regulatory bodies. The asymmetry of power and resources between a small grassroots organization like ours and the nexus of industry and their powerful political allies is immense. Losing is not an option however, because our children’s health and future hang in the balance. These are words of Ranjana Bhandari, founder and executive director of the grassroots environmental advocacy group Liveable Arlington [Texas], in our Networker interview with her published in April 2023. Our work with Liveable preceded that piece and continues today. Last month, SEHN’s program Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) participated in Liveable’s release of an extraordinary data set and mapping project, further bringing to light Arlington’s reckless and continued catering to the oil and gas industry that places the city’s children in harm’s way. The project reveals that every one of Arlington Independent School District’s 76 schools is within a two-mile radius of at least three active drilling sites. The majority of those schools are within that distance of five drilling sites, and 18 of the schools are surrounded by 10 or more drill sites. A drill site may have up to 30 gas wells, each well emitting pollutants throughout its lifecycle. Looking at closer distances, tens of thousands of children are going to school within one mile and even a half-mile or less, of multiple sites. |
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Repercussion Section: Glyphosate: A Short, Unfinished Biographyby Sandra Steingraber, senior scientist and writer in residence |
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The oil and gas industry has many chemical offspring. One of them is single-use plastics—so-called “frackaging”—which is manufactured from ethane, a waste product of fracking that comes up out of the ground with methane when natural gas is extracted. Another is anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, whose starting point is methane itself. A third is polyester. And then there is the kid who is out there serving as the subject of a recent Supreme Court decision and making headlines for himself: the weedkiller glyphosate. Otherwise known by the brand name Roundup and sprayed on 90 percent of U.S. corn and soybeans, glyphosate makes industrial agriculture possible. It is also an avatar for unintended consequences. Here’s a short, unfinished biography. *** Glyphosate is a baby boomer, first synthesized in 1950. But, although it belongs to the same chemical generation of toxic, post-war pesticides that biologist Rachel Carson warned us about in 1962, glyphosate does not appear in her book Silent Spring. That’s because it wasn’t marketed to poison plants until 1974. In its youth, glyphosate was an underachiever. The man who first synthesized it, a Swiss chemist named Henri Martin, wasn’t setting out to help farmers keep weeds out of their fields—or even solve any human problem at all. He was just trying to make bespoke petrochemicals that his company could patent, which would guarantee a monopoly on sales. A search for glyphosate’s possible role in the world came after the fact. |
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