Natural gas can cause health problems that worsen COVID

On Feb. 14, the Post-Gazette published the letter “Natural Gas Provides Materials to Fight COVID-19,” by Kevin Sunday of the PA Chamber of Businessand Industry. The letter shapes natural gas to be a “hero” in the fight against COVID-19. Mr. Sunday correctly links natural gas extraction to the production of singleuse plastics, but he fails to acknowledge the environmental and human health degradation that comes along with resource extraction and plastic production.

Do single-use medical materials offset the respiratory illnesseslinked to plastic production? Living near petrochemical cracker plants or gas drilling causes asthma, a pre-existing condition that exacerbates harmful symptoms of COVID19. Fracking, a popular method of extracting natural gas, spews pollutants - like volatile organic compounds benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, and nhexane — into air and water sources; long-term exposure to these chemicals is linked to birth defects, neurological problems, blood disorders, and cancer.

Suggesting that natural gas is in any way “clean” is an industry tactic that attempts to justify unnecessary and unsustainable drilling to create single-use consumer products like the plastic wrap on grocery store bananas. I would like to see Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell, build his mansion next to Shell’s petrochemical cracker in Beaver County to show how “clean” plastic production is.

While Mr. Sunday’s “unsung heroes” of the natural gas industry are patting themselves on the back, they are also putting the US’s most vulnerable communities at risk by strategically placing their well pads, pipelines, and processing facilities into Black, brown, Indigenous, and poor communities. These populations - that the natural gas industry openly exploits — are also the most affected by COVID-19 due to racial and ethnic health disparities.

There is no questioning that PPE like masks, gowns, face shields, and gloves are keeping frontline workers safe during a deadly pandemic. Do valuable medical materials have to be attached to the fossil fuel industry? There are innovative solutions to the health, waste, and climate problems caused bynatural gas extraction. Medical plastic can be made with hemp, algae, or even mushrooms — and natural gas can beleft in the ground.