National Nurses United

Tammy Manning believes fracked gas wells near her house contaminated her family water well and made her granddaughter sick. a continuous supply of clean water, among other things. Since their well went bad, a couple of neighbors��� wells have become unusable, too. ���There���s going to be a lot of bad stuff going on, handfuls of cancer clusters and things like that. We don���t know what chemicals they use.��� Her family has been under pressure, too, to settle a con���dential agreement with the gas company. The Mannings are lucky in that they at least have clean water for the time being. Other communities have not been as fortunate, and activists say that the energy companies use the supply of clean water that they can provide as unfair leverage in settling complaints quickly and privately. Some neighborhoods, such as the Woodlands area 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, are desperate for clean water and depending on donations to pay for re���lling their water tanks, or buffaloes, as they are called. But it���s not just those living near fracking wells that can be hurt. In April 2008, an emergency room nurse named Cathy Behr at Mercy Regional Medical Center in Durango, Colo. went into organ failure after being exposed to fracking chemicals, according to NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT (Continued from page 10) Women are also less likely to have employer-paid pensions or other savings, and typically live longer than men. It is fully funded through the Social Security Trust Fund; payments do not add a dime to the deficit. It is not going broke. The Trust Fund has a current surplus of $2.6 trillion, an amount expected to reach $3.7 trillion in 2022. When the surplus erodes through the aging of Baby Boomers, by 2033, incoming payroll tax revenues will still enable recipients to be paid more than 75 percent of promised benefits. The Trust Fund can be strengthened, but not by any of the punitive proposals floated by those who would undermine or gut Social Security. The simplest step would be to raise the income ceiling on payroll taxes, meaning we would apply the payroll tax to earnings above the current limit of $110,000, a position then-Senator Obama endorsed. The fund would be further strengthened by putting people back to work, adding to the system with more payroll taxes on people earning a living. O C TO B E R 2 0 1 2 Newsweek. A worker involved in a well spill had come in complaining of nausea and headaches. ���The chemical stench coming off [his] boots was buckling,��� Behr said. She helped him out of his clothes and to shower, according to the Denver Post. The hospital eventually quarantined the ER and ordered staff into protective gear, but it was already too late for Behr. Within days, her kidney, lungs, liver, and heart started giving out. The diagnosis was chemical poisoning, but when one of her doctors called Weatherford International, the well operator, to ���nd out the exact composition of ZetaFlow, the ���uid that had poisoned Behr, the company refused to say, citing the information as a trade secret. After weeks in the ICU, Behr eventually recovered, but her story and the stories of others should be a wake-up call to registered nurses, other medical providers, ���rst responders, and citizens everywhere. The effects of fracking chemicals ripple outward from the well through the soil, water, air, workers, neighbors, wastewater, pipeline���even the tires on the trucks that can track contaminated dirt all along a road. Roben Rosenberg Schwartz, an RN living in Scranton, Pa., said that she heard stories about gas drillers washing their work clothes at neighborhood laundromats, and of local residents asking them to stop. ���You would be living in a bubble if you were not afraid of the long-term rami���cations of these drilling sites,��� said Schwartz, a post anesthesia care unit RN at Geisinger Medical Center and union leader there. ���They���re dealing with these chemicals day in, day out. This is a public health concern for all of us. The drillers don���t care how they leave the land. In ���ve, 10, 20 years down the road, this land will be useless.��� Lucia Hwang is editor of National Nurse. Today, some 54 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, the majority of them retired workers and their dependents, but also people on disability, and families of deceased workers for whom Social Security is an essential form of life insurance. After the election dust settles, the deficit hawks, Republicans and Democrats alike, are almost certain to swoop in on Social Security ��� as proposed by the chairs of the Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a group praised by Romney and Obama alike this campaign season. Draconian proposals, such as slashing the amount of benefits, raising the retirement age to force people to work more years (which those with physically demanding jobs like nurses are often unable to do), or handing it over to Wall Street through privatization would devastate tens of millions of current seniors and future retirees for whom Social Security remains a lifeline, often the only lifeline. The stakes could not be higher. It will be up to all of us to save this crown jewel of American democracy. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N AT I O N A L N U R S E 15

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