Luke Blanock of Canonsburg, PA, was only 19 when he passed away from an extremely rare form of Pediatric bone cancer, Ewing Sarcoma. A teammate, son, brother, and husband, the loss of such a kind, resilient, and deeply loved person as Luke on its own is indescribably devastating, the pain unequivocal. This loss, however, is not a closed chapter to read back upon in the Blanock Family, but rather is still being written by the unanswered questions, a burning sense of injustice, and frightening implications as to what could have catalyzed his condition beyond fate or simple chance.

Janice Blanock realized that Luke’s condition may not have been such a random occurrence when, upon waiting for Luke’s treatment to conclude at a hospital in Ohio, she encountered a mother whose daughter had the exact same prognosis. To her shock and dismay, they discovered they only lived a mile apart back home in Cecil, PA. This suspicion only deepened when Luke’s old teammate, Mitchell Barton, was also diagnosed with this condition. Both had played with the Cecil Township Youth Baseball Association, on a field heavily (and ironically) sponsored by EQT, the largest Oil and Natural Gas provider in Appalachia. Finally, cementing her concerns, was the realization that the death of Curt Valent, a junior at Robert Morris University, years prior was the result of Ewing tumors in his lungs, liver, lymph nodes, and spleen. To understand how baffling and shocking this is, it is important to understand the extreme rarity of Ewing Sarcoma; in the entire U.S., with an entire population of 330 million, only around 200 cases are diagnosed every year (NORD, 2013). To have four cases concentrated in the same region, all occurring within the last decade, seemed absurd, improbable, and undeniably terrifying. The whole town was beginning to sense a rising fear and concern as palpable as fog, and just as illusive. It became clear that not only was something going terribly wrong with the environment and a poison was polluting the community, but the mega corporations and other powers at large were not willing to address these concerns. Almost seeming insidious, Oil and Gas giants such as Range Resources and EQT would refuse to grapple with these allegations in light of potential lost profit and a refusal to take accountability that would define their environmental position for years to come.

Janice Blanock does not stand alone in this belief of causation beyond coincidence, and many other activists and scientists have come to similar conclusions. An expansive new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers confirms that numerous carcinogens involved in the controversial practice of natural gas hydraulic fracturing have the potential to contaminate air and water in nearby communities. Of the 119 compounds with sufficient data, 44 percent of the water pollutants and 60 percent of air pollutants were either confirmed or possible carcinogens. Because some chemicals could be released to both air and water, the study revealed a total of 55 unique compounds with carcinogenic potential. Furthermore, 20 chemicals had evidence of increased risk for leukemia or lymphoma specifically (Meyer, 2016). This scientific conclusion is not even altogether entirely recent, as attested to by a 1991 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a research facility of the Department of Energy, that analyzed health risks posed by radium isotopes in the waste produced by conventional gas drilling. “Two isotopes of radium (Ra-226 and Ra-228) are the radionuclides of most concern,” the report read. Radium, which attaches to bone, is known to cause cancers and other illnesses (Griswold 2021). Southwestern PA is especially affected by these pollutants, being a hot spot of drilling and private leases on top of the Marcellus Shale, and home to over 1300 oil and gas wells in Greene and Washington county alone.

Despite growing evidence and numerous independent studies finding fracking to cause contamination that seeps into water, soil, and air that directly impacts residents to a measurable and quantifiable degree, the state of Pennsylvania’s health department, politicians, and even residents undermine this perception of risk, meeting stories such as Janice’s with skepticism, or even hostility. The 2022 Pennsylvania Health Department Report on Ewing Sarcoma did show that Ewing Tumors and Childhood cancer occur at a higher rate in fracking counties, but the difference was not statistically significant (Department of Health, 2020). When she inquired to her doctor about these odds, he explained, “If you were to throw up a handful of pennies in the air, wouldn't some land in the same place?”, as if these people's lives were chump change killed by the rules of gravity, and not a potentially preventable ailment. Even among her own neighbors, Janice Blanock admitted to me in an interview we held in April 2022 that she still felt some of them did not believe that Luke’s, or Mitchell's or Curt's illnesses were connected to anything other than cruel fate or misfortune. During an interview with Lois Bower-Bjornsen, an environmental activist, dancer, and mother of four, who founded FrackLand Tours to raise awareness of loss among her neighbors, she meets this disbelief and wariness with a tempered understanding. "I get it", she states, explaining to me how the economic conditions of Southwestern PA have created a culture of poverty, desperation, and general financial insecurity. When faced with the minimal jobs and simply invaluable opportunity gas companies create, how can you tell these people to sacrifice their own life stability for a cause they can just as easily set aside in the back burner of their mind? We note in our capstone research how it seems that because of this disparity, it typically takes extremely intimate and physical consequences to alert and spark people into action. Years of extractivism, subjugation, and pollution has ensured that only an extreme and personal assessment of risk will justify action to mitigate it. This is exemplified in both Eliza Griswold's book, Amity and Prosperity, and in Lois's FrackLand tour official walkthrough, in which often times sacrifice of land, health, and property is seen as a "patriotic duty," akin to fighting in a war, in order to ensure national security, energy independence, and economic prosperity. Further research would be necessary in order to find the roots of these ideas and misconceptions, but they play a very important role in creating what is deemed "necessary risk" within more traditional, working class, and conservative communities.

This divide in community assessment of risk and corporate/state accountability and culpability leads to an interesting and provocative question: what is it like to live in a toxic environment in which the perceived consequences are “not directly linked”? How does this change the culture of motherhood, family life, safety, and perceived risk? How do we bridge the gaps between what science finds to be “objectively true”, and community perceptions and experiences of risk and quality of life? While I think this is an issue that warrants much deeper and more flushed out research, from our own short few months talking with many affected residents and activists, we can offer our own perspectives, as well as possibly propose ways in which we believe human experience can still be as tangible, material, and consequential as scientific "facts." This is significantly seen in our research as perceptions of inescapable fate, poison, and a destruction of trust that extends past corporate perception into the realms of family, neighbor, and public life. Poignantly, Janice Blanock will not let her husband buy a lake house in Pennsylvania because she will not swim or fish in the waters, assessing it to be tainted and dangerous. She has lived here her entire life, has family, history, and countless memories here. Her son lived here. Yet, she confided that she would leave if she could take everyone with her. Viscerally, Janice tells her daughter to keep her kid's teeth, just in case of the worst, if they might be needed for research. We also interviewed Tim and Jo, an activist couple that fights to save Deer Lake near Pittsburgh, that left the region to go further North to protect their kids, but now must defend public parks against the exact same enemy. To be a parent in a sacrifice zone is to be afraid for your children, and we have taken note of a correlation between older activists and parenthood. It is not hard to conceptualize how this fear might extend deeper into culture, family, and childhood. Once part of a rich Appalachian Mountain range, it is no longer safe to fish. Backyards are now laced with carcinogens, public parks disrupted by rumbling trucks, and stars blotted out by blinding construction lights. The sacrifice continues.

Finally, we can also try to holistically comprehend the impoverished and isolationist cultural context that shapes some Southwestern PA residents' vehement denial of environmental pollution, as well as what types of personal experiences with pollution motivate others to speak out and brazenly contest. In this as well lies the answers to how anthropologists like us can best integrate, understand, and assist a community we enter into as outsiders. As we begin to understand grassroots activism as happening less because of increased education and awareness, but more so because of personal experience and testimony, as activist and engaged anthropologists we can hope to speak to the needs of affected residents by helping amplify the distinctions between "necessary" and "unnecessary" sacrifice. We can emphasize the weight of seemingly "arbitrary" losses, such as a neighbor's peach tree or the soil of a family garden. If we can help conceptualize all these dimensions as crucial to culture building, we can make the argument that communities infiltrated by oil and gas become sacrifice zones whose needs for education, social programs, and food security become paramount. It is evident that in these Sacrifice Zones, federal, state, and local officials are unwilling to take community concerns seriously, and they most often choose to not involve themselves with community members or allocate community-based research and collaboration. As proposed by Melissa Checker in her article, "But I know It's True: Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice, and Anthropology", community members should be given the platform and ability to speak up and advocate for themselves, but until they are taken seriously, it may be helpful for us as anthropologists to help as mediators. In grassroots activist groups such as Coalfield Justice, Frack Tracker Alliance, and others, those who can speak the language of academia and institutions such as the EPA are essential in translating legal and technical barriers these marginalized groups already experience. The stigma and hostility environmentalists often face within traditional rural communities, however, means we must work directly with grassroots activists from these areas rather than approach residents as "voices of reason." Thus, our research informs us on how best to translate this information, and places collaboration on the forefront of our mission.