Fri, Jul 12
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
Justin Nobel, Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It
An acclaimed science journalist's extraordinary seven-year investigation into how the U.S. oil and gas industry has avoided environmental regulations and created a dangerous and radioactive public health crisis.
Date, Time & Location
Jul 12, 2024, 6:00 PM MDT
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
Co-sponsors: New Energy Economy, Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, and No False Solutions.
This will be an in-store event and live streamed to Zoom, register here for Zoom.
Purchase Petroleum-238 ($31.99, hardcover) from CW online here or call the store to order (505) 988-4226.
As Justin Nobel traveled the United States reporting on the oil and gas industry he learned a disturbing and little-considered fact: a more comes to the surface at a well than just the oil and gas. Each year the industry produces billions of tons of waste, much of it toxic and radioactive. The fracking boom has only worsened the problem. So where does it all go?
Petroleum-238 provides the shocking answer. Shielded by a system of lax regulations and legal loopholes, this waste has been spilled, spread, injected, dumped, and freely emitted across America. Nobel relies on oilfield workers, community activists, a century of academic research, and a trove of never-before released industry and government documents to lay out a series of game-changing reveals into the world's most powerful industry. None have been more deceived than the industry's own workers, who are suffering mysterious health maladies and dying from unexplainable cancers.
This book is an impressive work of investigative science journalism with surprising moments of literary beauty, and a welcome breakdown of the false wall corporations and politicians often set between industry workers and environmentalists. In the tradition of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Petroleum-238 is both a landmark work of environmental writing and an urgent call to action.
About the author
Justin Nobel writes on science and environment for US magazines, investigative sites, and literary journals. He has been published in Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best American Travel Writing. A book he co-wrote with a death row exoneree, The Story of Dan Bright, was published in 2016 by University of New Orleans Press. His 2020 Rolling Stone magazine story, "America's Radioactive Secret," won an award from the National Association of Science Writers and inspired his new book, Petroleum-238: Big Oil's Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It. Justin's writing has helped lead to lawsuits, public dialogue, academic research and been taught at Harvard's School of Public Health.