Fracking has received the Hollywood treatment in Matt Damon’s “Promised Land.” Now we have a book out, “Brindle 24,” which provides a fictional account of the horrors of fracking.
J.J. Brown says she wrote the novel Brindle 24 to shine a light on toxic chemical use in hydraulic fracturing, fracking, after she saw the horrifying documentary film Gasland by Josh Fox.
“As a scientist and a parent, I clearly understood the health risks of water contamination. I wanted to tell the story of a rural family – adolescents, parents, a pregnant mother, elders – to focus on dangerous effects of industrial chemicals on our bodies and our futures. Where I live now in New York City, and where I grew up in the rural Catskill Mountains, fracking can harm us in the same way it did the families in GasLand.
“Highlighting the use of industrial chemicals in the water and land around us is critical now, so that we can protect ourselves – our water and food suply – from poisoning. Authors, artists, physicians and scientists are speaking out, because contamination of water sources all over the world from fracking is an urgent issue. We know that water is connected without borders or political boundaries. Here in New York, the political debate on fracking is intense now, because fracking is temporarily banned, due to health concerns. Upstate aquifers supply water to 8 million of us living in the city, so both urban and rural communities are rising up to take a stand on the issue of fracking. Understanding fracking and the risks it brings to our health will help all of us to stand up for our rights to clean water.”
Fracking tower. Photo: Ari MooreEXCERPT:
Dr. Miller wants to tell her patient that toxins travel from the environment to the mother and then to the baby. Not only alcohol, but poisons like the chemical toluene are shared with the unborn baby through the mother’s blood and body fluids. Worse, the radioactive materials in the industrial wastes deposited by the gas drilling sites in the evaporation pits; these also travel from mother to child. She wants to say that hundreds of chemicals contaminate the blood of newborn babies here, linked to everything from organ damage to disability and mental illness. Toxins show up in the amniotic fluid that the fetus floats in, and then later, in the mother’s milk.
There must be a place that is safer to have the baby than Brindle.
Charlotte looks down at her hands in her lap. She sighs deeply. “Do you mean like what happened to the fish? When all the fish died here, the fish and the salamanders?”
Dr. Miller nods. “It could be. When was that, exactly?”
“Three months ago.”
“The same time as—“
“—Yes, please don’t say it. Did you know my little cat died last week?”
“I’m sorry.”
“We are poisoned here.”
“I think this is a real possibility, unfortunately,” Dr. Miller says.
“I have family in Louisiana, in New Orleans. And in France, in Marseille. I have family there too. They live in the city,” Charlotte says. She tears up. “I don’t like the city, you know. I really don’t like it, not at all.”
Dr. Miller smiles at her and takes her hand. “See if you can visit, won’t you? I’m not sure what your place is like in New Orleans after the flood, but in France the environment is cleaner. They banned fracking there.”
Charlotte looks up at her. “I know. I saw that in the news.”
“Please,” the doctor says. “Try. Do it for the baby. Do it for her future.”
Fracking has received the Hollywood treatment in Matt Damon’s “Promised Land.” Now we have a book out, “Brindle 24,” which provides a fictional account of the horrors of fracking.
