After the Madrid terrorist bombing on March 11, 2004, a latent fingerprint was found on a bag containing detonating devices. The Spanish National Police agreed to share the print with various police agencies. The FBI subsequently turned up 20 possible matches from their database. One of the matches led them to their chief suspect, Brandon Mayfield, because of his ties with the Portland Seven (Mayfield, a lawyer, represented one of the seven American Muslims found guilty of trying to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban in an unrelated child custody case) and his conversion to Islam (Mayfield was in the FBI database because of his arrest for burglary in 1984 and his military service). FBI Senior Fingerprint Examiner Terry Green considered “the [fingerprint] match to be a 100% identification”1. Supervisory Fingerprint Specialist Michael Wieners and Unit Chief, Latent Print Unit, John T. Massey with more than 30 years experience “verified” Green’s match according to the referenced court documents. Massey had been reprimanded by the FBI in 1969 and 1974 for making “false attributions” according to the Seattle Times2. Mayfield was arrested and held for more than 2 weeks as a material witness but was never charged while the FBI argued with the Spanish National Police about the veracity of their identification. Apparently the FBI ignored Mayfield’s protests that he did not have a passport and had not been out of the country in ten years. They also initiated surveillance of his family by tapping his phone, bugging his home, and breaking into his home on at least two occasions3. All legal under the relatively new Patriot Act.
Meanwhile in Spain, the Spanish National Police had done their own fingerprint analysis and eventually concluded that the print matched an Algerian living in Spain — Ouhnane Daoud. But the FBI was undeterred. The New York Times4 reported that the FBI sent fingerprint examiners to Madrid to convince the Spanish that Mayfield was their man. The FBI outright refused to examine evidence the Spanish had and according to the Times “relentlessly pressed their case anyway, explaining away stark proof of a flawed link — including what the Spanish described as tell-tale forensic signs — and seemingly refusing to accept the notion that they were mistaken.”
The FBI finally released Mayfield and followed with a rare apology for the mistaken arrest. Mayfield subsequently sued, and American taxpayers shelled out $2 million when the FBI settled the case. More importantly, the FBI debacle occurred during a debate among academics, government agencies, and within the courts about the “error rate” associated with fingerprint analyses5. But before I address the specific problems with fingerprint identification let’s talk about the Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) court case. The details are fairly banal and would have been meaningless to this essay except for the fact that it reached the Supreme Court and established what is now referred to as the Daubert standard for admitting expert witness testimony into the federal courts6. In summay, the judge is responsible (a gatekeeper in Daubert parlance) for making sure that expert witness testimony is based on scientific knowledge7 Furthermore, the judge must make sure the information from the witness is scientifically reliable. That is, the scientific knowledge must be shown to be the product of a sound scientific method. Finally the judge must ensure that the testimony is relevant to the proceedings which loosely translated means the testimony should be the product of what scientists do – form hypotheses, test hypotheses empirically, publish results in peer-reviewed journals, and determine the error in the method involved when possible. Finally the judge should make a determination of the degree the research is accepted by the scientific community8.
“No fingerprint is identical” – it has become almost a law of nature within forensic fingerprint laboratories. But no one knows whether it is true or not. That has not stopped the FBI from maintaining the facade. In a handbook published by the FBI in 19859 they state: “Of all the methods of identification, fingerprinting alone has proved to be both infallible and feasible”. I think that fingerprints are an exceptionally good tool in the arsenal of weapons against crime, but it is essentially unscientific to perpetuate infallibility. The fact is that the statement “all fingerprints are not identical” is logically unfalsifiable10. And the more scientists argued against the infallibility of fingerprinting the more the FBI became entrenched in their position after the Mayfield mistake11. Take, for example, what Massey said shortly after the Mayfield case: “I’ll preach fingerprints till I die. They’re infallible12.” It may be true that no fingerprints are perfectly alike (I suspect it is true) but it is also true that no fingerprint of the same finger is alike. The National Academy of Sciences asserted that “The impression left by a given finger will differ every time, because of inevitable variations in pressure, which change the degree of contact between each part of the ridge structure and the impressions medium13.” The point therefore becomes not if all fingerprints are unique but whether laboratories have the abilities to distinguish between similar prints, and if they do, what is the error in making that determination.
U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak ruled in a January, 2002, murder case that fingerprint analyses did not meet the Daubert standards. He reversed his decision after a three-day hearing. Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science opined “It’s not that fingerprint analysis is unreliable. The problem rather, is that its reliability is unverified either by statistical models of fingerprint variation or by consistent data on error rates14 15.” As one might expect, the response by the FBI and federal prosecutors to Pollak’s original ruling and subsequent criticism was a united frontal attack not based on statistical analyses verifying the reliability of fingerprint identification but the infallibility of the process based on more than 100 years of fingerprint identification conducted by the FBI and other agencies around the world. The FBI actually argued that the error rate was zero. FBI agent Stephen Meagher stated during the Daubert hearing16, to Lesley Stahl during an interview on 60 Minutes17, and to Steve Berry of the Los Angeles Times during an interview18 that the latent print identification “error rate is zero”. How can the error rate be zero when documented cases of error like Mayfield exist? Even condom companies give the chance of pregnancy when using their product.
In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences through their committee The National Research Council produced a report on how forensic science (including fingerprinting) could be strengthened19. Perhaps the most eye-opening conclusion of the report is that analyzing fingerprints is subjective. It is worth quoting their entire statement: “thresholds based on counting the number of features [see diagram below] that correspond, lauded by some as being more “objective,” are still based on primarily subjective criteria — an examiner must have the visual expertise to discern the features (most important in low-clarity prints) and must determine that they are indeed in agreement. A simple point count is insufficient for characterizing the detail present in a latent print; more nuanced criteria are needed, and, in fact, likely can be determined… the friction ridge community actively discourages its members from testifying in terms of probability of a match; when a latent print examiner testifies that two impressions “match,” they [sic] are communicating the notion that the prints could not possibly have come from two different individuals.” The Research Council was particularly harsh on the ACE-V method (see the diagram below) used to identify fingerprint matches: “The method, and the performance of those who use it, are inextricably linked,and both involve multiple sources of error (e.g., errors in executing the process steps, as well as errors in human judgment).” The statement is particularly disconcerting because, as the Research Council notes, the analyses are typically performed by both accredited and unaccredited crime laboratories or even “private practice consultants.”
The fingerprint community in the United States uses a technique known via an acronym ACE-V – analyses, comparison, evaluation, and verification. I give an example here to emphasize the basic cornerstone of the process which involves comparison of friction-ridge patterns on a latent fingerprint to known fingerprints (called exemplar prints). Fingerprints come in three basic patterns: arches, loops, and whorls as shown at the top of the diagram. The objective in the analysis is to find points (also called minutiae) defined by various patterns formed by the ridges. The important varieties are shown above. For example, a bifurcation point is defined by the split of a single ridge into two ridges. I have shown various points on the example fingerprint. Once these points are ascertained by the examiner, the points are used to match to similar points in the exemplars in their relative spatial locations. It should be obvious that the interpretation of points can be problematic and is subjective. For example, note the region circled where there are many “dots” which may be related to ridges or may be due to contaminants. There is still no standard used in the United States for the number of matching points required to obtain a “match” (although individual laboratories do set standards). Computer algorithms, if used, provide a number of potential matches and examiners determine which of the potential matches, if any, is correct. The method appears straight forward but in practice examiners have trouble agreeing even on the number of points due to the size of the latent print (on average latent prints are typically one fifth of the surface of an exemplar print), smudges and smearing, the quality of the surface, the pressure of the finger on the surface, etc.20 There is another technique developed in 2005 called Ridges-in-Sequence system (RIS)21. For a more detailed description of latent fingerprint matching see Challenges to Fingerprints by Lyn and Ralph Norman Haber 22
Now you might be thinking that the Mayfield case was unusual given the FBI and other agencies promote infallibility, but Mayfield seems to be the tip of the iceberg! Simon Cole of the University of California, Irvine23 has documented 27 cases of misidentification (Cole excluded cases of matches related to outright fraud) up through 2004 and underscores the high probability of many more incorrect undetected cases because of the relatively large number of documented mistakes that have slipped through the cracks (Cole uses the term “fortuity” of the discoveries of misidentification) — particularly when the FBI and other agencies are very tight lipped about detailing how they arrive at their conclusions when there is a match. These are quite serious cases involving people that spent time in prison for wrongful charges related to homicides, rape, terrorist attacks, and a host of other crimes.
It is worth looking at the Commonwealth v. Cowans case because it represents the first fingerprint-related case overturned on DNA evidence via the Innocence Project. On May 30, 1997, a police officer in Boston was shot twice by an assailant using the officers own revolver. The surviving officer eventually identified Stephen Cowans from a group of eight photographs and then from a lineup. An eye-witness that observed the shooting from a second story window also fingered Cowans in a lineup. The assailant, after leaving the scene of the crime, forcibly entered a home where he got a glass of water from a mug. The family present in the home spent the most time with the assailant and, revealingly, did not identify him in a lineup. The police obtained a latent print from the mug and fingerprint analyzers matched it to Cowans24. The conflict between eyewitness’ testimonies made the fingerprint match pivotal and led to a guilty verdict. After five years in prison, Cowans was exonerated on DNA evidence from the mug that showed he could not have committed the crime.
What do we know about the error (or error rate) in fingerprint analyses? Recently, Ralph and Lyn Haber of Human Factors Consultants have compiled a list of 13 studies (that meet their criteria through mid-2013) that review attempts to ascertain the error rate in fingerprint identification25. In the ACE-V method (see diagram above) the examiner decides whether a latent print is of high enough quality to use for comparison (I emphasize the subjectivity of the examination – there are no rules for documentation). The examiner can conclude that the latent print matches an exemplar, making an individualization (identification), she can exclude the exemplar print (exclusion – the latent does not match), or she can decide that there is not enough detail to warrant a conclusion26. The first thing to point out is that no study has been done where the examiners did not know they were being tested. This poses a huge problem because examiners tend to determine more prints inconclusive when being examined27. Keeping the bias in mind, let’s look in detail at the results of one of the larger studies reviewed by the Habers.
The most pertinent extensive study was done by Ulery et al.28. They tested 169 “highly trained” examiners with 100 latent and exemplar prints (randomly mixed for each examiner with latent-exemplar pairs that did not match and those that did match). Astoundingly, for pairs of latents that matched exemplars, only 45% were correctly identified. The rest were either misidentified (13% were excluded that should have been matched and a whopping 42% found to be inconclusive that should have been matched). I recognize that when examiners are being tested they have a tendency to exclude prints that they might otherwise attempt to identify, but even with this in mind, the rate is staggering. How many prints that should be matched are going unmatched in the plethora of fingerprint laboratories around the country? Put in another way, how many guilty perpetrators are set free on the basis of the inability of examiners to match prints? Regarding the pairs of latent and exemplar prints that did not match, there were six individualized (matched) that should not have been — a 0.1% error. Even if the error is representative of examiners in general (and there is plenty of reason to believe the error rate is higher according to the Habers), it is too high. Put another way, if 100,000 prints are matched with a 0.1 percent error rate, 100 individuals are going to be wrongly “fingered” as a perpetrator. And the way juries ascribe infallibility to fingerprint matches, 100 innocent people are going to jail.
There are a host of problems with the Ulery study including many design flaws. For one thing, the only way to properly ascertain error is through submitting “standards” as blinds within the normal process of fingerprint identification (making sure the examiners do not know they are attempting to match known latent prints). But there are many complications involved in the procedure that begins with not having any agreed upon standards or even rules to establish what a standard is29. I have had some significant and prescient discussions with Lyn Haber on the issues. Haber zeroed in on the problems at the elementary level: “At present, there is no single system for describing the characteristics of a latent. Research data shows [sic] that examiners disagree about which characteristics are present in a print.” In other words, there is no cutoff “value” that determines when a latent print is “of such poor quality that it shouldn’t be used”. Haber also notes that “specific variables that cause each impression of a finger to differ have not been studied”.
The obvious next step would be to have a “come to Jesus” meeting of the top professionals in the field along with scientists like the Habers to standardize the process. That’s a great idea, but none of the laboratory “players” are interested in cooperating — they are intransigent. The most salient point Haber makes in my opinion is the desire by various agencies to actively keep the error unknowable. She states that “The FBI and other fingerprint examiners do not wish error rates to be discovered or discoverable. Examiners genuinely believe their word is the “gold standard” of accuracy [but we most assuredly know they make mistakes] . Nearly all research is carried out by examiners, designed by them, the purpose being to show that they are accurate. There is no research culture among forensic examiners. Very very few have any scientific training. Getting the players to agree to the tests is a major challenge in forensic disciplines.” I must conclude that the only way the problem will be solved is for Congress to step in and demand that the FBI admit they can make mistakes, work with scientists to establish standards, and adequately and continuously test laboratories (including their own) throughout the country. While we wait, the innocent are most likely being sent to jail and many guilty go free.
A former FBI agent still working as a consultant (he preferred to remain anonymous) candidly told me that the FBI knows the accuracy of various computer algorithms that match latents to exemplars. He stated “When the trade studies were being run to determine the best algorithm to use for both normal fingerprint auto identification and latent identification (two separate studies) there were known sample sets against which all algorithms were run and then after the tests the statistical conclusions were analyzed and recommendations made as to which algorithm(s) should be used in the FBI’s new Next Generation Identification (NGI) capability.” But when I asked him if the data were available he said absolutely not “because the information is proprietary” (the NGI is the first stage in the FBIs fingerprint identification process – they match with the computer and send the latent with closest matches to the analyzers). Asking for the computer error rate should not be proprietary – the public does not have to know the algorithm to understand the error on the algorithm.
Of course, computer analyses bring an additional wrinkle to the already complex determination of error. Haber states “Current estimates are such that automated search systems are used in about 50% of fingerprint cases. Almost nothing is known about their impact on accuracy/error rates. Different systems use different, proprietary algorithms, so if you submit the same latent to different systems (knowing the true exemplar is in the data base), systems will or will not produce the correct target, and will rank it differently… I am intrigued by the problem that as databases increase in size, the probability of a similar but incorrect exemplar increases. That is, in addition to latents being confusable, exemplars are.” I would only emphasize that the FBI seems to know error rates on the algorithms but has not, as far as I know, released that data.
To be fair, I would like to give the reader a view from the FBI perspective. Here is what the former FBI agent had to say when I showed him comments made by various researchers: “When a latent is run the system generally produces 20 potential candidates based on computer comparison of the latent to a known print from an arrest, civil permit application where retention of prints is permissible under the law etc. It is then the responsibility of the examiner from the entity that submitted the latent to review the potential candidates to look for a match. Even with the examiner making such a ‘match’ the normal procedure is to follow up with investigation to corroborate other evidence to support/confirm the ‘match’. I think only a foolish prosecutor would go to court based solely on a latent ‘match’… it would not be good form to be in court based on a latent ‘match’ only to find out the person to whom the ‘match’ was attached was in prison during the time of the crime in question and thus could not have been the perpetrator.” Mind you, he is a personal friend whom I respect so I don’t criticize him lightly, but he is touting the standard line. Haber notes that in the majority of cases she deals with as a consultant “the only evidence is a latent”.
I suspect that the FBI along with lesser facilities does not want anyone addressing error because the courts may not view fingerprints as reliable, no, infallible, as they currently do, and the FBI might have to go back and review cases where mistaken matches are evident. As a research geochemist I have always attempted to carefully determine the error involved in my rock analyses so that my research would be respected, reliable, and a hypothesis drawn from the research would be based on reality. We are talking about extraordinary procedures to determine error on rock analyses. No one is going to jail if I am wrong. I will leave you with Lyn Haber’s words of frustration: “No lab wants to expose that its examiners make mistakes. The labs HAVE data: when verifiers disagree with a first examiner’s conclusion, one of them is wrong. These data are totally inaccessible… I think that highly skilled, careful examiners rarely make mistakes. Unfortunately, those are the outliers. I expect erroneous identifications attested to in court run between 10 and 15%. That is a wild guess, based on nothing but intuition! As Ralph [Haber] points out, 95% of cases do not go to court. The defendant pleads. So the vast majority of fingerprint cases go unchallenged and untested. Who knows what the error rate is?… Law enforcement wants to solve crimes. Recidivism has such a high percent, that the police attitude is, If [sic] the guy didn’t commit this crime, he committed some other one. Also, in many states, fingerprint labs get a bonus for every case they solve above a quota… The research data so far consistently show that false negatives occur far more frequently than false positives, that is, a guilty person goes free to commit another crime. The research data also show — and this is probably an artifact — that more than half of identifications are missed, the examiner says Inconclusive. If you step back and ask, Are fingerprints a useful technique for catching criminals, [sic] I think not! (These comments do not apply to ten-print to ten-print matching.)”
- The quote is from a government affidavit – Application for Material Witness Order and Warrant Regarding Witness: Brandon Bieri Mayfield, In re Federal Grand Jury Proceedings 03-01, 337 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (D. Or. 2004) (No. 04-MC-9071) ↩
- Heath, David (2004) FBI’s Handling of Fingerprint Case Criticized, Seattle Times, June 1 ↩
- Wikipedia ↩
- Kershaw, Sarah (2004) Spain and U.S. at Odds on Mistaken Terror Arrest, NY Times, June 5 ↩
- see the following for more details: Cole, Simon (2005) More than zero: Accounting for error in latent fingerprint identification: The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 95, 985 ↩
- Actually the Daubert standard comes not only from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals but also General Electric Co. v. Joiner and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael ↩
- I can’t help but wonder what it was based on prior to Daubert. ↩
- It remains a mystery to me as to how a judge would have the training and background to ascertain if an expert witness meets the Daubert standard, but perhaps that is best left for another essay ↩
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (1985) The Science of Fingerprints: Classification and Uses ↩
- What I mean by unfalsifiable is that even if we could analyze all the fingerprints of all living and dead people and found no match, we still could not be absolutely certain that someone might be born someday with a fingerprint that would match someone else. Some might think that this is technical science speak but in order to qualify as science the rules of logic must be rigorously applied. ↩
- Cole, Simon (2007) The fingerprint controversy: Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 41 ↩
- Scarborough, Steve (2004) They Keep Putting Fingerprints in Print, Weekly Detail, Dec. 13 ↩
- National Research Council of the National Academies (2009) Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward: The National Academy of Science Press ↩
- Error rate as used in the Daubert standard is somewhat confusing in scientific terms. Scientist usually determine the error in their analyses by comparing a true value to the measured value, inserting blanks that measure contamination, and usually doing up to three analyses of the same sample to provide a standard deviation about the mean of potential error for the other samples analyzed. For example, when measuring the chemistry of rocks collected in the field, my students and I have used three controls on analyses: 1) Standards which are rock samples with known concentrations determined from many analyses in different laboratories by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2) what are commonly referred to as “blanks” (the geochemist does all the chemical procedures she would do without adding a rock sample in an attempt to measure contamination), and three analyzing a few samples up to three times to determine variations. All samples are “blind” – unknown to the analyzers. The ultimate goal is to get a handle on the accuracy and precision of the analyses. These are tried and true methods and as I argue in this essay, a similar approach should be taken for fingerprint analyses. ↩
- Kennedy, Donald (2003) Forensic science: Oxymoron?, Science, 302, 1625. ↩
- Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) 509 US 579, 589 ↩
- Stahl, Lesley (2003) Fingerprints 60 Minutes, Jan. 5. ↩
- Berry, Steve (2002) Pointing a Finger: Los Angeles Time, Feb. 26. ↩
- see ref. 13 ↩
- Haber, L. and Haber, R. N. (2004) Error rates for human latent fingerprint examiners: In Ratha, N. and Bolle, R., Automatic Fingerprint Recognition Systems, Springer ↩
- Ashbaugh, D. R. 2005 Proposal for ridge-in-sequence: http://onin.com/fp/ridgeology.pdf ↩
- Haber, L. and Haber, R. N. (2009) Challenges to Fingerprints: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company ↩
- see ref. 5 ↩
- One of the biggest criticism of the fingerprint community comes from the lack of blind tests — fingerprint analyzers often know the details of the case. Study after study has shown that positive results are obtained more frequently if a perpetrator is known to the forensic analyzers – called expectation bias: see, for example, Risinger, M. D. et al. (2002) The Daubert/Kumbo Implications of observer effects in forensic science: Hidden Problems of Expectation and Suggestions, 90 California Law Review ↩
- Haber, R. N. and Haber, N. (2014) Experimental results of fingerprint comparison validity and reliability: A review and critical analysis: Science and Justice, 54, 375 ↩
- see The Report of the Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Latent Print Analysis (2012) Latent Print Examination and Human Factors: Improving the Practice through a Systems Approach: National Institute of Technology ↩
- see ref. 24 ↩
- Ulery, B. T., Hicklin, R. A., Buscaglia, J., and Roberts, M. A. (2011) Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions: Proc. National Academy of Science of the U.S. ↩
- see ref. 14 ↩
When the World Trade Center was being built in 1973, Dr. Irving Selikoff, an expert on asbestosis and cancers caused by asbestos, was an outspoken critic of the wholesale spraying of the floors of the two structures with insulator containing copious quantities of asbestos for fire-proofing. He knew the potential dangerous hazards of asbestos as did the asbestos industry. Fortunately not all floors were insulated because New York City instituted a ban on the spraying of asbestos in the same year. Fast forward almost 30 years when the plumes of dust rolled over lower Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. The brave souls that rushed to help survivors and participate in the cleanup along with the many people that lived and worked in the area were exposed to one of the most serious carcinogens ever documented – asbestos in its many forms. One of the most deadly results of inhaling the tiny asbestos fibers that permeated the World Trade Center clouds is the nearly always fatal cancer mesothelioma (known to be caused only by asbestos). Unfortunately, the cancer often shows up decades after exposure. What many people do not realize is that asbestos has still not been banned in the United States even though the asbestos community has known internally since at least the 1930s that it was not only harmful but deadly. The asbestos executives and their hired doctors promulgated a disinformation campaign that asbestos was and is harmless knowing full well that these claims were patently wrong1.
Selikoff first came to prominence in 1964 when he organized an international symposium on the “Biological Effects of Asbestos” through the New York Academy of Sciences. Selikoff, through his position as the director of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, was able to persuade the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators & Asbestos Workers union to provide him with workers’ medical profiles2. He presented four papers at the conference on the results of his epidemiological studies of the union workers. There was no mistaking his results — working with asbestos insulation caused an increase in death by 25 percent from not only mesothelioma but asbestosis, lung cancer and even cancers of the stomach, colon and rectum. His independent research could not be buried by the asbestos industry as they had with their subsidized research, and Selikoff’s results were reported widely in the press. Selikoff’s team even found that insulator workers who smoked were ninety times more likely to get some form of asbestos-related cancer than those workers that did not smoke.
I don’t want to appear sanctimonious, but the dangers due to asbestos Selikoff and others reported in 1964 should have caused the asbestos industry pause – maybe even force them to attempt to improve working conditions. But as in other industries with similar threats, the asbestos executives circled the wagons and then went on the offensive. The Asbestos Textile Institute’s lawyers (the asbsetos industry’s public relation’s arm to promote asbestos products) sent letters to the New York Academy of Sciences and Selikoff warning them about the impact of their “damaging and misleading news stories”. Their smear campaigns began by attacking Selikoff’s medical credentials and the quality of his work. For years, the asbestos industry stalked Selikoff and others at conferences and meetings attempting to undermine their work. More details can be found in Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedle’s outstanding book entitled Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival.
It is astounding the lengths the asbestos industry went to suppress information they deemed adverse and to circulate disinformation cranked out by their hired doctors and researchers. Asbestos executives also turned to the largest public relations firm in the world – Hill & Knowlton – a sort of hit squad of lawyers with a ubiquitous presence in undermining science damaging to their clients which included Big Tobacco3. But perhaps what can only be described as turpitude, the companies led the disinformation campaigns while laborers in a whole slew of industries from mining to textiles worked in deplorable conditions that caused sickness and death. In the Libby mine in Montana, for example, not only was fibrous asbestos dust so thick in some areas of the open-pit mine it was hard for workers to see each other. The dust blew into the nearby town causing asbestos illness and death to residents (the Libby mine was eventually closed due to the huge number of tort claims by families struck by illness and death related to the operations). It was common for the industry to fire workers that developed asbestosis or cancer to avoid the appearance of illnesses related to asbestos. When it became clear to the industry that mesothelioma was a serious public relations nightmare, their public relation’s machine went into full overdrive focusing on two strategies. 1) Reassuring people that asbestos-related diseases were caused only by the inhalation of large amounts of fiber dust over long periods of time (internal memorandums clearly show that the companies involved knew this was not true). 2) Foisting the argument on the public that mesothelioma was the result of blue asbestos and that other types of asbestos, such as chrysotile, were safe (once again, internal memorandums show that the companies knew this to be patently untrue).
The diagram below shows the world production numbers for asbestos from 1900 through 2015. One might think that the asbestos industry would have been crippled by Selikopf’s research reported in 1964. But production actually increased through the 1960s and went on increasing into the late 1970s before tort claims began to impact the industry. But even today, worldwide production has not decreased below the early 1960s output due mostly to production in developing nations. The diagram is a testimonial to the success of the asbestos industry’s ability to undermine solid scientific research with political clout and the financial resources to promote their agenda – asbestos is safe. We have seen the same thing in many other industries like Big Tobacco with smoking and Exxon with global warming. McCulloch and Tweedle make a salient point: “Put another way, nearly 80 per cent [sic] of world asbestos production in the twentieth century was produced after the world learned that asbestos could cause mesothelioma!”
Data from Virta4 for 1900 through 2003, Virta for 2004 through 2006 (consumption), and Statista for 2007 through 2015.
Imagine that you are the mayor of a small town dependent on tourism, and doctors in the village are reporting an outbreak of a bacterial disease that is killing 40 percent of those being infected. You decide that reporting the disease to the CDC or WHO would harm the financial health of your town and you seek to suppress the seriousness of the outbreak. You tell tourists they have nothing to worry about and chastise the local news affiliates by telling them they are acting hysterically and causing undue panic. Would anyone deny that you are guilty of a serious criminal act? This is essentially what the asbestos industry did over many decades, and yet no one in the asbestos industry has served a day jail time for their actions. In fact, they were so successful in their disinformation campaign that even today as mentioned above asbestos is not banned in the US even though cheap substitutes exist and asbestos has been banned in other industrial nations such as France and Britain. I asked Dr. Jock McCulloch why and his response is telling: “There is no easy answer to your question nor to the adjacent one as to why 2 million tons of asbestos will be mined and used globally during 2016. One of the key factors has been the corporate corruption of the science (which began in the 1930s) and the other is the baleful behaviour of Canada at international forums- due in the main to federal/Quebec politics. And then there is Russia, its political climate and anti-western reflexes.” Both Canada and Russia have been and are huge producers of asbestos and Canada with the help of scientists at McGill University funded by the asbestos industry (one of the reasons why scientists should remain independent in their research) has been instrumental in persuading other governments to act gingerly against asbestos interests.
Distressing research now shows that trivial exposure to asbestos can cause cancers. The Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould died of cancer caused by asbestos fibers perhaps from asbestos within ceiling tiles. Actor Steve McQueen died at the age 50 from mesothelioma probably from asbestos exposure when he worked in a break repair shop (breaks are lined with asbestos). Many instances of cancer among family members of miners and other laborers in the asbestos industry have been attributed to exposure to asbestos fibers brought home on clothing. I think about the lives destroyed by asbestos when I read the words of McCulloch and Tweedle: “Central to the strategy was a policy of concealment and, at times, misinformation that often amounted to a conspiracy to continue selling asbestos fibre irrespective of the health risks.” I might add that attempts to force the asbestos industry to warn their workers about the dangers of asbestos were averted. And although most mining and manufacturing has moved out of industrialized nations, the developing world has picked up the slack — places like Swaziland where laborers have few protections and little legal recourse for compensation from asbestos illnesses. Records through litigation have turned up showing that industry officials thought black workers were far less sophisticated than those in the US or Europe about hazards to their health and sought to take advantage of them.
Stephen Jay Gould 
Steve McQueen
Sadly, the large asbestos companies (18 in all) were able to avoid paying thousands of tort claims in the US by declaring bankruptcy through Chapter 11. Bankruptcy implies that a company is insolvent, but due to the Manville Amendment passed by Congress in 1994 to help the asbestos industry, companies only need to show that future liabilities exceed the assets of the company in order to declare bankruptcy. The insurance companies pulled a similar “fast one” by shuttling liabilities into shell companies that also declared bankruptcy. I am very much for free and open trade but companies should be held responsible for travesties, and the bankruptcy claims are tantamount to highway robbery in my humble opinion. Many of those who lost out on benefits and claims were already on the edge of poverty from unemployment and the medical costs from their ailments. I might also point out that the American taxpayer is the ultimate source of support to these workers and their families because the asbestos companies were able to weasel their way out of their responsibilities to their employees and/or those harmed by their products. It may be important to remind the reader that it is estimated that between 15 to 35 million homes contain Libby asbestos as insulation. Asbestos is a problem that is not going away quickly.
I understand that industries like asbestos employ a large number of people (at one time in the 1960s, more than 200,000 people worked in the asbestos industry) and many of these workers would have difficulties finding new jobs elsewhere if the industries were closed overnight. But there are various steps that should be taken based on what we have learned from the asbestos travesty when future industries are found to be responsible for harm to their workers. 1) It should be a crime to purposely mislead the public and/or workers on safety issues of products. This must include the purposeful undermining of peer-reviewed science. The penalties should be stiff and include jail time. Laws need to be enacted accordingly. 2) Workers and their families need to be informed of the dangers in clear language in order that they may decide whether they wish to take the risk of continued employment in the industry. 3) In cases like asbestos where it is clearly a dangerous hazard, the product should be phased out by substitution of other products and eventually banned. 4) Workers and those impacted by the product should be entitled to compensatory damages through the establishment of funds in negotiations with the government. 5) And finally, American companies should be prohibited from moving their operations to nations that have lax laws that permit workers to be exposed to the hazardous products. If corporate America can’t police itself (and I don’t think they can based on the tales of woe involving tobacco, pesticides, global warming, etc.) the government must step in.
- McCulloch, J. and Tweedale, G. (2008) Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival: Oxford University Press ↩
- Selikoff recruited Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond who had already published his landmark research on the link between smoking and lung cancer ↩
- Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. M. (2010) Merchants of Doubt: Bloomsbury Press ↩
- Virta, R. L. (2006) Worldwide Asbestos Supply and Consumption Trends from 1900 through 2003: USGS Circular 1298 ↩
The term fracking conjures up so many knee-jerk-bad reactions that I am hesitant to broach the subject. I suppose if I am going to wade into the topic I should give some bona fides to display my knowledge of the petroleum industry, but not too many bona fides so that I might be seen as a talking wonk for the gas industry. I worked for one year as an engineer for a well service company called Schlumberger (world’s largest) and two as a geologist with Shell Oil. Shell gave its geologists full responsibility for drilling a well from the time it was proposed to production if it hit oil. Of the 11 wells I proposed, 3 hit oil which was above the industry standard in producing fields in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Eventually I realized my calling was in teaching and research and left to go back to school for my PhD. But not before I got a pretty good idea of how the industry works.
The process of drilling is not complicated although the devil can be in the details. A rig contains strings of thirty-foot drill pipe which attach to a tri-cone tungsten carbide bit (see the image below). The bit spins from drives or motors as drilling fluid, called mud (contents vary but clay, water and lubricants are typical), is pumped through the pipe string to keep the bit cool, increase pressure, and bring the rock debris from drilling back to the surface along the outside of the pipe. One of the technological marvels developed in modern times is the ability to direct the drill bit to specific locations with pin-point accuracy by knowing where the bit is in three-dimensional space usually thousands of feet below the surface. Directional survey measurements are complex but are based on measurements while drilling through various instruments. These advances have enabled horizontal drilling which has become important in fracking.
Rama, Wikipedia
I would be remiss not to emphasize the importance given to protecting the water table when drilling. State and Federal regulations require the well to be sealed off at least 50 feet below where potable groundwater can be produced, and those laws have been in place as far back as anyone can remember. The drill pipe is tripped (pulled completely out of the hole) when regulators deem the surface casing should be set to protect the water table (something on the order of 500 feet usually). The casing is cemented in place, and if it is done correctly, we know from the drilling of hundreds of thousands of wells over many decades that the water table is protected. After the surface casing is set, drilling is continued until the target zone is reached. The pipe is tripped again and the entire well is generally set with cemented production casing. The hole is plugged at the bottom usually up to 50 feet below the horizon of interest. The casing is perforated by tools that blow holes in it precisely where the rock containing oil and/or gas exists. Lisa Margonelli has written an excellent book entitled Oil On the Brain about the details of drilling and its impact on the politics of many countries like Nigeria and Venezuela1.
When I worked for Schlumberger, it was my job to determine if production casing should be set by running tools in the hole. The measurements produced records called well logs that gave us information about not only the rock below but whether it contained producible oil or not. Drilling is a chancy business, not for the faint of heart. Most wells never produce a drop of oil. I have seen many an owner of a wildcat well near tears as he realized from the logs that the well was a “duster”. That has changed to a great extent in the new-world order of gas and oil production through fracking. The new targets — usually oil shales — were discovered decades ago by previous drilling. They were ignored because shales do not naturally flow under the pressures at depth. Shale is very porous but not permeable. You need permeable rocks to produce oil and/or gas, or so it was thought.
That was before Mitchell Energy, a midsized exploration and production company, drilled the S. H. Griffin #4 well in North Texas into the oil- and gas-rich Barnett Shale in 1997. They used fracking techniques to produce large quantities of methane gas from what was traditionally seen as non-producible rock. If you are interested in more of the details, read Gary Sernovitz’s immensely entertaining and witty book The Green and the Black2. Sernovitz, even with ties to the petroleum industry, takes a rather neutral approach to adjudicate the brouhaha over fracking. One of the highlights of the book is his look at the impacts of the new United States gas and oil reserves on the political and economic scene.
The S. H. Griffin #4 not only produced gas, it produced it in steady quantities (1.5 million cubic feet per day). So how does fracking make an otherwise impermeable rock produce as if it was a well at the height of the oil boom of the 1960s in the United States? Fracking sounds ominous and sinister and conjures up visions of rock being fractured all the way to potable water zones. But it is nothing of the sort — pure fiction. The technique took decades of testing and experimentation in wells to develop. The secret is hydraulic pressure from fluids injected into the well to cause the shale to fracture. The fracturing is usually limited to about 300 feet in an outward radius around the drill hole. And don’t forget, the drill holes typically go down for thousands of feet below the surface and are protected with cemented casing that has only been perforated in small sections usually at the bottom of the hole where the target rock exists.
It did not take companies long after fracking became successful to incorporate horizontal drilling, another United States technological advance, into the new smorgasbord of production proficiencies. With the ability to target a bit within inches of a desired location, drillers learned how to gradually arc a pipe into the horizontal (see image below). The technology turned out to be a bonanza when combined with fracking. Companies drilled and set casing directly within and parallel to the oil shales enabling them to frack large sections of the rock which sent production through the ceiling.
EPA
The chemicals used in fracking were originally a trade secret, but people talk, and once the word was out, companies like Halliburton published the composition of their fracking liquids. Turns out 90 percent of the frack is made up of water, 9.5 percent consists of a proppant which is usually sand, and only 0.5 percent consists of the scary chemicals often used to undermine the industry. The sand serves as a support to keep the fractures (caused by the pressurized fluid) propped open so gas and/or oil will flow. I am not going to pull punches here. It takes a lot of water to frack a well. Sernovitz estimates that a typical frack (an average of 22 stages) uses between 4 and 8 million gallons of water and about 6 million pounds of sand. Unfortunately, not all of the fracking fluid stays in the hole. Some resurfaces. Today the water that comes back is reused or disposed of by pumping it into former producing fields in a concerted effort to make sure the chemicals within the water (even if they are only 0.5%) are placed out of harms way.
It has been widely reported that fracking causes earthquakes. Actually the disposal of water being pumped into the ground (usually from fracking) causes the seismic activity. Perhaps it seems like a trivial difference, but the public seems to have the idea that the pressure from fracking is so great that it directly causes earthquakes. The typical increase in seismic activity in a state like Oklahoma is usually effectively mitigated by diverting the injection of water from fields responsible for the activity or requiring the water to be disposed of via other methods. There can be little doubt that the earthquakes are associated with well injection and regulatory commissions need to fully address the problems.
The HBO premier of Gasland, a 2010 documentary about the natural-gas industry in general and fracking in particular, was probably responsible, at least in part, for New York State banning fracking and a great deal of misunderstanding about natural gas and its impact on the environment. I have two conflicting opinions about the documentary by Josh Fox. 1) It is clearly tarnished with misrepresented science, almost hysterical overreaction, and historical inaccuracies. The documentary has been thoroughly taken to task by Energy in Depth. 2) Having said that, there is no question that it is emotionally moving. It was difficult to watch people whose lives have been impacted badly by the failures of the gas industry. My conclusion — Gasland was necessary to open a national debate about the issue which has led to more government oversight and less rogue shortcuts leading to serious problems. However although there will always be problems associated with any industry, drilling for natural gas and/or oil on land in the United States is relatively safe to groundwater. We simply have to make sure that casing practices are properly implemented. Water taps catching fire in Dimock, Pennsylvania, happened because of sloppy cement work and poor casing in 27 holes during the early days of drilling in the State (gas leaked through the casing into the surrounding water table). I find it reprehensible that companies would not protect the water table at all costs and fully agree that the companies cited deserve the penalties they received and payouts they had to make to people they injured.
Finally, I need to emphasize that in 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did a summary paper entitled Assessment of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on drinking water resources and concluded that “Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources”. We can conclude that the gas industry has made mistakes, but we cannot contend that our drinking water is in danger because of fracking despite claims to the contrary in sources like Gasland.
Let’s not forget why Fox started filming the documentary – to protect his vacation home in a pristine part of Pennsylvania near the border with New York. I get it. No one wants a drill rig in their back yard even if it is only there for 40-days worth of drilling. By the way, if you want to read a reasoned and enlightening book about how people are affected adversely by drilling, I recommend Seamus McGraw’s The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone3. He weighs the potentially bad impacts of drilling with a healthy dose of understanding that gas and oil companies are filling a demand created by the United States and other world consumers. Unfortunately, Fox never examines the financial impacts of shutting down the fracking industry.
I recently wrote an article on the serious implications of global warming particularly related to the increase of athropogenic gases in our atmosphere. Of the three major fossil fuels, coal is, by far, the worst polluter of carbon dioxide followed by petroleum. Natural gas is the least (see figure below showing the effects of anthropogenic gases as radiative forcing). In fact, Sernovitz has emphasized that “the United States has led the world in carbon dioxide emissions reduction because of shale gas [use of methane gas instead of coal]”.
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report 2013
It would be unfair not to point out that methane leaks into the atmosphere directly from the production of methane gas contributing to anthropogenic gases (as methane) also, but according to the EPA in a report entitled Overview of Greenhouse Gases: “Methane (CH4) emissions in the United States decreased by 6% between 1990 and 2014.” During the period from 2007 to 2014, natural gas production was increased tenfold according to the US Energy Information Administration database. The EPA goes on to comment that “During this time period [1990 to 2014], emissions increased from sources associated with agricultural activities, while emissions decreased from sources associated with the exploration and production of natural gas and petroleum products.” Note the lack of effect from the natural gas boom between 2007 to 2014 in the graph below showing total United States methane emissions (converted to carbon dioxide equivalents). In a paper funded by the green-friendly Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Allen et. al4 estimated from measuring 190 onshore gas locations that about 0.42 percent of the methane produced leaks from drilling and completion of the wells. The EPA is working with the gas companies to further reduce this figure but, once again, it is hardly having the impact sources such as Gasland have portrayed.
The oil production in thousands of barrels per day since 1966 from the top ten oil producing countries (as of 2015) is shown in the diagram below. One of the most startling aspects of the graph is that the United States has become the World’s largest producer of oil. It’s not Saudia Arabia or Russia, it’s the United States. What is even more remarkable is that our world lead came through good old fashion American know how — the technology that enabled the United States’ producers to frack horizontally. I am no flag waver, but there is no denying how the United States has transformed itself. The halcyon days of the 1960s when the United States led production worldwide were thought to be gone forever (see figure). By the early 1980s, even secondary recovery processes in declining oil fields could not up American production. Our decline in oil production continued until about 2005 when fracking began to be felt. The dramatic impact of that technology can be seen by the subsequent rise in production for the last 10 years in the graph below. However, our increased production does not meet our ever-increasing demand, but it not only helps our trade deficit but decreases our dependence on oil from the troubled Middle East and a hostile Russia. Along with the increase in oil production, we have also become the world’s leader in the production of natural gas (don’t forget that both oil and natural gas have less impact on climate change than coal).
I asked Gary Sernovitz what he thought about America’s new role as a leading oil and natural gas producer: “One of the strange things about the gas boom is that even as prices have gone down, and activity has gone down (because of low prices), volumes have still gone up—a credit to how productive have been [sic] the wells in the Northeast US. This year [2016] gas production is down slightly, but we’re still producing 34% more than the Russians so no risk of losing our crown. 2015 was the year that we exceeded Saudi Arabia in total oil production, and became the world’s largest oil producer. We’ve temporarily lost that crown in 2016, but I’d expect [our] prices to recover for that leadership to happen again soon. And I do think we’re still by far the largest oil and gas producer, despite the dip in oil production because of prices, as we’re far ahead of Russia on oil now too.”
So I would like to summarize the article by stating categorically that we need to curb anthropogenic gasses (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.). But attempting to shut down the oil and gas industry in the United States because of fracking and/or to solve the climate change problem is like trying to take out a drug cartel to stop drug usage in the United States. The only way we are going to reduce our dependency on oil and gas is to reduce the increasing need for it. Fracking is relatively safe to the consumer and looks to be giving America another chance to remain less dependent on other suppliers while we find alternative sources to replace or at least curb America’s craving for energy.
- Margonelli, L. (2007) Oil on the Brian: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline: Doubleday ↩
- Sernovitz, G. (2016) The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future Energy: St. Martin’s Press ↩
- McGraw, S. (2011) The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone: Random House ↩
- Allen, D. T. et. al (2013) Measurements of methane emissions at natural gas production sites in the United States: Proceedings of the Natl. Acad. Science: 110, 17768–17773 ↩