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.

As Justin Nobel traveled the United States reporting on the oil and gas industry, he learned a disturbing and little-considered fact: a lot 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.

*Cover design by Sabrina Bedford. Cover photo by Julie Dermansky.