Sunday, June 2, 5-9pm, First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd.

FrackStock will offer free food and music and will celebrate writer Justin Nobel on June 2.

FrackStock, a celebration of science journalist Justin Nobel’s new book exposing health risks that gas and oil workers are exposed to from working with radioactive toxic waste will be held Sunday, June 2 from 5pm to 9pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd. in Columbus.

The alcohol-free event features free food, folk, Celtic and blues music, and presentations by Ohio organizations dedicated to preserving Ohio’s environment and phasing out fossil fuels.

To register for a free ticket, visit bit.ly/4byaDSY.

“Woodstock came about because of the Vietnam War and young people’s desire to express love and peace with music,” said Carolyn Harding of Grassroot Ohio, an event organizer. “FrackStock operates on the same premise — love, Justin and music.”

Nobel spent seven years traveling eastern and southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other states interviewing workers in the gas and oil industry about their work conditions and health issues they eventually faced. His book is Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop it (Karret Press, 2024)

Nobel will speak and will answer audience questions. Book copies will be available for purchase.

The book relies on stunning worker accounts revealing that, at some fracking waste treatment facilities, the industry relied on workers recently released from prison and often addicted to drugs to do the horrifically dangerous work of treating radioactive oilfield waste yet granted these workers no appropriate knowledge on the dangers they faced or protection against it, said Nobel. Several workers cited in his book have passed away, including two men who worked at a fracking waste treatment plant located in northern West Virginia — one man died of stomach cancer, the other of an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Nobel’s 2020 Rolling Stone magazine story, “America’s Radioactive Secret,” won the National Association of Science Writers award and inspired the book.

His writing has led to lawsuits, public dialogue, and academic research, and has been taught at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

“Oilfield waste has been spilled, spread, injected, dumped, and freely emitted across this nation since oil drilling began in the U.S. in 1859,” said Nobel. “And contamination has been discharged — sometimes illegally, often legally — into the same rivers America’s towns and cities draw their drinking water from.

“This book is a story about worker justice and environmental justice. It’s an astonishing scientific story. We live on a radioactive planet, and oil and gas happens to bring up some of earth’s most interesting and notorious radioactive elements. Whether it’s a multinational company out of Paris or the guy in rural Pennsylvania who stashed fracking waste beneath a courthouse, readers will be surprised at how deep this rabbit hole goes, and how close it may touch their homes, their health, and the natural places they cherish.”

Private lands in eastern and southeastern Ohio have been fracked for natural gas since the early 2010s, despite vehement protests from Athens County residents. In early 2023, Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law H.B. 507, which amended one word in an existing law to require fracking under Ohio state parks and public lands.

Since then, Ohio environmental organizations have banded together to stop fracking and to keep fossil fuels in the ground in order to keep climate warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Every tenth of a degree in global warming avoided will do a great deal to mitigate the worst effects that our heating planet will have on tree, plant, animal, and fish populations, said Harding.

A memorial tribute will be offered to Teresa “Tess” Mills, 69, of Grove City, Ohio, who died December 2, 2023.

Mills turned from homemaker to activist in 1994 to lead her neighborhood’s push to successfully fight a Columbus trash-burning power plant. She was the 2003 recipient of Ohio Citizen Action’s Metzenbaum Award for activism synonymous with Ohio U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum’s career of “principled tenacity.”

She was director of Buckeye Environmental Network, an environmental and social justice nonprofit that most recently stopped commercial logging in Wayne National Forest and Mohican State Forest. It also prevented longwall mining under Dysart Woods, one of Ohio’s few old-growth remnant forests.

FrackStock sponsors are Buckeye Environmental Network, Grassroot Ohio, First UU Church of Columbus, Columbus Community Rights Coalition, Save Ohio Parks, Third Act Ohio, and the Ohio Brine Task Force.

Music will be performed by: Jenny Morgan, Joanie Calum, Joe Ventresca, Dogwood Road, Terry Hermsen, Kelly Vaughn, and Shaun Booker Band.

Hosted by GrassRoot Ohio, Columbus Community Bill of Rights, and five other organizations.