Truck Drivers Hauling Oil’s Radioactive Waste Fight for Their Rights

On highways across the United States, truck drivers are hauling hazardous oil and gas waste without proper hazardous materials (HAZMAT) certifications. Both communities and drivers are in danger.

The waste comes from fracking, which produces several barrels of chemical-filled wastewater for every barrel of oil. Yet drivers and operators report that oil and gas companies often do not test their waste for hazardous materials before loading it onto trucks, despite being legally required to do so. In some cases, a single truckload can contain more than 2,000 times the Department of Transportation’s legal cargo limit for radioactive materials.

Because these federal HAZMAT rules are not being enforced, drivers are routinely sent out without the necessary training, certification, and protective equipment. Sometimes, they don’t even know they are hauling toxic or radioactive substances.

It’s this lack of transparency that worries Billy Randel, a labor organizer and retired driver, the most.

“[Drivers] don’t even know what the hell they’re trucking,” says Randel, who hauled HAZMATs from 2003 to 2015.  “You bring [oil and gas waste] home. You’re going home in work clothes. You’re sitting in your car to drive home. Your wife might use that for the weekend to go shopping. What do you think — that stuff just disappears?”

Randel leads Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ), an organization representing an estimated 15,000 owner-operators and company drivers from Mexico and the U.S. fighting to improve working conditions. Earthjustice is representing the group as they demand the Department of Transportation (DOT) enforce existing hazardous materials rules for hauling oil and gas waste.

Billy Randel, leader of Truckers Movement for Justice and a retired truck driver, photographed near Barnesville, Ohio. (Nancy Andrews for Earthjustice)

A Dangerous Job

In addition to chemically contaminated water, fracking waste can include drilling fluids, sludge, sands, and brine. These wastes often contain contaminants that peer-reviewed research, including government studies, have shown to be harmful to human health and the environment.

Some of the most dangerous of these include the toxics lead-210 and benzene, as well as radioactive materials from naturally occurring rock formations deep in the earth such as radium-226 and radium 228.

Long-term exposure to radium-226 and radium-228 is linked to bone and other types of cancer, blood disorders, liver damage, and reproductive defects. Lead-210 is associated with chronic kidney disease as well as neurological damage, while benzene is a known human carcinogen linked to increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.

Drivers and community members have also long raised alarms about exposure to hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas in oil and gas production and waste. This type of gas has killed workers and community members living in the vicinity of oil and gas infrastructure. At lower levels it has been linked to neurological, respiratory, and other health problems.

Other health impacts linked to oil and gas waste include respiratory, skin, and eye irritation, as well as organ damage. Drivers can become exposed to toxins through inhalation, skin contact, and ingestion from residue on their fingers.

For current truck drivers like Jane*, who has been in the job for 12 years, the risks are routine. She regularly hauls fracking wastewater from oilfields in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The region, known as the Permian Basin, is the nation’s highest-producing oil field.

“Personal protective equipment does not shield you from harm completely because [waste] goes through clothes and gloves,” says Jane. “I’m in touch with oil and gas waste all the time. There have been times when my skin has broken out, and when I blow my nose, there’s something black and brown that will come out.”

New Mexico-based Pepe*, a husband and father of five, has driven trucks for five years. Three of those have been spent hauling oil and gas waste in the Permian Basin.

“The very first day I started working with vacuum trucks, I was exposed to strong smells ever since, making me feel dizzy” says Pepe in Spanish. “I’ve been feeling constant heartburn, but I endure these conditions because I am the sole breadwinner in my house.”

A truck driver connects his tanker truck to fracking waste water storage tanks at a facility outside the city limits of Reno, Texas. (LM Otero / AP)

In June, Earthjustice submitted a letter to the DOT on behalf of TMJ and Ohio Valley Allies, an environmental advocacy organization, requesting that the department immediately enforce federal HAZMAT law for transportation of oil and gas waste. The letter also states that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration must conduct a formal safety audit for all carriers operating in oilfields across the country.

The groups argue that by law, companies should classify the waste as HAZMAT, and that would trigger a requirement to ensure truckers receive proper training, licensing, and insurance to haul these dangerous materials. This move would also protect communities, since drivers currently take routes through residential zones, schoolgrounds and other populated areas that aren’t allowed under HAZMAT regulations.

Even though oil and gas waste has been exempted from the hazardous waste label under Environmental Protection Agency regulations since 1988, it still qualifies as a hazardous material under DOT regulations and should be handled accordingly: The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has determined that a substance does not need to be classified as “hazardous waste” to fall under federal HAZMAT rules.

A sand truck that services fracking sites turns off Route 7 in Wetzel County, West Virginia. (Nancy Andrews for Earthjustice)

In addition to health hazards, Randel underscores that the wages truckers receive do not measure up to the risks they face when hauling hazardous materials – compounding those risks.

“Safety is an economic issue in our industry, and it’s an economic issue that is guided by the greed of the carriers and the industry itself. And that greed does not allow you to take proper precautions,” Randel says. “That is what causes a higher level of accidents and environmental issues. Because you’re not paying attention to what you do. You’re hustling for money, and when you hustle, you don’t give a damn about safety.”

Vehicle crashes are a regular occurrence in oilfields, accounting for two-thirds of worker fatalities in 2023. There were 73 crashes per day on Permian Basin highways that year, according to the state Department of Transportation. Surges in heavy truck traffic are common in overburdened communities, from West Texas to Appalachia, jeopardizing public safety.

“I would like to see responsible steps taken to be able to still do the same work without a negative impact on people,” says Tom McKnight, a retired HAZMAT driver who spent six years of his life hauling oil and gas waste in the Ohio River Valley until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2019. “There has to be a way.”

Exposing the Human Cost of Oil and Gas

Senior attorney Megan Hunter is spearheading Earthjustice’s efforts to hold shipping authorities accountable. She recalls when TMJ approached Earthjustice with a wealth of knowledge about the exposures its members grapple with — and solutions.

“The oil and gas industry enjoys so many legal loopholes that deprive workers and communities of information about the toxic exposures they experience from oil and gas waste,” Hunter says. “Once TMJ began speaking about the protections that should [already] apply under federal hazardous materials rules, it was obvious that enforcing existing rules would help protect not only drivers, but everyone in communities exposed to oil and gas waste.”

If HAZMAT rules are enforced, she says, not only would companies transport it with greater care, but public perception of oil and gas trade-offs may shift.

“When we say the hazardous material law applies here, and that this stuff has radioactivity in it, it recognizes oil and gas waste for the human health hazard it is,” explains Hunter. “It’s not just some fossil fuel product.”

Core to Earthjustice’s mission, she points out, is getting oil and gas to internalize their real costs instead of offloading them onto everyday people and their employees.

Part of that means ensuring employees receive necessary training and compensation in a way that reflects and mitigates the risks they are taking when they agree to haul oil and gas waste.

“Why would being a truck driver be an exception to that basic understanding that the more responsibility someone has, the more we pay them?” asks Hunter. “It’s important that the oil and gas industry pay the cost of what it’s doing.” 

The aftermath of a truck crash that was hauling sand to a fracking site in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas in 2018. (Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images)

Calls for greater enforcement of HAZMAT regulations are part of Earthjustice’s broader work to expose the human cost of oil and gas development and protect all workers in the industry. Currently, Earthjustice is litigating a case to stop fracking in Wayne National Forest in Ohio, where an accident recently occurred at an orphaned oil well, killing two workers.

“I hope our work on enforcing hazardous material law helps to connect the dots on exactly how much the oil and gas industry has outsourced its harms and risks onto everyday people,” says Hunter. “This is one of the most powerful, richest industries in the world. It can afford to clean up its mess, it can afford to protect workers from unnecessary risk.”

Editor’s note: Some of the names have been changed to protect truck drivers’ real identity.

Dustin Renaud and Megan Hunter contributed to this report