"Residents’ comments on health impacts were enlightening. Parents particularly noted their children coming in from playing outside with nose bleeds. Often they had linked increased frequency of these occurrences with wind direction and some had stopped their children playing outside at these times. Some adolescents had had daily nose bleeds for three months at a time. These rural children now deliberately avoided going outdoors when possible. Adults who had lived in the bush all their life now found their lives restricted to indoors.
Children were noted to be constantly rubbing their fingers. Children complained of ants in their hands and one infant reportedly screams and dips his fingers in water in the middle of the night. Children were reported to be waking at night in distress wanting their mums to rub their limbs. The only child who has been sent for evaluation by a paediatrician for this complaint was reportedly told she was attention seeking. Children were reported to be waking out of their sleep with headaches.
For adults and children alike, eye irritation and skin irritation, particularly when outside, were said to be constant background complaints, with severe exacerbations linked to odour events. So extreme was the discomfort for some people, they described that they felt they could rip their skin. Some said that after the odours came through, their skin felt like it had been washed by acid and their skin peeled in the shower.
Infants, children and adults alike suffered from headaches. Some had been so intense that they had been investigated with CT scans and lumbar puncture.
Extreme fatigue, difficulty focusing and difficulty concentrating were new and debilitating symptoms for many residents. Symptoms were worse when odours came through. Some people could identify distinct individual odours at different times, variously described as:” rotten eggs, sickly sweet, like pine tarsal, acetone, creosote, after burn from cigarette lighter.” Many people noted the association between their symptoms, wind direction and the location of the CSG waste water/evaporation ponds. Some people commented on the link between road spraying and their symptoms.
Children and adults alike complained recurrently of a metallic taste which made them nauseous and anorexic. Undiagnosed cough, repeated diagnosis of ‘flu’, pneumonia, pleurisy and exacerbation of asthma were recurrent themes. Children were missing a lot of school. Sleep disturbance was endemic within the families surveyed. Many people related this directly to the noise associated with CSG activities: trucks moving, reversing, beeping, the noise and vibration from drilling, fracking and seismic testing. Some people were very clear that their sleep was disturbed by noise and vibration from the compressor station, at distances up to 15km away. Many other people’s sleep was disturbed by the constant strain of living with, and dealing with, the impact of CSG on their daily lives. Many expressed helplessness and hopelessness in the face of their children’s ill health and their inability to help and protect them. Some had the capacity to move away and did. Most found themselves trapped."