Well, our opponents are at it again!  They are using petroleum based and natural gas cured products to protest – you guessed it – natural gas.  Our friends on the other side are selling T-shirts intended to send a message of opposition to hydraulic fracturing.  There’s just one little problem.  Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing is required to deliver it. 

We are noticing something very interesting about our natural gas protestor friends; they don’t seem to know what they’re protesting.   We have noted, several times on this blog, the hypocrisy of people such as Sean Lennon and his mom, Yoko Ono, who live in the comfort of homes heated with natural gas produced from hydraulic fracturing, while making sure to place themselves in front of cameras as they protest the source of that comfort.

What caught our attention this morning, however, was a new solicitation by the folks over at Deep Green Resistance. They are, between calls for destruction and mayhem, selling T-shirts with not so clever messages opposing what they, themselves, are using to deliver those messages.

Screen printed T-shirts are made using natural gas, you see, and the inks used make hydraulic fracturing fluid look like lemonade by comparison.

Let’s start by taking at look at some of the T-shirt marketing going on amidst the opposition to natural gas development.  Here’s a selection of what’s available:

It’s hard to beat the opposition for pretend-clever slogans, but there are, obviously, many pro-gas T-shirts available as well.  However, we don’t suggest people are getting sick from wearing them either, which is what our friends on the other side should be doing if they were intellectually honest.  They would, in fact, demand a health impact study regarding T-shirts, if they weren’t so hypocritical.  A simple Google search will bring you to this website where you can read of the dangers of T-shirts made with fabric dyes.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivities may result from garment finishes and dyes found in most fabrics. These sensitivities can range from runny nose, itchy eyes, headache, skin rashes, nausea, fatigue, poor concentration, breathing, aching joints and muscles, dizziness, and seizures. MCS symptoms in children include learning disabilities, rashes, and skin irritation, dark circles under the eyes, food intolerance, and hyperactivity.  What causes these reactions? Some of the reactions may be a result of garment finishing or the dye fixative used to bond the dye to the fabric.

Conventional dye and dye fixatives often contain heavy metals and may also use toxic chemicals for the dye process. Some of the chemicals found in the dyeing process are dioxin, formaldehyde, azo dyes and heavy metals such as alum, chromium, copper, iron, and tin. Some of these chemicals are carcinogenic or are suspected to be a carcinogen. Not only are these chemicals a health risk but also cause damage to our environment by polluting the water.

Who’d have thought wearing a T-shirt could expose a person to this stuff?  We think we remember a billboard and someone wearing a T-shirt protesting it all.

Let’s Play 10 Questions

Sounds absolutely horrible, right?  Aren’t these the same things people against natural gas are protesting?  Isn’t this what they want to protect other generations from?  Doesn’t the other side argue people living near natural gas supposedly experience “headache, skin rashes, dizziness, etc?”  Why aren’t we protecting children from learning disabilities caused by T-shirt dye?   Why aren’t we concerned about children’s skin or rashes from this?  What makes these rashes different from what our friends on the other side of the argument claim?  Aren’t there more T-shirts than natural gas wells?  Isn’t the production of T-shirts contributing to all of these horrible symptoms daily?  Aren’t we all exposed to T-shirts daily?

Reasonable people will note the world hasn’t come to an end with the popularity of T-shirts.  Why?  Because, “the  dose makes the poison” and the levels found in T-shirts  are typically harmless, just as this the case with all those elements listed on that infamous billboard.  That was a fact carefully ignored by natural gas opponents every time they talked about Dimock until the EPA spoiled the whole game for them.

Yet, if natural gas opponents were consistent they’d be protesting T-shirts, not wearing them, and certainly not selling them to raise money to challenge natural gas development.  Hypocrisy doesn’t seem to bother them, though.  They want to use T-shirts to spread their messages and they couldn’t care less what’s involved.  We have seen this with the plastic signs they employ as well, with apparently zero thought to the source of the product they’re using to deliver their messaging.  Shouldn’t their messaging be done with cardboard?  No, wait, that involves cutting trees.  How about smoke signals?  No, that means burning trees.  Maybe electronic signage?  No, that involves fossil fuels, too.  Well, you see the problem.

Still, why would they use T-shirts with all those dyes?  Particularly when MSDS sheets for some of them indicate the constituents are carcinogenic, hazardous or proprietary.  They can’t possibly tolerate any of that, can they?

So, Let’s Play 10 Questions, Again

Where are the regulations on the T-shirt industry that uses all this stuff?  Where is their waste discarded?  Why is this not labeled “hazardous” waste or is it and we just don’t know about it?  Can’t the factories shift to green completions?  How about shipping them? And, why are so many heavy metals involved?  Worst of all, some of the dyes used are carcinogenic, so why are these T-shirts being pedaled by the Deep Green Resistance?  Why haven’t they  moved to organic T-shirts?  I don’t see that on their website.  Better yet, why aren’t we protesting non-organic T-shirts?  Even more to the point, why are these folks protesting natural gas with these killer T-shirts on the loose?

We have to wonder if they proposed a T-shirt factory in New York State, would the people against natural gas also protest it as they are wind power in Madison County?  What would their T-shirts protesting T-shirts say?  Maybe “Dead man walking?”

Irony of Ironies

All of the above pales beside this irony; the most widely used inks in printing T-shirts are plastisols which are petroleum-based polyvinyl chlorides typically cured to the shirt with natural gas fired dryers (see illustration below).  Natural gas fired dryers are not the only option, but they are far more efficient at bonding the inks to the fabric (Curt has spent many years in the printing business).  There are water based inks available, but they are not preferred, as they have heavy metals and dry quickly to the screens during downtime, which creates more work.  Therefore, we know the bulk of the T-shirts worn by these natural gas opponents are literally made with natural gas.

Are the Messengers Killing Themselves?

Well, no, we don’t think so, but by their standards they are, aren’t they?  The T-shirts they are printing are being printed to send out a message.  The message they are trying to send is that natural gas development is bad for people and bad for the environment, yet they’re using a medium that is a killer by the measures they would apply to natural gas development.  The people buying these T-shirts have not done any research on the dyes used nor have they considered the potential of vinyl lettering (petroleum based).  They are simply buying into the hypocrisy of a movement that seeks to stroke its own ego while ignoring the plain facts or demonstrating any consistency of thought.

The center shirt in the collage offered above includes the phrase “Death by lethal injection?”  Why are they worried about natural gas when T-shirts are clearly a much closer threat to the human body?  People who do not support natural gas will, in fact, never have a natural gas well on their property and there is no instance of hydraulic fracturing ever polluting a water supply in this country.  So, why the worry?  They will literally have to walk off of their property to even come in contact with a gas well.  Yet, they rest easy when their dressers are full of these killer T-shirts they choose to wear to spread their anti-natural gas ideology.

Wonders never cease with these folks.  Who else could wear a product made with natural gas to oppose natural gas?