As an environmentally minded Knox County resident and supporter of the proposed Frasier Solar project, I have been dumbfounded by the pervasive misleading claims about solar panel toxicity that have been peddled to our community by Knox Smart Development and their dark-money allies, especially considering the actual pollutants that our community is currently exposed to.
First off, solar panels are not toxic. Many legitimate sources can confirm this including the Ohio Department of Health. That’s why we put them on our schools and houses and hospitals, as well as on our farms. Solar panels are not fragile, they’re waterproof, they resist all but the largest hail, they don’t shatter and are quickly replaced if broken, and Frasier Solar only uses panels that are confirmed non-toxic by EPA leaching tests.
Despite this, we keep hearing “concerns,” regularly repeated by solar opponents funded by competing industries, that solar panels leach toxins and in 30 years we’ll have a massive toxic solar panel waste problem.
So what are the facts?
There was a recent study in the Journal Nature that added up all the solar panel waste projected over the next 35 years and found that it’s the same volume of toxic coal ash we generate every single month.
Think about that: 35 years of solar waste, which is not toxic, is the same volume as our monthly coal ash waste. That’s 100 million tons of coal ash every year in the U.S.!
And unlike solar panels, coal ash is actually toxic. It contains hazardous pollutants including arsenic, boron, cobalt, chromium, lead, lithium, mercury, molybdenum, radium, selenium, and other heavy metals, which have been linked to cancer, heart disease, reproductive failure, and neurological harm.
According to the Ohio River Valley Institute, Ohio has more than 160 coal ash dumpsites that leach pollutants into our groundwater and even into the Ohio River. More than 90% of the coal ash disposal sites nationwide are leaking at levels that make the underlying groundwater unsafe for drinking. Meanwhile, coal air pollution deposits actual toxic cadmium on farm fields all over Ohio.
Do you know what else is actually toxic? Fracking fluids from natural gas production! Fracking fluids contain lots of toxic substances like arsenic, lead, formaldehyde, mercury, ethylene glycol, chlorides, and acetone, and the exact mix is usually kept a secret by natural gas companies.
Ohio has hundreds of active fracking injection wells that inject millions of gallons of toxic chemicals into the ground which are known to migrate out of the wells and potentially into our groundwater.
In just one well in 2021, even after containment measures were put in place to prevent fracking waste from going into a nearby tributary, the research group physicians, scientists, and engineers for Health Energy found that “for four days, the idle production well spewed over 40,000 barrels of waste across the ground and into a nearby stream, killing approximately 500 fish and aquatic species.”
Additionally, as important as farming is to our community, we need to face the fact that many commercial pesticides that are directly applied to these same farm fields every year are actually considered hazardous waste. Where do you think those chemicals end up, year after year?
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, right here in Knox County every year on every square mile we spray almost 130 pounds of glyphosate weed killer, which has been linked to cancer. Maybe that’s why the Ohio Department of Health reports that the Knox County cancer rate is higher than the Ohio average and a lot higher than the U.S. average?
These are the facts, but the people pulling the strings at Knox Smart Development who pay for anti-solar propaganda disguised as news, text messages and scary mailers, and speakers from out of town don’t want us to think about that. They want to scare us into thinking that solar panels, one of the most inert power sources on Earth today, is a toxic threat to our soil and water.
It’s a lie, paid for by corporate interests that want to protect their polluting profits at all costs. Don’t believe the lies. Please support Frasier Solar.
Stephen P. Rex Sr.
Fredericktown, OH
