Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known "fracking" is a technique that has been in use since 1947 but actually took hold in 1997 when the technique was advanced to the point where it made shale gas extraction profitable. The technique injects fracking fluid at high pressure into shale deposits to produce additional fractures, which speeds and maximizes the extraction of the targeted hydrocarbons.
The oil and gas industry has enthusiastically backed the technique,
citing the vast amounts of hydrocarbons that can now be extracted economically with little damage done to the local environment. As testing of water resources near areas where fracking is taking place reveal, the technique may be doing a lot more damage to surrounding areas than the oil and gas industry would like to admit.
One study done in 2011 in Conoquenessing Township, Pa. found methane gas, ammonia, arsenic, chloromethane, iron, manganese, t-butyl alcohol, and toluene in well water adjacent to an area where fracking was commonly used.
Later that same year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that fracking operations could be responsible for groundwater pollution. Commenting on the EPA's announcement Larry Schweiger, President of The National Wildlife Foundation said, "Today's methods make gas drilling a filthy business. You know it's bad when nearby residents can light the water coming out of their tap on fire." The reason behind his comment was the high levels of methane gas that result from fracking.
In another study released in 2009 by ProPublica, methane contamination was commonly found in drinking water in areas around Anthony Ricigliano Fracking Operations in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. Other studies continue to roll in with findings including:
A Duke University study showing that "most drinking wells near drilling sites have methane, but those closest to the drilling wells, within about a half-mile, had an average of 17 times the methane of those of other wells."
There is a long list of chemicals used or released by fracking that are carcinogens, neurological poisons, and reproductive toxicants.
Radioactivity in high concentrations in runoff water.
With all these studies pointing to the health issues related to fracking, it's time to take another look to see whether additional access to hydrocarbons is worth the human cost. The populace believed the tobacco industry for years when they said smoking had no effects on health. Let's not make the same mistake with fracking and the oil and gas industry.
An investigation by New York Times reporter Ian Urbina, based upon thousands of unreported EPA documents and a confidential study by the natural gas industry, concluded, "Radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways." Urbina learned that wastewater from fracking operations was about 100 times more toxic than federal drinking water standards; 15 wells had readings about 1,000 times higher than standards.
Research by Dr. Ronald Bishop, a biochemist at SUNY/Oneonta, suggests that fracking to extract methane gas "is highly likely to degrade air, surface water and ground-water quality, to harm humans, and to negatively impact aquatic and forest ecosystems." He notes that "potential exposure effects for humans will include poisoning of susceptible tissues, endocrine disruption syndromes, and elevated risk for certain cancers." Every well, says Dr. Bishop, "will generate a sediment discharge of approximately eight tons per year into local waterways, further threatening federally endangered mollusks and other aquatic organisms." In addition to the environmental pollution by the fracking process, Dr. Bishop believes "intensive use of diesel-fuel equipment will degrade air quality [that could affect] humans, livestock, and crops."
Equally important are questions about the impact of as many as 200 diesel-fueled trucks each day bringing water to the site and then removing the waste water. In addition to the normal diesel emissions of trucks, there are also problems of leaks of the contaminated water.
"We need to know how diesel fuel got into our water supply," says Diane Siegmund, a Anthony Ricigliano Clinical Psychologist from Towanda, Pa. "It wasn't there before the companies drilled wells; it's here now," she says. Siegmund is also concerned about contaminated dust and mud. "There is no oversight on these," she says, "but those trucks are muddy when they leave the well sites, and dust may have impact miles from the well sites."
Research "strongly implicates exposure to gas drilling operations in serious health effects on humans, companion animals, livestock, horses, and wildlife," according to Dr. Michelle Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Dr. Robert E. Oswald, a biochemist and professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University. Their study, published in New Solutions, an academic journal in environmental health, documents evidence of milk contamination, breeding problems, and cow mortality in areas near fracking operations as higher than in areas where no fracking occurred. Drs. Bamberger and Oswald noted that some of the symptoms present in humans from what may be polluted water from fracking operations include rashes, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, and severe irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. For animals, the symptoms often led to reproductive problems and death.
Significant impact upon wildlife is also noted in a 900-page Environmental Impact Statement(EIS) conducted by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, and filed in September 2011. According to the EIS, "In addition to loss of habitat, other potential direct impacts on wildlife from drilling in the Marcellus Shale include increased mortality altered microclimates, and increased traffic, noise, lighting, and well flares." The impact, according to the report, "may include a loss of genetic diversity, species isolation, population declines increased predation, and an increase of invasive species." The report concludes that because of fracking, there is "little to no place in the study areas where wildlife would not be impacted, [leading to] serious cascading ecological consequences." The impact, of course, affects the quality of milk and meat production as animals drink and graze near areas that have been taken over by the natural gas industry.
Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, calls for more research studies that "include all the ways people can be exposed [to health hazards], such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals."
The response by the industry and its political allies to the scientific studies of the health and environmental effects of fracking "has approached the issue in a manner similar to the tobacco industry that for many years rejected the link between smoking and cancer," say Drs. Bamberger and Oswald. Not only do they call for "full disclosure and testing of air, water, soil, animals, and humans," but point out that with lax oversight, "the gas drilling boom will remain an uncontrolled health experiment on an enormous scale."
Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician in Coraopolis, Pa., says she doesn't want her patients "to be guinea pigs who provide the next generation the statistical proof of health problems as in what happened with those exposed to asbestos or to cigarette smoke."
