The Dangers of Fracking

By Wayne White

Bob Johnson lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Not too far from a natural gas drilling site. This
morning Bob woke up to his house rumbling. What was going on? Oh, it was just another
earthquake. In Texas of all places. They have been happening a lot lately since they started
drilling for natural gas where he lives. They say not to worry, its not from the drilling, or
fracking, which is short for hydraulic fracturing. That is how natural gas is extracted from shale
deposits deep in the earths crust. But what they didnt mention is that its likely from the
disposal of the waste water used for fracking. Bob says thats not the worst of it, though. Thats
not nearly as bad as accidentally lighting the water from his faucet on fire because it is infused
with methane gas from the fracking. But even thats not the worst of it. The real difficulty for
Bob is the sensory, respiratory and neurological damage hes suffered from ingesting
contaminated water.

Natural gas is the cleanest burning of all the fossil fuels. With approximately 2,203
trillion cubic feet available in the United States alone, we have about a 90 year supply. But what
they arent telling you is that the extraction process is highly toxic and dangerous. Just consider
that each well requires approximately 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from
the site. How much pollution is caused from those vehicles alone?

Then consider the chemicals that are used for the fracking process. There are up to 600
chemicals used in fracking fluid, including some toxins and carcinogens such as lead, uranium,
mercury, ethylene glycol, hydrochloric acid, radium, formaldehyde and methanol. Each
fracturing requires about 40,000 gallons of chemicals and up to 8 million gallons of water. With
500,000 active wells in the Unites States, and each well has the ability to be fracked up to 18
times, that equates to 72 trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of chemicals needed to
operate our current natural gas wells.

Wastewater byproducts are known as flowback, and need to be disposed of when
finished. One way to do that is to leave it in open air pits to evaporate, which releases volatile
organic compounds into the atmosphere, leading to acid rain, ground level ozone and
contaminated air.

The best way to dispose of those chemicals with very little treatment is to inject it back
into the ground at another well. Again, transportation of that material requires more hauling of
materials and thus more pollution, but also methane gas and other toxic chemicals are being
injected back into the ground, which can leach out and contaminate nearby water. There have
been cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingesting contaminated
water. Methane concentrations in drinking water wells are 17 times higher near fracturing sites,
and there have been over 1000 documented cases of water contamination near those sites.
You can see videos on Youtube showing people lighting the water coming out of their faucets
on fire (4).

The other problem with injecting it back into the ground is that is has been shown to
cause earthquakes. States with wells have seen increases in seismic activity, some as high as
a 3.5 magnitude. Scientists currently dont understand why it is causing more earthquakes, but
it could be due to increasing pressure or possibly lubricating the faults.



Although natural gas has been promoted to be a clean burning fuel, the process of
extracting it is anything but clean. Between the trucks hauling supplies to the job site, the
dangerous chemicals being used in the fracking process, to the disposal of flowback either
being deposited in pits and contaminating the air or injected back into the ground and leaching
into our water supply, there are tons of reason to reconsider moving towards natural gas.
Green technologies such as wind and solar power, or even hydroelectric power can produce
power without all of the toxic contaminants involved. Until oil and gas companies can come up
with a safe and clean approach to tracking, there are better alternatives that should be
considered.




References:
1) http://naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas/
2) http://www.dangersoffracking.com
3) http://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/fracking-wastewater-fullreport.pdf
4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBjSXWQRV8
5) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/14/fracking-earthquake_n_5585892.html
6) http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/tag/earthquake/
7) http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/fracking-across-the-united-states
8) http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=58&t=