Scientists Just Discovered How to Determine If Water Contamination Comes From Fracking

By Emily Atkin, Oct. 21 2014 thinkprogress.org

A jar holding waste water from hydraulic fracturing is held up to the light at a recycling site in Midland,
Texas, Sept. 24, 2013.
A team of U.S. and French scientists say they have developed a new tool that can specifically tell when
environmental contamination comes from waste produced by hydraulic fracturing, better known as
fracking.
In peer-reviewed research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology on Monday, the
researchers say their new forensic tool can distinguish fracking wastewater pollution from other
contamination that results from other industrial processes such as conventional oil and gas drilling.
Fracking is a controversial oil and gas well stimulation technique that uses a great deal of water, mixed
with chemicals, to extract oil and gas from miles deep underground. Once the rock is fractured by the
high pressure fluid, fossil fuels follow the fracking fluid to the surface. The disposal of this oftenradioactive water mixture, known as fracking fluid, is widely considered to be one of the biggest
environmental threats that fracking poses, along with the emissions of greenhouse gases like methane
and carbon dioxide.
There have been many claims of water contamination since the technique gained popularity in 2008, but
its been difficult to determine if fracking was really the cause mainly because fracking companies are
not required to disclose what chemicals they use in the process (the mixture is often considered a trade
secret). With the new tool, though, scientists no longer need to know the chemical make-up of the
fracking fluid to determine whether its getting into the environment, Duke University geochemist Avner
Vengosh told ThinkProgress on Monday.

This is one of the first times weve been able to demonstrate that, here, you have a spill in the
environment, and yes, this is from fracking fluid and not from other source of contamination, Vengosh
said. Its a pretty cool way to overcome the issue of trade secrets.
In order to do this, Vengosh and a team of researchers from Dartmouth College, Stanford University,
and the French Geological Survey among others created a tool that they say can trace the isotopic and
geochemical fingerprints of the fracking process. In simpler terms, the tracer picks up what the
researchers say is a unique, chemical fingerprint left behind by the fracking fluid injection process.
The tracers track two elements boron and lithium which occur naturally in shale formations. When
fracking fluid is injected underground, those two elements are naturally released along with oil, and the
fracking fluid then becomes enriched with the elements. When the fluid comes back to the surface,
Vengosh said they have an isotopic fingerprint that is different than any other type of wastewater,
including wastewater from conventional oil and gas operations.
Many of the fracking operations today are happening in areas that have a legacy of 20, 30 years of
conventional oil and gas development, Vengosh said. So when theres contamination, [fracking
companies] can say Oh, its not us its the legacy of 30 years of operations here.
We now have the tools to say, well, sometimes youre right and sometimes youre wrong, he added.
As fracking has boomed across the United States, so has the use of water to do it. A 2013 report from
Environment America showed that fracking wells nationwide produced an estimated 280 billion gallons
of wastewater in 2012 a huge number considering more than 55 percent of fracked wells are in areas
experiencing droughts.
Vangosh was also part of a research team that found there are more risks of drinking water
contamination from fracking wastewater than was previously believed. In a peer-reviewed paper
released last month, he and other scientists from Duke and Stanford found that even when fracking
wastewater goes through water treatment plants, and is disposed of in rivers that are not drinking water
systems, the treated water still risks contaminating human drinking water. Thats because there are
generally drinking water systems downstream of those rivers, and treatment plants arent doing a good
job of removing contaminants called halides, which have the potential to harm human health.

Isotopic Fingerprinting

Stable isotope ratios are generally expressed

using the internationally accepted (delta)
notation where
X = (Rsample/Rstandard 1) x 1000
and R = 13C/12C, 2H/1H, etc. Although isotope
ratios vary only slightly, they can be measured
very precisely using mass spectrometers
designed expressly for this purpose (normal
organic mass specs lack sufficient precision for
isotope analysis).

2 isotopes of carbon
Isotopic Fingerprinting

What are stable isotopes?

Isotopes are different forms of the same
element, differing only in the number of
neutrons in the nucleus of the atom. Although
some isotopes are unstable and decay
radioactively, most are stable. Carbon, for
example, has 2 stable isotopes, one of mass 12
(12C) and the other of mass 13 (13C).
Although different isotopes have nearly
identical chemical behaviors, they have slightly
different physical properties. This difference
can cause slight variations in reaction rates
resulting in isotopic fractionation.
Fractionation can cause 2 batches of the same
compound to have different isotopic ratios, and
therefore can provide the compound with a
specific isotopic fingerprint.

Some scientists have the capability of

measuring different isotope ratios of a variety
of materials. Sometimes an individual isotopic
measurement can explain a great deal about a
compounds origin, source components, etc. For
example, the hydrogen isotopic composition of
surface water is dependent on latitude,
altitude, and distance from the ocean. Thus,
plants grown in different areas, or materials
produced using local water, can reflect isotopic
composition of the local water supply. Also
some plants have greatly different carbon
isotopic composition. For example, products
formed from corn are distinctly different from
those formed from most other plant materials.
Analyzing multiple isotopes often provides a
highly specific isotopic fingerprint.
Information from isotechlabs.com

Extra-Credit: (Scored evenly with a quiz- each question is 2 points)

Write a paragraph that answers the following questions with information from the two articles above.
1. What is Fracking?
2. Why is it controversial?
3. In the past, how have fracking companies waylaid claims about their causing drinking water
contamination?
4. What is the new method environmental forensic chemists use to prove contamination comes
from fracking sites?
5. To the best of your ability describe isotopic fingerprinting, including what is an isotope and why
this is important if youre determining the source of pollution.