Fracking, as the practice is commonly called, is a means of extracting natural gas by pressure-drilling a mix of water, sand and chemicals more than a mile vertically and horizontally into the earth. The sand and chemicals break up the dense rock to release methane, the compound comprising natural gas, which is pumped back up along with the fracking liquid, now infused not only with the chemical additives but heavy metals and radioactive material as well. The problem is that these materials are leaching into our water supplies, sickening people, vegetation and animals.
By design, hydrofracking causes miniature underground explosions – fracturing rocks and consequently releasing gas, along with radioactive and other carcinogenic and highly toxic substances from deep within the earth. These carcinogens, along with radioactive materials and the toxic sludge known as frack fluid, can contaminate aquifers and spoil water supplies.
Gasland tells the gripping and awful story of how fracking became the dominant technology in US gas production. As Eisenberg explained, Halliburton and Dick Cheney are prime actors in the fracking drama. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, developed behind closed doors with Cheney’s oversight, allowed energy companies to conceal as trade secrets the chemicals they use to help the drilling liquid reach and fracture the shale. But reports by whistle-blowers, and industry documents have revealed that the “trade secrets” clause is being used to cover the fact that dangerous compounds like butoxyethanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrocholoric acid, sodium hydroxide and benzene are posing a major health risk to increasing numbers of Americans.
Filmmaker Fox traveled across 32 states to meet rural residents on the front lines of fracking and investigate the concrete consequences of the practice on the ground. He discovered toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/154975/perils-hydro-fracking
DN Editorial: Hush, Doctors: Gas industry gags physicians
WHAT ARE they afraid of?
That’s the obvious question that arises from yet another move by the fracking industry, and their BFFs in Pennsylvania government, to keep secret (“proprietary,” if you will) the toxic chemicals that they are injecting into the earth.
Act 13, the hydraulic fracturing law passed in February, already qualified as a major corporate giveaway to the natural-gas industry, giving companies the right to overturn local zoning laws and pretty much drill anywhere. But buried in the law, which goes into effect April 14, is a gag order on doctors. If physicians want to learn the exact chemicals being used in fracking they must sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevents them from sharing what they know with their patients or other doctors. At least that’s how many health professionals and environmentalists read it.
Pennsylvania doctors already were flying blind when it came to answering their patients’ anxious questions about the health effects of fracturing. In an essay in the Harrisburg Patriot-News in February, Dr. Marilyn Heine, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, reported that some of her colleagues were being asked if symptoms like rashes might be tied to fracking chemicals, or whether they should have their well-water tested. She said that medical expertise is being “handcuffed by a lack of research.”
Act 13 adds a muzzle to the handcuffs.
Sponsors of the bill say that the confidentiality agreement is necessary because the exact cocktail of carcinogens – and 650 of 750 of the chemicals used in fracking are known to cause cancer – are “trade secrets,” and that doctors might spread them to competitors in the oil and gas industries.
Puh-lease.
Isn’t it far more likely that they know that if people knew about the massive amounts of benzine, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and other toxins to which they and their kids have been exposed, they would ask more questions – and ask them louder?
According to State Sen. Daylin Leach (D, Montgomery), the “broad and troubling” provision wasn’t in the legislation that was debated and voted on in both houses of the Legislature in February, but was added in conference, so that many legislators likely did not know it was there.
But we have little faith that, even if the majority of members of the Pennsylvania Assembly knew about it, they would have hesitated before rushing headlong into this sweetheart deal for the natural gas industry.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-04-06/news/31300592_1_fracking-toxic-chemicals-gas-industry
Posted on February 13, 2013 at 10:00 PM
Updated Thursday, Feb 14 at 2:49 AM
NEWS 8 EXCLUSIVE
PARKER COUNTY — Parker County homeowner Steve Lipsky, accused of conspiring against a powerful gas exploration company, is speaking out.
A judge ruled last year that Lipsky misled the public by trying to fool the public into believing his well water could catch on fire.
Now that homeowner wants the public to hear his story and witness his nightmare for themselves.
It all started with a video clip posted on YouTube. Grainy images from a home video recorder showed Lipsky holding a garden hose, hooked up to his water well, proving a point.
The aquifer beneath his house was so polluted with methane, he could light emissions from the well on fire.
The video went viral.
Administrators with the Environmental Protection Agency caught wind and stepped in, tested the well, and blamed a gas drilling company — Range Resources — for pollution.
Lipsky sued Range Resources, but a local judge tossed out the case, calling the video “deceptive.”
State regulators with the Texas Railroad Commission agreed, and ruled that Range was not to blame for any methane contamination of Lipsky’s well.
At that point, the EPA backed off the case and agreed to work with Range on a testing program.
That left Lipsky alone to fight a $4 million lawsuit filed by Range Resources against him.
“This has been a nightmare,” he said. “I would not wish this on my worst enemy.”
Having exhausted most of his resources and energy, Lipsky says he has only one weapon left — and WFAA is the first television crew to witness it.
Over and over, Lipsky demonstrated how it was possible to ignite a brilliant orange and blue plume of methane gas streaming from a pipe attached to his water well head, designed specifically to let volumes of gas in his well to escape.
What the drilling company, Range Resources, contended — and the judge agreed — was that Lipsky deliberately tried to make the public believe that his water was flammable.
But Lipsky says the garden hose in the video was only a temporary venting mechanism.
“This was where the hose was hooked up,” Lipsky told WFAA as he demonstrated. “It’s hooked up to the head space of the well, and that’s where the hose was always hooked up, and we never said it was anything but that.”
The well water — coming from a long white PVC pipe attached to the well head — is so laced with methane it can be seen actually catching on fire.
“So you can’t say it’s the PVC burning… you see, it’s going up the water,” Lipsky said. “It’s actually going up. See? There it goes.”
EPA tests have shown that Lipsky’s well is contaminated with not only dangerous levels of methane, but also other cancer-causing toxins such as benzene and toluene.
Lipsky said investigators with the Texas Railroad Commission were the first to warn him of the dangers.
“They told me if I hadn’t had it disconnected and left it going on the way it was, that it probably would have been catastrophic,” Lipsky remembered. “They said my house would have blown up with all the gas accumulating.”
Lipsky said he discovered methane in his water a few months after Range Resources drilled a gas well about a half mile from his house. Range Resources has always claimed its drilling has had no impact on the underground aquifer, and that the methane in Lipsky’s well is occurs naturally.
According to the Texas Railroad Commission, water wells in the area have had natural gas in them for many years.
In the end, Lipsky said he is left with a legal bill, a contaminated well, and a mystery that may never be solved.
“Here I am getting dragged through the coals, and all I had was my water became contaminated, and I just want to know the truth,” Lipsky said.
“What happened?”
http://www.wfaa.com/news/News-8-Exclusive-Parker-Co-water-well-in-on-fire—191125411.html
disaffected purveyor 