One can argue all you like about the danger of earthquakes posed by waste water injection by the oil and gas extraction industry. However, from both a short term and long term perspective, the contamination of the groundwater resources that millions of Americans rely upon for fresh water for drinking and agriculture is the real threat. The chemicals involved in the hydrofracking process are a closely held secret that, by law, not even the US government (thanks to former Vice president Cheney) may disclose to US citizens at risk of the side effects of using and injecting "proprietary formulas" of water and other elements at high pressure underground. However, research has indicated that the use of such fluids is a clear and present danger to the health and safety of Americans who live within states where hydrofracking and high pressure waste water injection underground is ongoing.
Even spills of such fluids prior to injection have been demonstrated to result in groundwater contamination with chemicals harmful to human life. For example, consider this recent study by Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences:
A study conducted on flowback fluid, or wastewater, from hydraulic fracturing shows that the fluid causes the release of particles in soil that bind to pollutants. When water runs through such soil, the particles unbind from the soil and are released with the water, contaminating groundwater with pollutants.
The particles in question are called colloids. They are microscopic particles that are larger than a molecule and tend to bind to soil and sand grains because of the colloids' electric charge. [...]
Fewer than 5% of the colloids were leached out of the soil with the deionized water when it was released. But 32-36% of the colloids were released with the flowback fluid.
The authors of the paper believe the cause to be the chemical properties of the flowback fluid, which is used to extract the natural gas from shale. The fluid most likely reduces the binding forces between the colloids and the soil. Any colloids that bind to the soil when the flowback fluid spills into it will be leached, along with bound pollutants and heavy metals, into the groundwater.
In the language of the scientists who conducted this study:
Accidental spills and deliberate land application of hydrofracking fluids, which return to the surface during hydrofracking, are common causes of environmental contamination. Since the chemistry of hydrofracking fluids favors transport of colloids and mineral particles through rock cracks, it may also facilitate transport of in situ colloids and associated pollutants in unsaturated soils. We investigated this by subsequently injecting deionized water and flowback fluid at increasing flow rates into unsaturated sand columns containing colloids. Colloid retention and mobilization was measured in the column effluent and visualized in situ with bright field microscopy. While <5% of initial colloids were released by flushing with deionized water, 32–36% were released by flushing with flowback fluid in two distinct breakthrough peaks. These peaks resulted from 1) surface tension reduction and steric repulsion and 2) slow kinetic disaggregation of colloid flocs. Increasing the flow rate of the flowback fluid mobilized an additional 36% of colloids, due to the expansion of water filled pore space. This study suggests that hydrofracking fluid may also indirectly contaminate groundwater by remobilizing existing colloidal pollutants.
In effect, the "flow back" from hydrofracking operations releases pollutants bound in soils at a much higher rate than occurs normally. These pollutants likely include such chemicals and heavy metals such as
carcinogenic benzenes and lead (known to be included in the
potpourri of materials contained in fluids used by hydrofracking operators), are then released into the groundwater wherever hydrofracking is being conducted. Once released, these chemical and heavy metal contaminants spread throughout existing groundwater systems.
And this is not the only way in which hydrofracking fluids contaminate our groundwater. Methane gas contamination of wells and freshwater aquifers has been shown to increase dramatically near sites where hydrofracking is occurring:
Methane concentrations were detected generally in 51 of 60 drinking-water wells (85%) across the region, regardless of gas industry operations, but concentrations were substantially higher closer to natural-gas wells (Fig. 3). Methane concentrations were 17-times higher on average (19.2 mg CH4 L-1) in shallow wells from active drilling and extraction areas than in wells from nonactive areas ...
And then of course, there is the
history of downstream contamination, including radioactivity, heavy metals and other poisonous chemicals, caused by fracking operations, even after treatment at waste water facilities designed to insure the safety of fresh water resources used by the public:
According to Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, high concentrations of radioactivity, salts, and metals have been found downstream from a [wastewater] treatment plant in a western Pennsylvania creek. The plant is used to remove specific metals from hydraulic wastewater, but the Duke team found that certain metals, such as chlorides and bromides, haven’t been successfully removed. In fact, they contribute to four-fifths of the total downstream chloride flow.
"The treatment removes a substantial portion of the radioactivity, but it does not remove many of the other salts, including bromide," Vengosh said. "When the high-bromide effluents are discharged to the stream, it increases the concentrations of bromide above the original background levels. This is significant because bromide increases the risks for formation of highly toxic disinfection byproducts in drinking water treatment facilities that are located downstream."
Furthermore, the amount of radioactivity that has accumulated in the river sediments exceeds the thresholds for safe disposal of radioactive materials, according to Vengosh. They are above management regulations in the US and would only be accepted at a licensed radioactive disposal facility. "Years of disposal of oil and gas wastewater with high radioactivity has created potential environmental risks for thousands of years to come," said Vengosh.
"While water contamination can be mitigated by treatment to a certain degree, our findings indicate that disposal of wastewater from both conventional and unconventional oil and gas operations has degraded the surface water and sediments," said Nathaniel R. Warner, a recent Ph.D. graduate of Duke who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College. "This could be a long-term legacy of radioactivity."
Indeed, recent studies indicate that the amount of pollution of groundwater resources from oil and gas operations, including hydrofracking operations, may have been
vastly understated. The damage being done now may be irreversible and place a strain on our future ability to provide clean, fresh water for agricultural uses and for human consumption.
It turns out that there may far more contamination from fracking than once thought. Scientists have found that the oil and gas extraction method known and hydraulic fracturing may contribute more pollutants to groundwater than previous research has suggested.
Unfortunately, the oil and gas industry has actively worked to
limit research into potential issues regarding pollution of our precious groundwater resources. Indeed, they have even managed to bury EPA research conducted decades ago which connected hydrofracking to groundwater contamination.
For years the drilling industry has steadfastly insisted that there has never been a proven case in which fracking has led to contamination of drinking water.
Now Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization engaged in the debate over the safety of fracking, has unearthed a 24-year-old case study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that unequivocally says such contamination has occurred. The New York Times reported on EWG's year-long research effort and the EPA's paper Wednesday.
The 1987 EPA report, which describes a dark, mysterious gel found in a water well in Jackson County, W.Va., states that gels were also used to hydraulically fracture a nearby natural gas well and that "the residual fracturing fluid migrated into (the resident's) water well." [...]
[T]he language found in the EPA report made public Wednesday is the strongest articulation yet by federal officials that there is a direct causal connection between man-made fissures thousands of feet underground and contaminants found in well water gone bad. The explanation, presented in the EPA's own words, stands in stark contrast to recent statements made by EPA officials that they could not document a proven case of contamination and a 2004 EPA report which concluded that fracturing was safe.
Unfortunately, the delay in conducting more comprehensive studies on the effects of hydrofracking and other extreme industry extraction processes does nothing to alleviate the
current assault on human health in areas where such oil and gas operations are increasing.
In Texas, which now has about 93,000 natural-gas wells, up from around 58,000 a dozen years ago, a hospital system in six counties with some of the heaviest drilling said in 2010 that it found a 25 percent asthma rate for young children, more than three times the state rate of about 7 percent.
“It’s ruining us,” said Kelly Gant, whose 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son have experienced severe asthma attacks, dizzy spells and headaches since a compressor station and a gas well were set up about two years ago near her house in Bartonville, Tex. The industry and state regulators have said it is not clear what role the gas industry has played in causing such problems, since the area has had high air pollution for a while.
“I’m not an activist, an alarmist, a Democrat, environmentalist or anything like that,” Ms. Gant said. “I’m just a person who isn’t able to manage the health of my family because of all this drilling.”
Unlike Ms. Gant, I am an alarmist. Our reliance on fossil fuels is bad in so many ways. Climate change is obviously the single largest threat we face on a global basis, but right behind it comes what I refer to as the lesser known evils of fossil fuels, and in particular the means the oil and gas industry uses to extract every last ounce of oil or liter of methane from under the surface of our planet.
The pollution of our fresh water resources caused by the extraction of fossil fuels, particularly through hydrofracking and high pressure injection, is a clear and present danger to the health and well being of every citizen of the USA.
We don't know the precise chemicals and other materials used in hydrofracking fluids because the oil and gas companies are not required to disclose the toxic chemicals and other pollutants they use in those fluids. However, we do know that carcinogenic chemicals, radioactive waste and heavy metals have been found in waste water from fracking operations, even after that water has been treated. We also know that such pollution very likely will migrate into both underground aquifers, and into rivers and reservoirs through contamination via the release of inadequately treated wastewater downstream. And we have known this for some time now.
Indeed, as the EPA report from regarding toxic waste in West Virginia's groundwater shows we've known about the risk of groundwater contamination from drilling for nearly three decades. And we know that these chemicals and heavy metals cause dangerous and often fatal consequences for the health of human beings. Exposure to benzene and other similar chemicals can cause infertility but also deadly cancers. In short, fracking is extremely hazardous to your health and the health of those you care about:
People with homes close to fracking sites could be at greater risk of suffering infertility, cancer and birth defects from chemicals used in process, research has warned. [...]
"More than 700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb hormone function," said study author Dr Susan C. Nagel of the University of Missouri School of Medicine.
"With fracking on the rise, populations may face greater health risks from increased endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure." [...]
Rresearchers took surface and ground water samples from sites with drilling spills or accidents in a drilling-dense area of Garfield County, Colarado, which has more than 10,000 natural gas wells.
Samples from the Colorado River – the drainage basin for the natural gas drilling sites – were also found to have moderate levels of the chemicals.
“Spills associated with natural gas drilling can contaminate surface, ground and drinking water.
"We found more endocrine-disrupting activity in the water close to drilling locations that had experienced spills than at control sites,” added Dr Nagel.
“This could raise the risk of reproductive, metabolic, neurological and other diseases, especially in children who are exposed to EDCs."
We know all thiese facts, but we just haven't done anything to prevent runaway drilling and high pressure fluid injection drilling processes such as those employed in fracking from irrevocably poisoning our valuable and essential freshwater resources. That has to change and change soon, or we will risk serious harm to valuable water resources we will need in the near future.
The question we all should be asking ourselves and our government officials is why are we allowing the oil and gas industry to run roughshod over the health and safety of people who live in the vicinity of, or downstream from, hydrofracking operations? Why are those companies still protected from disclosing the chemicals they use as high pressure injection fluids in order to extract natural gas? Why are we ignoring the current and future economic and environmental costs of hydrofracking and other injection well drilling methods? Why aren't we holding oil and gas companies liable for the environmental and health consequences of their use of toxic chemicals to extract fossil fuels from deep underground? And why are we not expending our tax money and research efforts into developing safer, sources of renewable energy production?
If you live in a state where these drilling methods are used, ask your politicians and expected officials who do they care about more: you and your children or the profits of Big Oil? Because the problem of the destruction of our freshwater respources, and the long term consequences to our ecosystems and public health are not going away anytime soon unless we all act to bring this issue to the larger public's attention put pressure on all political parties to make the ultimate elimination of fracking and related injection well drilling a priority. The longer fracking continues, the more states into which it expands the greater the ultimate harm to our country and our people.
Just ask yourself, in the next ten to twenty years, where is our clean drinking water going to come from? Right now, there is no guarantee that there will be enough safe drinking water to go around, and one of the reasons for that is your friendly neighborhood oil and gas drilling company.