Fracking and the Environment – More & More Concerns

Science Shorts from S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

A Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) analysis of the more than 400 peer-reviewed studies to date on the impacts of fracking and shale gas development is startling:

· 96 percent of papers published on health impacts indicate potential risks or adverse health outcomes

· 87 percent of original research studies published on health outcomes indicates potential risks or adverse health outcomes

· 92 percent of all original research studies on air quality indicate elevated concentrations of air pollutants

· 73 percent of original research studies on water quality indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination.

Here is a graph that shows the growth of science of shale gas developmwent.

DOE scraps carbon capture plant

DOE has decided not to further fund FutureGen, a project to create the first commercial-scale power plant in the U. S. to capture and sequester (use a storage well) for the resulting CO₂, due to rising costs. Started under Bush II, Obama earmarked $1.7 in 2010, but the CEO says the project can not be finished in time. Permitting delays and environmental challenges have delayed its progress.  Source: Science, February 15, 2015, p 967

Contaminated water in 2 states linked to faulty shale gas wells

The scientists from Duke, Ohio State, Stanford, Dartmouth and the University of Rochester published their peer-reviewed study Sept. 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using noble gas and hydrocarbon tracers, they analyzed the gas content of more than 130 drinking water wells in the two states.

“We found eight clusters of wells — seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas — with contamination, including increased levels of natural gas from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and from shallower, intermediate layers in both states,” said Thomas H. Darrah, assistant professor of earth science at Ohio State, who led the study while he was a research scientist at Duke.

Researchers find alarming levels of these new contaminants in wastewater released into Pennsylvania and West Virginia streams

Two hazardous chemicals never before known as oil and gas industry pollutants—ammonium and iodide—are being released and spilled into Pennsylvania and West Virginia waterways from the booming energy operations of the Marcellus shale, a new study shows.

Ammonium and Iodide are making their way into streams and rivers, both accidentally and through deliberate release from treatment plants that were never designed to handle these contaminants… The Duke team found ammonium levels in streams and rivers from energy industry wastewater outflows at levels 50 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s water-quality threshold… Iodide forms disinfection products in water with toxic and carcinogenic properties.

Coping with earthquakes induced by fluid injection

“Large areas of the United States long considered geologically stable with little or no detected seismicity have recently become seismically active. The increase in earthquake activity began in the mid-continent starting in 2001 and has continued to rise. In 2014, the rate of occurrence of earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 and greater in Oklahoma exceeded that in California. This elevated activity includes larger earthquakes, several with magnitude greater than 5, that have caused significant damage. To a large extent, the increasing rate of earthquakes in the mid-continent is due to fluid-injection activities used in modern energy production.” This includes both fracking and storage wells.

Facing the Challenges—Research on Shale Gas Extraction

This week the peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Science and Health devoted an entire issue, eight articles, to the public health impacts of fracking in Pennsylvania, a state that now supplies 25% of the natural gas produced in the United States.

Three Short Shorts

when KWWL Channel 7 out of Waterloo/Cedar Falls, Iowa, did research following recent ethanol derailment north of Dubuque, they learned that derailments AVERAGED 1,300 per year in U.S. over the past 5-years.

John Church found in recent decades, climate change has been adding, on average, effectively the energy obtained by detonating 378 million atomic bombs in the oceans each year.

Every stage of unconventional oil and gas [UOG] operation from well construction to extraction, operations, transportation, and distribution can lead to air and water contamination. Hundreds of chemicals are associated with the process of unconventional oil and natural gas production. In this work, we review the scientific literature providing evidence that adult and early life exposure to chemicals associated with UOG operations can result in adverse reproductive health and developmental effects in humans….

The high ion content of flowback water prevents recognition of the true amount of radium using the method prescribed by EPA for radium in drinking water. Accurate measurement requires high-purity gamma ray spectroscopy.

The title says it all in these two

Internal Documents Reveal Extensive Industry Influence Over EPA’s National Fracking Study

Why the Scientific Case Against Fracking Keeps Getting Stronger

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net and www.Marcellus-Shale.us

Tagged as: air pollution, climate change, drilling, environmental impacts, fossil fuels, fracking, greenhouse gases, marcellus shale, methane, water pollution