Fracking Chemicals Detected in Pennsylvania Drinking Water.

An analysis of drinking water sampled from three homes in Bradford County, Pa., revealed traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids, according to a study published on Monday.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PANS , addresses a longstanding question about potential risks to underground drinking water from the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The authors suggested a chain of events by which the drilling chemical ended up in a homeowner’s water supply.

I have saw many members try and make claims that fracking does not contaminate drinking water ,but I have to disagree because we don't really know what happens under ground during the process .

The question is , "is it safer than drilling " ..

Ill let you ATS answer that one .

I just wish that we could stop relaying of fossil fuel period .

TextThe industry has long maintained that because fracking occurs thousands of feet below drinking-water aquifers, the drilling chemicals that are injected to break up rocks and release the gas trapped there pose no risk.

NY Times

your thoughts ?

Kap .

Killing women and children with napalm and grenades in another country poses no risk to me here so therefore its ok, ' it poses no risk' to me.

a reply to: Shadow Herder

Subtle approach what?

Thanks for the report Kapusta the UK government is gets its panties in a wadge to frack here and that report has come out at the right time.

I loose all faith in common sense in government when we have such high cancer statistics yet no explanation for them. Its time we were looking at issues like this- which I notice don't even appear on many manifestos for the UK election so, probably the same as in the USA we don't get a say whatsoever.

a reply to: Kapusta

Another example of greed trumping life itself.......we do not have an infinite amount of drinking water yet we act as if we do......gold fever is a disease that will consume a person no matter what the currency is.....

a reply to: Kapusta

This is fully to be expected as fracking continues.

People tolerate this and will die from this because media tells them its something else.

Eventually the filth will be knee deep and no one will be able to cover it up.

Guys calm the heck down.

The chemical was found in parts per trillion on an outside tap. The chemical is used in paints and cosmetics. The level found is one million times lower than the safe exposure limit. GET A GRIP.


a reply to: TorinoFer

originally posted by: Deharg
Guys calm the heck down.

The chemical was found in parts per trillion on an outside tap. The chemical is used in paints and cosmetics. The level found is one million times lower than the safe exposure limit. GET A GRIP.


a reply to: TorinoFer

Lol right .. So it's ok to consume it ? Every. Day? on trying to water it down. (Pun intended) but i would rather not drink it. Not. Buying it sorry.

They cannot see what is cracking underground and where these cracks go. We also cannot prove which company is causing the problem because of this. Without exact evidence, which is hard since they do not have to disclose their mixture, we cannot go after anyone. You have to prove it is being done, that they know it is happening, and that it is the right company. You have to prove their chemicals pose a major risk to human health too.

The laws are not to protect us.

Yes,...the "Haliburton Loophole"...(a name that just screams "Integrity"!/)

www.truth-out.org...#

That act, signed into law by Republican President Gerald Ford, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to keep toxic chemicals from getting into Americans’ drinking water. Cheney didn’t care about public safety but he did care about Halliburton’s bottom-line - after all, he was a big Halliburton stockholder when he became vice president - and so he joined the lobbying efforts to get Congress to carve out an exemption for fracking in the Safe Water Drinking Act.

Thanks to that carve-out - let’s call it the “Halliburton loophole” - the EPA can’t regulate fracking poisons even when they get into our water supply. But Cheney and his oil industry buddies didn’t stop there.

In 2005, Congress also gave the natural gas industry an exemption from having to write up reports on its activities under the National Environmental Policy Act and expanded its exemption from having to follow Clean Water Act regulations on what kind of chemicals it can dump in storm water runoff.

And as bad as it is now, when the TPP passes, it will get even worse.

I would like to know, what chemicals were found. All of these fracking companies have tried to keep what they use for Fracking from the public. I think we have let these Fracking companies run for far too long without any real look into what exactly is being put into the ground. Whatever is being used cannot be good, to create the underlying bedrock to fracture has got to be some extremely nasty stuff.

What was found was 2-Butoxyethanol....commonly used in cosmetics and paint materials at levels millions of times higher than found in this sample. The interesting point is that ONE sample showed this many more from the same groundwater source did not...the story does not add up. Anyone who uses washing powder, goes to the beach, or even uses detergents of any sort ingests millions of times more material every day than in this sample.
Like I said get a grip... Even breathing will get you to ingest more material far more toxic than this....driving a car or using a bus for instance. You should look up what a trillion is... Parts per trillion is less than the DDT in your coffee ... GET A GRIP......

This site is supposed to deny ignorance not give folks the chance to show it.....

I dislike pictures that misrepresent how the process works to misguide people to think one way. It would be better to post a picture to show a true scale of the depths and layers of a well and a typical formation. Instead of trying to spread false propaganda to 'discredit' the big bad operators and service companies, lay out the true information.

That picture you linked is wrong, the mast is even longer than the depth of the well? And I don't understand how the shale has one layer between the water aquifer? It would be a roll of the dice if that layer is permeable or not, if that was the case, there would be a slurry of gas and oil mixed with the water NATURALLY.

energyindepth.org...

Anyways, reading the posted article by OP is misguiding the reader. I linked the rebuttal.

I don't like fracking and that is because the higher the price of oil and gas, the more money I make. However, I hate to see biased articles and threads.

a reply to: Kapusta

Of course this came from NY! They are fighting tooth and nail to not allow fracking in their state! So they found 1 chemical found in fracking?? Do you have any idea how many chemicals are used? Probably not, but the odds of just 1 chemical being found in water I can tell you it is more than likely NOT from fracking! If there were multiple chemicals found, then I would look deeper, but 1 chemical....The odds of this coming from fracking is almost zero....Come on people....If you want to demonize fracking, try harder...

originally posted by: rickymouse
They cannot see what is cracking underground and where these cracks go.

Actually you kinda can. That is part of the reason why petroleum geologists get paid 200k. There is a well log analysis of every proposed drill site, which is redundantly checked. Knowing what the rock layers are composed of, you can determine the tensile strength of the formations layers. Knowing how much stress they can handle, you can apply as much pressure before cracks propagate parallel to the stresses for a layer, pressure loss is also factored in.

Kind of like if I'm applying pressure from a hammer to a single layer of Jolly Rancher, a layer of rock, and a layer of steel all behind one each other. The Jolly Rancher will break before the rock, If you want to break the rock, you're going to have to apply more pressure in a smaller area and the rock will break at a higher stress. So if you are within the range to break the Jolly Ranchers, and the rock, you can determine what cracks and what doesn't crack.

I hate doing mohr circles, but it's a good visual representation of the failure envelope, and here is the general gist of it.

petrowiki.org...
www.eng.ox.ac.uk...

a reply to: Laxpla

Good explanation! Most people just demonize fracking because others say so....Most just follow the leader! But when someone actually looks in depth at the process, it is very well thought up and safe in comparison to other fossil fuel mining! The casing job is very important and most companies have to comply to very strict standards...

a reply to: Chrisfishenstein

You're right. The article linked above from OP has no technical details or facts, only cherry-picked sentences without context.

a reply to: Laxpla

I don't know much about the science they try to sell us, but I know what happens when you try to crack rock. It tends to start cracking then goes whatever way it wants to. It doesn't always follow the grain of the rock, if it did I would have been a lot happier when cracking rocks to make some things in the past.

They may try to say they know which way the cracks will go but that does not mean I have to believe them. Maybe two thirds of the time they go where they want to go and that is under controlled situations. Like when they are making limestone blocks and so forth.

Fracking is so harmful and the whole industry is dishonest.

They keep the chemicals secret. Why would they do that?

They know it takes Decades for long term studies and scientific process, so they'll just pollute and destroy the earth until finally our weak government says no. It's pathetic.

a reply to: rickymouse

I don't know much about the science they try to sell us

It's not so much "sell" us, it's science. It's verifiable and you can see it first hand. I don't think you understand what I wrote above. The pressure that is applied, doesn't exceed the tensile strength of the rock layers other than the layers that are targeted. There are layers of rock under your feet, there You can't apply a small 10 N force in your backyard, crack a glass frame and expect a crack to form and propagate all the way to the opposite side of the hemisphere.

Here is a picture. It's not objects on the picture are not to scale, but I want to see the layers of rock. They all have different strengths.

www.enersciences.com...

Lets make it simple, and say there are three layers of rock composed of different types of rock stacked on top of each other. Layer 1 fractures at a stress of 1000 psi, layer 2 is 2000 psi, and layer 3 is 3000 psi. If you apply 1100 psi to layer 1, you will get fracturing. Now, lets say the fluid happens to make it to layer 2 somehow when applied to layer 1, layer 2 would not be able to fracture because the there is only 1100 psi being applied.

Another example, if I put a piece of glass on top of a wooden table, and drop a rock on it, only the glass fractures and not the wood.

They may try to say they know which way the cracks will go but that does not mean I have to believe them.

Absolutely, I'm just placing the facts out there, I can't make someone decide for themselves if they already made up their mind.

a reply to: Laxpla

If this was true, there would be no way that fracking could cause an earthquake of any size, yet fracking is causing quakes. If it was true, there would be no way that radioactive elements would be entering the water of some cities in Indiana and Illinois, which has been pretty much proved to be the case. Even though the level has increased, after fracking started there, they have not banned fracking, they are just looking for different sources of water. So I would have to say that the conclusions they have reached about how their fracking works may be flawed. Those pictures do not convince me, I can draw pictures that aren't real and use them to show a product I sell is different than what the product is.

I'm not saying that all fracking everywhere is dangerous, just where upheavel of the crust has changed the lay of the land. Pretty much everywhere that has a hill or valley. Those layers are not always in a straight line either, depending on the lay of the land when it was formed. Those pictures make it look like they are straight.

I know if I was in charge of a fracking company, I would definitely look for evidence to show that what I was doing is completely safe and probably blow away evidence as not applicable of people who challenged me. If you are looking after your investors interests, then that is what you do. Geology was created to supply intel to companies that profit from ores and exploitation. They did not start researching this to go against the companies that paid for their services. Most training is done to reinforce the companies interests in mineral and gas exploration. Many mistakes have been made in acquiring these products leading to problems in the environment over the years. Most times industry and geology work hand in hand.

If there was nobody doing gas and oil exploration or mining, there would not be a need for most geologists.