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Recent Paper Shows Fracking Chemicals In Drinking Water, Industry Attacks It
eldavojohn writes: A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences turned up 2-Butoxyethanol from samples collected from three households in Pennsylvania. The paper's level headed conclusion is that more conservative well construction techniques should be used to avoid this in the future and that flowback should be better controlled. Rob Jackson, another scientist who reviewed the paper, stressed that the findings were an exception to normal operations. Despite that, the results angered the PR gods of the Marcellus Shale Gas industry and awoke beltway insider mouthpieces to attack the research — after all, what are they paying them for?
Profits above all else.
Hu-mans have turned into Ferengi.
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One of the authors thinks the problem may have been due to a leak at a storage tank on the surface. Emphasis on the "may".
Plus there's the concentration issue - parts per trillion doesn't make for much of a problem in any case. Even the authors didn't make this out to be a health problem....
Of course, I could be mistaken, and the companies involved could be part of a massive conspiracy to slaughter Pennsylvanians by the millions.
Yeah, on second thought, I'll have to go with the conspiracy thing. After all, everyone knows that even one part per trillion is too much, and the spill at the storage tank was probably just meant to cover up the deliberate poisoning of the water supply in three counties in rural PA....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
obviously nobodys going to do anything about it.
The oil industry wont stop until they can sell us water for $3 a gallon.
Water is a basic necessity of life. It's not a product.
In other news, it's up to the fracking companies to protect themselves against nukes from orbit.
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I think any PR person, CEO, and other mouthpiece who says this stuff is perfectly safe should be forced to drink it. Daily. For a year. Their family included.
If the PR clowns are going to claim it's safe, put their money where there mouth is. If they refuse to drink it, assume they're lying and feed them to bears.
Hold these guys to some standard of truth instead of their accustomed truthiness, and see what they do.
I'm so tired of these "think tanks" who are nothing more than paid shills who spout this crap just to obfuscate the truth -- it's no different than the tobacco lobby did. It's slimy and dishonest, and should carry a huge penalty.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My understanding is that modern household water wells generally use reverse osmosis systems. Water quality from drinking wells varies widely depending on the location and quality of the well. But (1) they aren't 100% effective, nor can they be against unanticipated chemicals that weren't being pumped into the ground en masse at the time the well was designed, and (2) I shouldn't have to pay to upgrade my drinking water well filter to handle chemicals used in fracking. Fracking companies should be not contaminating my drinking water.
Well, that is the philosophical divide in the US. Are people responsible for the effects their actions have on others, or are they responsible for only the effect their actions have on themselves? That is the bridge people have trouble crossing when talking about responsibility between conservatives/libertarians and liberals. One believes your fate is in your own hands, you are singularly responsible for yourself, while the other believes that we bear responsibility for our actions on others. Oddly enough one tends to benefit the strong and the majority group, while the other takes from it.
The problem there is that when the well is contaminated, it's WAY too late to do anything. Even if the responsible company immediately stops fracking completely, the well will continue to provide polluted water until the aquifer gets cleaned out somehow. That may be anytime from years to millenia.
I think it's more reasonable for the landowner to be able to force the fracking company to "fix what they broke" and to ensure the landowner has a supply of clean water equal to their current well production available to them for free until the well runs clean again. Or the frackers pay for all the land at pre-fracking market value.
Yeah, I'm a dreamer.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
My understanding is that modern household water wells generally use reverse osmosis systems.
Your understanding is incorrect. There is no standard template for a modern household water well. Modern household water wells generally use one or more mesh filters in the pump house, and usually one big carbon filter inside the house, commonly followed by a water softener. There may be an RO filter involved for drinking water, but there often is not.
Most people don't use RO because of the high amount of waste water. If you don't have a grey water system, that's just additional cycling your pump has to do for no benefit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The communities are just following the stupidity of the political view points.
Can we frack in your community? Sure... However we want our water quality (including well water, checked once a month at your expense, for as long as the pumps are active and 10 years after. (This is relatively inexpensive demand). If there is a problem with water quality that has changed sense fracking. Then you need to supply us with clean water for 150 year or until the water quality returns.
If your method is as safe and clean as you state, then you shouldn't have to worry about it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The two aren't mutually exclusive you know. In fact, the side you lambaste as liberals, and how VERY telling that you think it's a swear word, is actually MORE plugged in to the reality of who and what we are as a species than the supposedly conservative "every man exists in vacuum" view.
We are social animals. We exist in groups. The erstwhile libertarian has his head so far up his ass he can see that burger he ate in 1983. And it's almost ALWAYS a he; we women, somehow, are mostly immune to this memetic plague. To ignore the realities of what we are our, evolutionary and social heritage, is to invite disaster, and behold, disaster has come; I give you 35 goddamn years of voodoonomics as exhibit A.
The key is to make it so that the desires of the individual do not compromise the group's integrity, and that the actions of the group do not stifle individual freedom.