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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.
Are there any? negative externalities that people have an obligation not to impose on others; or is it always the other guy's job to suck it up and add whatever systems are necessary to compensate for them?
From Article:
The chemical, which is also commonly used in paint and cosmetics, is known to have caused tumors in rodents, though scientists have not determined if those carcinogenic properties translate to humans. The authors said the amount found, which was measured in parts per trillion, was within safety regulations and did not pose a health risk.
Don't worry, our "good friends" the Saudis have manipulated to oil price to drive the frackers out of business so it won't be a problem for long.
Oh wait, only the ones that cut corners will be able to afford to survive so it will be a problem.
Go tell your congressman to get off the Saudi teat and work for his own country and maybe we won't see so much of these problems.
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.
Currently live about a half mile from the epicenter of some earthquakes where there have never been earthquakes before. Grew up here. Never experienced them before. Have had several 2-3 magnitude tremors now shake my building where I live. Yesterday the Texas Legislature banned bans on fracking. And of course, the city legislatures around here have been legalizing fracking and allowing it for the past several years. I expect to hear bullshit about the frequency of earthquakes justifying them as normal soon. In a few years, I expect to hear bullshit as to why unusual organic compounds are in our ground water. Then more bullshit about why it is in the drinking water.
Industry attacks what? Drinking water?
Its up to the companies that market the water to filter it properly
Do you understand the concept of a well that provides water to a home?
Who markets the water for the drinking well at a person's home?
You're thinking of the local water company with it's water filtering plants and pipes that lead directly to your home. That is not where fracking is happening. Fracking is done out where there isn't public water and sewer. People have drinking wells for their homes.
This article is saying that fracking chemicals are getting into the same water that is feeding the wells to people's homes. It is the fracking companies' responsibilities to keep their chemicals out of our drinking water wells.
$0.003/gallon surcharge for value added chemicals to ensure no stray shale clogs their piping.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
That's the chemical.
They found it (a very small amount) in the water. Parts-per-trillion levels.
It's used in fracking fluids - and also in a LOT of other places, like paints, sealants, cleaning products, et bloody cetera. The shocker would be if they didn't find the stuff. Here's a partial list of chemicals that use it:
http://hpd.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/search?tbl=TblChemicals&queryx=111-76-2
It's used in many Simple Green products, a LOT of Rustoleum paints, and a lot of others. Minwax, Goo-Gone, Zep, Windex... the list is pretty long. And all it would take would be a home mechanic spilling a bottle of one of those products to get to that same parts-per-trillion levels in their own well water.
The paper suggests that the chemical may have come from a surface-level leak at a nearby well - and that they can't actually tie the chemical to the actual fracking chemicals used at that well.
As an oil and gas industry professional I dont see anything wrong here. What Pennsylvania is complaining about is their own hubris and greed. Friendly patrio-tastic drilling companies asked kindly if they could carefully remove oils and gasses in the fight against terrorism and to prevent the war on christmas. Once informed citizens understood both gasses and oils had to be removed from the ground in order for jesus to love them and no child to be left behind, companies reluctantly did that which was most needful at the time. It was difficult, but we removed gasses and oils, and converted them to fresh clean and definitely not unhealthy gasoline to power freedom loving americans SUV's and trucks. But after a time, Pennsylvanians became greedy.
2-Butoxyethanol...no more, no less. We promised 2 of them to help invigorate the spleen and whiten teeth. But whats next? 4? 5? god forbid 8 Butoxyethanols?! We're being squeezed to death here.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The oil industry wont stop until they can sell us water for $3 a gallon.
That would be a discount from what people already are paying for water. People are voluntarily buying bottled tap water at $7.57 per gallon right now. Approximately 2000X what it would cost from the tap.
From the wikipedia entry on the chemical:
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry cleaning solutions, lacquers, varnishes, herbicides, latex paints, enamels, printing paste, and varnish removers, and silicone caulk. Products containing this compound are commonly found at construction sites, automobile repair shops, print shops, and facilities that produce sterilizing and cleaning products. It is the main ingredient of many home, commercial and industrial cleaning solutions. Since the molecule has both non-polar and polar ends, butoxyethanol is useful for removing both polar and non-polar substances, like grease and oils. It is also approved by the U.S. FDA to be used as direct and indirect food additives, which include antimicrobial agents, defoamers, stabilizers, and adhesives.
So, basically, this stuff can be found pretty much EVERYWHERE and pretty much everywhere in or around a home. But, nope, nope, nope, these samples HAD to come from fracking wells.
1) a problem with the pipe further up near the surface. When you have an oil well (even a regular old one) you get all sorts of stuff that comes up water, the gases we call "natural gas", nasty deadly gases and "oil".
2) some other source of contamination completely unrelated to drilling which given their measurement of the concentration at parts per trillion seems likely..
Even if the problem is the first one I imagine there would be nastier compounds I would be more worried about.
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.
First of all people have been drinking water out of wells for several thousand years prior to the invention of reverse osmosis systems. In general it's completely safe, in specific areas it could be unwise.
Second of all there's a difference between: is it safe to drink water from an arbitrary well, and why does this well that used to be safe to drink now contain fracking byproducts.
If in fact the well had been perfectly fine to drink until recently and is now contaminated with fracking byproducts then I think it's reasonable to ask the drilling companies to stop and fix their system.
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.
You're thinking of the local water company with it's water filtering plants and pipes that lead directly to your home. That is not where fracking is happening. Fracking is done out where there isn't public water and sewer.
Hate to break it to you, but yes, fracking very much IS happening right in the middle of where there are water and sewer service. Both Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the 31st and 23rd largest MSA's in the country are right in the middle of the shale boom and both states have their department of natural resource (exploitation) overruling local control so there's plenty of drilling happening in the middle of communities (my town of 30k took the DNR to the state supreme court to try to block projects after we had several leaking wells contaminate drinking water and local streams)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Exxon Mobil CEO: No fracking near my backyard
Exxon Mobil's CEO has joined a lawsuit to stop construction of a water tower near his home that would be used to in the fracking process to drill for oil...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/02/22/exxon-mobil-tillerson-ceo-fracking/5726603/
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.'"
Many of the concerns about the safety of fracking relate to the drill shaft and riser pipe that comes up from the pay dirt, through the groundwater supplies, to the surface. When the riser pipe is installed, a drill shaft is made and the pipe is inserted into it, there is a space between the pipe and the wall of the drill shaft that is supposed to be filled in with cement. If the cement flow is blocked for whatever reason, the annular space may not be filled in, you will end up with an open channel that could run for thousands of feet between the pay dirt and the groundwater supply. Since you cant really see if the cemented went okay, its many thousands of feet underground, its hard to tell if this is happening. When the high pressure drilling fluids are injected, they would easily flow right up that channel into the groundwater supply. They say in the propoganda that there is many thousands of feet of impermeable rock between the pay dirt layer and the groundwater, but this doesnt mean much as you just drilled a hole through it all.
Depends on the water quality. Just a particulate filter and softener are pretty common in my area. A softener will remove small amounts of iron, but there are systems ("iron filters") which will remove higher levels. But none of the above will remove organic chemicals or biologicals.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
Your understanding is wrong. Reverse osmosis is used in places where the well water isn't safe to drink, but that's the exception, not the rule. Ever heard of the phrase "poisoning the well?" Used to be one of the worst war crimes there was.
Why doesn't the industry just charge those people for the addition of chemicals to their water? Those people are getting those chemicals for free right now, and chemicals don't cost nothing! The industry should be billing everyone in that town for the chemicals they're currently getting for free!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If that were truly the case, then why would the "no responsibility for our actions on others" group support a police force and other government-backed methods of coercion to impose such responsibility on thieves, violent assailants, etc? After all, the victims are the ones who failed to take sufficient personal responsibility to protect themselves.
Let's be honest here - the difference is not a matter of general principle, but of degree.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What's their evidence it came from fracking and not, say Windex?
Interesting list of uses from wkpda;
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry cleaning solutions, lacquers, varnishes, herbicides, latex paints, enamels, printing paste, and varnish removers, and silicone caulk. Products containing this compound are commonly found at construction sites, automobile repair shops, print shops, and facilities that produce sterilizing and cleaning products. It is the main ingredient of many home, commercial and industrial cleaning solutions. Since the molecule has both non-polar and polar ends, butoxyethanol is useful for removing both polar and non-polar substances, like grease and oils. It is also approved by the U.S. FDA to be used as direct and indirect food additives, which include antimicrobial agents, defoamers, stabilizers, and adhesives.[6]
And the environmental impact;
2-Butoxyethanol usually decomposes in the presence of air within a few days by reacting with oxygen radicals.[12] It has not been identified as a major environmental contaminant, nor is it known to bio-accumulate.[13] 2-Butoxyethanol biodegrades in soils and water, with a half life of 1–4 weeks in aquatic environments.[6]
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.
Might want to check on the particular chemical in question;
2-Butoxyethanol biodegrades in soils and water, with a half life of 1–4 weeks in aquatic environments.[6]
The summary conflates two papers, a review paper in Science which summarizes the state of knowledge about fracking the Marcellus Shale (Vidic et al. 2013), and a study of an individual incident published this month in PNAS in which researcher purport to have found a single instance of minor contamination from a fracking well (Llewellyn et al. 2015). Neither paper is particularly damning or inflammatory, so at first blush it's not immediately obvious why the fracking PR flacks have gone to DEFCON 3 on this. The key is to read the review paper first. This is almost always the best way to start because review papers are supposed to give a full and balanced overview of the current state of scientific knowledge on a topic. TL;DR, I know, but stick with me for a few paragraphs and I think I can make the problem clear.
Vidic paints a rather favorable picture of the fracking industry's response to problems that have arisen during the fracking boom in the Marcellus shale. It absolves them of any responsibility for the infamous "burning tapwater" we've all seen in Youtube videos. It states they have been quick to respond to wastewater leaks and well blowouts before contamination could spread. It says the industry has redesigned wells in response to concerns that they might leak fracking water as they pass through the aquifer. And it says that fracking water that returns to the surface ("flowback") is treated and re-used for more fracking -- an expensive environmental "best practice".
Vidic does raise some important concerns, however, and the most important is this. At present recycling flowback into more fracking water is practical because production is booming. But at some point production will level off and begin to decline, and when that happens the industry will be producing more flowback than it can use economically. In Texas, where fracking was pioneered, flowback was disposed of in deep wells -- a process not without its drawbacks, but better than leaving the contaminated water on the surface. Pennsylvania doesn't have enough disposal capacity to handle today's flowback, which helps make recycling fracking water attractive at the present time.
We now have enough context to understand Llewellyn, and why Llewellyn is so upsetting to the industry. Llewellyn's paper documents a single instance of minor contamination which matched the chemical fingerprint of flowback from a nearby well. This contamination was well below a level that would be cause for any concern. Llewellyn concludes the most likely cause was a small spill from the flowback holding pit, although it can't rule out the possibility that the contamination occurred inside the well. Taken with the picture Vidic paints of an industry that is generally on top of stuff like this, the occurrence of a single mishap with negligible consequences is hardly damning. So why has the fracking industry unleashed its flying PR monkeys on this?
Because the fracking industry apparently has made no plans for when the day comes it can no longer recycle all the flowback it uses, and it doesn't want the public to think about that.
It would be sensible for them to prepare for the flowback problem now on the upswing of the boom, for the same reason the industry has been able to be so responsive to date: these are good times for the industry in the Marcellus Shale. They're flush. Although preparing for the problem now would be expensive, it wouldn't slow the boom appreciably, and it would add jobs. But... if the industry can kick the flowback can far enough down the road, we'll have to ask it to fix the problem while production and probably the regional economy is in decline. Doing something about the problem then will cost jobs and require money nobody will have.
So if the industry isn't forced to do something about the looming problem soon, it will become politically if not financially impossible to make them do that ever. That's why the industry is allergic to the very mention that surfa
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The reason these chemicals are expensive to dispose of is that they are difficult to destroy by any means other than sweet, cleansing flame — and a whole hell of a lot of it. Throwing it in your campfire won't do it. Anything that can't be gotten out of your water by relatively simple means isn't filtered out by your municipal water department.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not a product.
The bottling industry disagrees. And contaminated tap water is good for business.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”