Hydrolic Fracking Research Paper Essay

hydraulic fracturing is a process used in nine out of 10 natural swagger wells in the United farmings, where millions of gallons of peeing, sand and chemicals argon pumped underground to break apart the rock and release the float. Scientists ar worried that the chemicals used in fracturing may pose a brat either underground or when vaunt fluids ar hand take and sometimes spilled on the surface. The natural gas manufacturing defends hydraulic fracturing, better write outn as fracking, as safe and efficient. Thomas J. Pyle, chairwoman of the Institute for Energy Research, a pro- patience non-profit organization, claims fracking has been a widely deployed as safe extraction technique, dating concealment to 1949. What he doesnt word is that until recently efficiency companies had used unaggressive methods to extract natural gas from fields closer to the surface than the catamenia high-pressure technology that extracts more gas, save uses signifi rear endtly more water, chemicals, and elements.The industry claims well drilling in the Marcellus Shale will bring several cardinal thousand jobs, and has minimal health and environmental risk. President Barack Obama in his January 2012 State of the Union, said he believes the development of natural gas as an energy source to replace fossil fuels could generate 600,000 jobs. However, research studies by some economists and others debunk the idea of significant job creation. Barry Russell, president of the Independent oil Association of America, says no evidence directly connects injection of fracking fluid into shale with aquifer contamination. Fracking has never been found to contaminate a water well, says Christine Cronkright, communications director for the dada subdivision of Health. Research studies and numerous incidents of water contamination prove otherwise. In late 2010, equipment failure may drive home led to toxic levels of chemicals in the well water of at least a dozen families in Co noquenessing Township in Bradford County.Township officials and Rex Energy, although acknowledging that two of the drilling wells had problems with the casings, claimed thither were pollutants in the drinking water before Rex moved into the ara. John circus disagrees. Everybody had good water a year ago, Fair told environmental generator and activist Iris Marie Bloom in February 2012. Bloom says residents told her the color of water changed to red, orange, and gray after Rex began drilling. Among the chemicals detected in the well water, in attachment to methane gas, were ammonia, arsenic, chloromethane, iron, manganese, t-butyl alcohol, and toluene. While non acknowledging that its actions could have caused the pollution, Rex did provide fresh water to the residents, but then stopped doing so on Feb. 29, 2012, after the Pennsylvania discussion section of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the well water was safe. The residents absolutely disagreed and represent protests aga inst Rex environmental activists and other residents trucked in portable water jugs to help the stirred families.The Marcellus Outreach Butler blog (MOB) declared that residents lives have been severely disrupted and their health has been severely come toed. To just close the book on probes into their troubles when so umteen indicators point to the accountability of the gas industry for the disruption of their lives is unbelievable . In April 2011, near(a) Towanda, Pa., seven families were evacuated after about 10,000 gallons of sewer water contaminated an farming(a) field and a stream that flows into the Susquehanna River, the result of an equipment failure, according to the Bradford County Emergency concern Agency.The following month, DEP fined Chesapeake Energy $900,000, the largest amount in the states history, for allowing methane gas to pollute the drinking water of 16 families in Bradford County during the previous year.The DEP famed thither may have been toxic methan e emissions from as many as six wells in five towns. The DEP also fined Chesapeake $188,000 for a sacking at a well in Washington County that injured threesome workers. In January 2012, an equipment failure at a drill site in Susquehanna County led to a spill of several thousand gallons of fluid for well-nigh a half-hour, causing electric potential pollution, according to the DEP. In its citation to Carizzo crude oil and Gas, the DEP strongly recommended that the company cease drilling at all 67 wells until the cause of this problem and a solution are identified. In December 2011, the federal official Environmental Protection Agency concluded that fracking operations could be responsible for groundwater pollution.Todays methods make gas drilling a filthy business. You know its bad when nearby residents can light the water coming out of their tap on fire, says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. Whats causing the fire is the methane from the drilling o perations.A ProPublica investigation in 2009 revealed methane contamination was widespread in drinking water in areas around fracking operations in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. The presence of methane in drinking water in Dimock, Pa., had become the focal point for Josh Foxs investigative documentary, Gasland, which received an honorary society Award nomination in 2011 for dandy Documentary Fox also received an Emmy for non-fiction directing. Foxs arouse in fracking intensified when a natural gas company offered $100,000 for mineral rights on property his family owned in Milanville, in the extreme northeastward part of Pennsylvania, about 60 miles east of Dimock. Research by a team of scientists from Duke University revealed methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems that is associated with shale-gas extraction. The data and conclusions, create in the May 2011 issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, historied that not only did most drinking wells near drilling sites have methane, but those closest to the drilling wells, about a half-mile, had an average of 17 times the methane of those of other wells.Some of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturingor liberated by itare carcinogens, Dr. Sandra Steingraber told members of the Environmental saving and Health committee of the advanced York State Assembly. Dr. Steingraber, a biologist and fantastic scholar in residence at Ithaca College, pointed out that some of the chemicals are neurological poisons with suspected links to learning deficits in children, while others are asthma triggers. Some, especially the radioactive ones, are known to bioaccumulate in draw. Others are reproductive toxicants that can contribute to pregnancy loss. An investigation by New York Times musical compositioner Ian Urbina, based upon thousands of unreported EPA documents and a confidential register by the natural gas industry, concluded, Radioactivity in drilling wa ste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways. Urbina learned that wastewater from fracking operations was about 100 times more toxic than federal drinking water standards 15 wells had readings about 1,000 times high than standards.Research by Dr. Ronald Bishop, a biochemist at SUNY/Oneonta, suggests that fracking to extract methane gas is super likely to destroy air, surface water and ground-water quality, to harm cosmos, and to negatively jolt aquatic and forest ecosystems. He notes that potential exposure effects for humans will include poisoning of susceptible tissues, endocrine disruption syndromes, and wondrous risk for certain cancers. Every well, says Dr. Bishop, will generate a bank deposit discharge of approximately eight tons per year into local waterways, advertise threatening federally endangered mollusks and other aquatic organisms. In access to the environmental pollution by the fracking process, Dr. Bishop believes intensive use of diesel-fuel eq uipment will degrade air quality that could affect humans, livestock, and crops. Equally important are questions about the impact of as many as 200 diesel-fueled trucks each day rescue water to the site and then removing the waste water. In addition to the modal(prenominal) diesel emissions of trucks, there are also problems of leaks of the contaminated water.We need to know how diesel fuel got into our water supply, says Diane Siegmund, a clinical psychologist from Towanda, Pa. It wasnt there before the companies drilled wells its here now, she says. Siegmund is also bear on about contaminated dust and mud. There is no oversight on these, she says, but those trucks are muddy when they leave the well sites, and dust may have impact miles from the well sites. Research strongly implicates exposure to gas drilling operations in serious health effects on humans, companion animals, livestock, horses, and wildlife, according to Dr. Michelle Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Dr. Robert E. Oswald, a biochemist and professor of molecular medicinal drug at Cornell University. Their study, published in New Solutions, an academic journal in environmental health, documents evidence of milk contamination, breeding problems, and cow mortality rate in areas near fracking operations as higher than in areas where no fracking occurred.Drs. Bamberger and Oswald noted that some of the symptoms present in humans from what may be soil water from fracking operations include rashes, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, and severe irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. For animals, the symptoms often led to reproductive problems and death. Significant impact upon wildlife is also noted in a 900-page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) conducted by New Yorks Department of Environmental Conservation. According to the EIS, In addition to loss of habitat, other potential direct impacts on wildlife from drilling in the Marcellus Shale include increased mortality . . . altered microclimate s, and increased traffic, noise, lighting, and well flares. The impact, according to the report, may include a loss of genetic diversity, species isolation, population declines . . . increased predation, and an increase of invasive species.The report concludes that because of fracking, there is little to no place in the study areas where wildlife would not be impacted, leading to serious cascading ecological consequences. The impact of course affects the quality of milk and meat production as animals drink and graze near areas that have been taken over by the natural gas industry. The response by the industry and its political allies to the scientific studies of the health and environmental effects of fracking has approached the issue in a manner similar to the tobacco industry that for many years rejected the link between smoking and cancer, say Drs. Bamberger and Oswald. Not only do they call for full disclosure and testing of air, water, soil, animals, and humans, but point out that with lax oversight, the gas drilling manna from heaven . . . will remain an uncontrolled health experiment on an terrible scale.Bibliography of Works Citedhttp//www.marcellusoutreachbutler.org/http//www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/19/the-perils-of-fracking/ www.coalitiontoprotectnewyork.orghttp//psehealthyenergy.net/data/Bamberger_Oswald_NS22_in_press.pdf http//www.scribd.com/doc/97449702/100-Fracking-Victimshttp//www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04natgas.html?pagewanted=all http//steingraber.com/http//frack.mixplex.com/ sate/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-fracking http//www.hydraulicfracturing.com/Pages/information.aspxhttp//www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/http//geology.com/articles/hydraulic-fracturing/