This concern, confirmed by the recent Duke University study, was a principal reason for NYC to call for a ban on fracking in its upstate NY watershed. They did so on the basis of the Hazen and Sawyer study, perhaps still the most thorough independent study done of fracking in the Marcellus shale region. If fracking is too dangerous for NYC's watershed, then why isn't it too dangerous for the whole Marcellus region?
Millions of gallons of toxic wastewater are produced by each fracked well. As reported in a recent New York Times series, this water is a permanent hazardous waste, often containing radioactive residues and other toxins for which there is no satisfactory purification or disposal option: either it will be diluted into surface waters, or injected underground.
Dr. Theo Colburn of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange has identified many of these chemicals not only as carcinogins but as endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors are unusual stealth toxins: tolerable at higher doses, but increasingly dangerous as doses get smaller and smaller, even when not detectable; no safe thresholds have been found.
Not only methane but other volatile organic compounds are emitted in the vicinity of the production and distribution of natural gas, compromising air quality. Ground-level ozone concentrations in rural areas with fracking -- previously pristine, like Wyoming -- now rival those of metropoitan areas.
Until now, deregulation and defunding pushed by the industry have left state and federal agencies unable to effectively monitor gas industry activites, let alone regulate them. By exempting itself from public accountability for its actions, the industry -- ironically -- has only succeeded in undermining its own credibility. So far fracking has not been done safely, and apparently can't be, and there is no "watchful eye."
Some concluding points:
The true long-term harms and costs of natural gas extraction, considered cumulatively, decisively outweigh, in our assessment, any short-term benefits. Yet these direct and indirect costs are conspicuously ignored or dismissed by the industry. Defunding and deregulation have ensured that few objective studies of natural gas extraction have been done, allowing the gas industry to claim, as the tobacco industry used to do, that harms are unproven.
Individually, fracking harms are as well documented as can reasonably be expected. If they have not received the attention they deserve it is because the industry has kept the dots from being connected. But when you connect them, the rationale advanced for public policy promoting natural gas as an energy source using current technologies disappears.
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