Check out this article posted by ProPublica Wednesday.
It gives a detailed report of all the chemicals used in the fracking process. It breaks them down in categories of the Most Commonly Found, Serious Health Hazards and Just Plain Weird. A detailed and insightful piece.
In some states, oil and gas companies are required to report when and where they are fracking, even the chemicals being used. But in California, no such regulation exists.
http://www.ewg.org/release/california-regulators-turn-blind-eye-fracking
According to researchers at Penn State’s College of Agriculture and Sciences, evidence has suggested there may be a link between natural gas development and a drop in dairy production in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale region.
Reports have indicated that natural gas development in the region has caused farmers in the area to leave agriculture altogether once they receive money from gas industries. At the moment this is mere speculation, because there is little existing data that measures natural gas development’s real impact on agriculture, Farm and Dairy reports.
Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics, examined county-level changes in dairy cattle numbers and milk production between 2007 and 2010. Kelsey found that changes in dairy cattle seem to be associated with drilling activity.
“Counties with 150 or more Marcellus Shale wells on average experienced a nearly 19 percent decrease in dairy cows, compared to only a 1.2 percent average decrease in counties with no Marcellus wells,” he said.
Kelsey thinks it is important to be aware of how fracking affects farming because agriculture plays such a large economic, environmental and social role in the Marcellus region.
Kelsey is adamant that additional research must be completed to find conclusive answers. He believes the research should investigate whether farmers who receive lease and royalty payments use gas-related income to improve their farms, or simply abandon them.
Hydraulic fracturing, also called “fracking,” is a method for extracting natural gas from deep shale formations. On paper, the fracking process is relatively simple. First, a well is drilled over 5,000 feet into the ground. Then, a mixture of sand, water and chemicals are pushed into the well at extremely high pressures. The pressure forces the shale to fracture, which allows the natural gas to flow out of the well for removal. Fracking is a controversial issue because although it has the potential to reduce our reliance on foreign oil, it can also cause serious harm to the environment.
Fracking Curation project 