Fracking

Fracking: A Silent Death Sweeps Across the World
By Carolanne Wright

Farmland is tainted. Drinking water is flammable. And humans along with animals are sick.
The cause? Fracking.
It’s terrorizing the environment, destroying the health of those who live close to the sites and contaminating the food supply. With more than 600,000 fracking wells and waste injection locations around the country, if this practice is not contained soon, clean water and food will become a distant memory.
What exactly is fracking? It’s a technique used by the oil industry to facilitate the flow of natural gas or petroleum by injecting mass amounts of noxious liquid deep into the earth. The chemicals used in fracking (benzene, arsenic, ethylene glycol, lead, formaldehyde, toluene, Uranium-238, Radium-226, to name a few) devastate the land and water within proximity to the poisonous injection sites. Even more alarming, the toxins are also linked with birth defects, cancer, autism, kidney failure and autoimmune disorders.
Water on Fire
One of the more dramatic illustrations of fracking contamination is water catching fire straight our of the faucet. Seriously. The methane levels are so high, tap water becomes combustible. Not only does fracking ruin the land and water, but it also infuses livestock and plants with toxins that eventually enter into the food supply. Farmers who live close to fracking wells have become seriously ill, animals die.
One example is seen with Marilyn and Robert Hunt, farmers in West Virginia. Goats, chickens and cattle are raised on their 70-acre organic farm. The Hunts turned down an offer from the Chesapeake Energy Corporation to lease their minerals rights. This didn’t prevent Chesapeake from “stealing gas from both sides of our property,” according to Mrs. Hunt in the Organic Consumers Association article, “Fracking our Farms: A Tale of Five Farming Families.” Then, in 2010, the company received a permit to dispose fracking waste on her land. She recalls, “The water got little white flecks in it, and we started to get sick. We lost a whole lot of baby goats that got gastrointestinal disorders from drinking the water.” Curiously, the cattle were spared any adverse effects. Mrs. Hunt believes this is due to the fact that the cattle drink from an uncontaminated spring high on the property.

Susan Wallace-Babb, a Colorado rancher, has also suffered from fracking. In 2005, she breathed in fumes from an overflowing natural gas tank half a mile from her property. She collapsed, unconscious. The next morning, Susan was violently ill with severe diarrhea and uncontrollable vomiting. Within a few days, a burning rash broke out over her body, lesions soon followed. Her symptoms became worse whenever she went outdoors. A year later she moved to a small town in Texas. Susan’s health improved over the course of three years until Exxon began fracking wells 14 miles away. Her symptoms returned within a few short months.
End the Madness
Until farmers refuse to lease their land to fracking operators, the problem will continue to escalate. In an effort to educate fellow ranchers about the dangers of fracking, Jacki Schilke of North Dakota, warns, “They’re here to rape this land, make as much money as they can and get the hell out of here. They could give a crap less what they are doing here. They will come on your property look you straight in the eye and lie to you.”
For those who find fracking unacceptable, a petition to ban the practice in the United States can be found here.
To learn more, the Dangers of Fracking website offers unique animated information.


5 Fracking Consequences You’ve Never Heard About
trueactivist

We know fracking isn’t exactly the safest of practices. We’ve heard of its propensity to pollute our air and drinking water and thereby raise human health concerns. The media, however, isn’t talking about the massive sinkholes pockmarking the nation, the radiation leaks, and other lesser known but no less earth-shattering effects of fracking.
Here are 5 other consequences of fracking you may not have heard of until now.
1. Methane-Spewing Geysers
Fracking is the act of pumping water and chemicals underground in order to facilitate the flow of oil or gas.
It’s not terribly hard for a giant corporation like Shell or Chesapeake Energy Corporation to start fracking wherever the company pleases.  Regulators don’t even require drilling companies to search the area for abandoned wells. This is why unplugged, forgotten wells—like Butters well in Pennsylvania’s Tioga County, drilled in 1932 —literally burst with gas when drilling displaces underground pockets of methane. As it turns out, Shell knew about Butters well—just not if it was plugged.
Abandoned wells aren’t the only ways disrupted gas escapes. Cracks in the ground can also emit this highly flammable gas.
2. Your Land is my Land
One Chesapeake employee was recorded saying, “If properties don’t want to sign, if we have 90 percent secured of the well that we need, we have the power to put these people in the lease without their permission.  …  We can do whatever we want.”
 
3. Milk Production Dips
If water is contaminated, so too will be crops…and livestock. Despite the compensation given to farmers for leasing their land to fracking companies, dairy farmers may be doing themselves a considerable disfavor. According to university researchers, milk production decreased by 19 percent in Pennsylvania’s counties with 150 or more Marcellus Shale wells compared to a 1.2 percent decrease in counties with no wells.
Related Read: 8 Dangerous Chemicals Used in Fracking
4. Contaminated Wine
Fracking-derived groundwater pollution doesn’t just mean contaminated drinking water (although that’s a concern enough that the EPA has finally admitted it). Dirty water means dirty crops, and even dirty wine.
Simon Salinas, a member of Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors, says in response to Venoco’s prospective drilling in the vineyard-rich county, “Anything that can taint our water and food supply could be devastating to our economy.” It doesn’t help that Monterey already competes with Napa and Sonoma wine, and proximity to fracking activity would do nothing for the region’s marketability.
One winery in Brooklyn, NY, even hosted an anti-fracking benefit. “Many of our wine bar’s seasonal menu items include ingredients grown on upstate farms,” the winery’s web site read.
5. Contaminated Food, Stillborn Calves and Poisoned Animals
Not even the all-American burger (grassfed or not) is sacred from the dangers of fracking. Fracking fluid consumption killed 16 cows in Louisiana, and hundreds of others raised near fracking sites are being reported affected. When 28 beef cattle in Pennsylvania were exposed to fracking fluid recently, 8 of 11 calves birthed thereafter were stillborn.
Many doctors are protesting fracking, and direct contamination via the air and water mustn’t be the only considered contributors to fracking-related cancers. We are what we eat, after all, and fracking as of yet seems to be little more than just another inventive way to slowly poison the earth and ourselves. The greater problem lying in energy consumption, however, will make resolution difficult.
Where do you stand?