There
are few words in the United States today as heavy as ‘Frack’.
Hydraulic fracturing is an extraction technique in which water is combined with
sand and a series of chemicals then pumped into shale rock containing natural gas
deposits at high pressure. The natural gas is then collected at the surface,
processed then used to heat homes and cook Thanksgiving dinner and even power
the Los Angeles bus system (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/13/local/la-me-buses-20110112).
A fairly straight forward process, right? Wrong. That series of chemical compounds
I mentioned earlier? Well, critics of the process assert that the chemicals in
this compound contain carcinogens, highly flammable agents, and highly toxic
agents. Meanwhile, supporters of the technique look out at North America see a
vast, beautiful, drillable landscape, capable of ending America’s energy woes
for fifty generations (http://www.aei.org/article/economics/benefits-of-hydraulic-fracking/
). And falling short of either of these camps is the majority of the American
population, whose knee-jerk reaction to the term ‘fracking’ is a somewhat
telling lack of reaction. So what are we to believe? That there is an untapped
Saudi Arabia underneath Ohio? That huge energy conglomerates are making people
very sick in the name of profits? That all of this is just sciencey gibberish
and our collective attention should be paid to this week’s episode of American
Idol? Fear not, gentle reader; in this blog post I shall bring the truth behind
hydraulic fracturing to the surface for all to see. You may, however, want to
hold your breath and bring some bottled water.
There
are great arguments in favor of the process. The huge energy potential locked
under North America is the most enticing of these. Industry website, the
American Enterprise Institute chronicled the massive energy potential, saying, ‘In 1990, the USA produced in total 70.706
quadrillion Btu of energy, a number which remained fairly steady through 2006,
when total production was 69.443 quadrillion Btu. After that year, however, as
fracking… became more widely spread, total production of the energy sector
eventually reached 74.812 quadrillion Btu in 2010, accelerating even faster to
78.091 in 2011.’.
Keep
in mind that this is being withdrawn from a finite pool of resources. This increase
would be like getting better mileage the closer your car got to empty. In
addition, industry spokespeople are often fast to point out that there are no
documented cases of fracking causing adverse health effects (http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/29/fracking-doesnt-pose-health-risks/).
Whilst
there has yet to be a documented case of people falling ill due to fracking,
this is mainly due to the fact that there is no medical diagnosis of death by
fracking. There is, however, early onset ovarian cancer, male breast cancer and
a plethora of neurological disorders. That chemical cocktail from before? It contains
compounds known to act as carcinogens
in human beings (http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.3/unpacking-health-hazards-in-frackings-chemical-cocktail).
And that’s just from one of the few companies that have disclosed this
information. In fact, in 2005 energy companies had the clean drinking water act
changed so as to keep from having to disclose which chemicals they use in
fracturing agents and even had an amendment added exempting them from following
ground water contamination protocols. But, as my uncle used to say, ‘,Just
because McDonalds is unhealthy doesn’t mean you should never grill a hamburger!’.
And sure he may have been justifying binge drinking, but the fact still stands.
We don’t know what is being pumped into the ground, so we can’t know it’s all
bad.
The
information available on hydraulic fracturing makes it a somewhat unappealing
option, but not a conclusively unacceptable one. One has to wonder, however, if
the chemical cocktails used by energy companies are harmless, why they fight so
hard to keep the public from knowing what’s in them.
