Fracking

By University of Colorado, Denver In a new study, researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health have shown that air pollution caused by hydraulic fracturing or fracking may contribute to acute and chronic health problems for those living near natural gas drilling sites. “Our data show that it is important to include air pollution in the national dialogue on natural gas development that has focused largely on water exposures to hydraulic fracturing,” said Lisa McKenzie, Ph.D., MPH, lead author of the study and research associate at the Colorado School of Public Health. ...

By Walter Brasch / Dissident Voice A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking. Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendouspressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels. ...

By Fiona Harvey / The Guardian The biggest meeting on the issue of fracking for shale gas to be held in the UK will take place in Manchester on Saturday in an attempt to set up a broad nationwide coalition to stop the controversial practice. Protest groups have been set up in areas currently affected by shale gas exploration activities or likely to be the sites of fracking in future. ...

By Krishna Ramanujan A new report has found dozens of cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, fish and other wildlife, and humans. It says these conditions could be the result of exposure to gas drilling operations. Hydraulic fracturing, popularly called hydrofracking, is a process for extracting natural gas from shale using chemicals and water. The paper’s authors, Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and veterinarian Michelle Bamberger, DVM ‘85, interviewed animal owners in six states – Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas – and cited 24 cases where animals were potentially affected by gas drilling. ...

By Dave Cooper / Huffington Post While combating dirty fossil-fuel energy sources like coal and shale gas, activists can sometimes find themselves so intensely focused on one issue that they lose track of important developments in other related fossil fuel campaigns. Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB), March 21-28 in northern West Virginia, seeks to build bridges between the long-established anti-mountaintop removal (MTR) campaign in Appalachia and the fast-growing anti-fracking campaign. ...

By Kevin Begos, Associated Press A western Pennsylvania woman says state environmental officials refused to do follow-up tests after their lab reported her drinking water contained chemicals that could be from nearby gas drilling. At least 10 households in the rural Woodlands community, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, have complained that recent drilling impacted their water in different ways. The Department of Environmental Protection first suggested that Janet McIntyre’s well water contained low levels of only one chemical, toluene. But a review of the DEP tests by The Associated Press found four other volatile organic compounds in her water that can be associated with gas drilling. ...

By Hernán Scandizzo, Latinamerica Press Members of the Mapuche community say the Argentine government’s aggressive push to increase energy supplies by allowing oil companies to explore in their lands will cause irreversible environmental and social damage. According to Argentina´s Energy Secretariat, close to 87 percent of Argentina’s energy is generated from fossil fuels. The government agency said that in 1988 Argentina had enough gas supplies for 36 years. But by 2009, this outlook was slashed to seven years. Oil supplies fell from 14 to nine in the same period. ...

By Environment News Service A natural gas drilling rush is on in rural North Dakota. And with it, residents are reporting growing numbers of respiratory ailments, skin lesions, blood oozing from eyes, and the deaths of livestock and pets. Elsewhere, residents of Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming and other states who thought they’d hit the lottery by signing natural gas drilling leases have watched their drinking water turn noxious: slick, brown, foamy, flammable. ...

By Maura Stephens Pennsylvania’s state legislature has effectively signed a death warrant for some number of residents, who knows how many. Corbett’s about to make it official. Pennsylvanians: Fight back — or suffer the consequences. The fracking industry has written a bill that gives itself legal permission to poison Pennsylvanians-and keeps doctors who treat them once they’re poisoned from telling anyone else what poisoned them. The bill also essentially permits all gas drilling and processing activities anywhere, including in residential areas. ...

By Mirel Bran, Guardian Weekly Shukri Hussein was only 23 when he first bought some land, with a friend, to start a farm at Praventsi, a village close to Novi Pazar, in north-east Bulgaria. Ten years later the biology graduate heads a 110-hectare organic farm with a workforce of 35. He was pleased with what he had achieved and had no intention of letting anyone spoil his dream. At the beginning of January he joined thousands of others to protest against plans to explore the huge shale-gas reserves in his region. Their efforts were crowned with success. In June last year the Bulgarian government had granted a permit to the US firm Chevron to prospect across 4,400 sq km around Novi Pazar. ...