The Air Pollution Impacts of Fracking
From the RAFF Facebook Page – We thought this important enough to make it permanent here!
The shale gas industry here in the UK has not been open about the threats to the health of people living nearby sites where ‘fracking’ takes place. Of course earthquakes, water and land contamination, industrialisation of the area and the hit that will be taken by the tourism and agriculture industries is of prime importance but the government and councils are not discussing their obligation to ensuring our health is not at risk from their plans:
“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.
The study will be published in an upcoming edition of Science of the Total Environment.
The report, based on three years of monitoring, found a number of potentially toxic petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near the wells including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene. Benzene has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a known carcinogen. Other chemicals included heptane, octane and diethylbenzene but information on their toxicity is limited.”
