Pros And Cons Of Hydro Fracturing

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Hydro-fracturing is a technique that uses pressurized liquid to fracture rock in order to let gas and oil flow more freely through the cracks of rock and make use of these natural resources. Although this technique gets credit for providing a more prolific and efficient method to exploit petroleum, it can also cause a series of serious problems. First of all, Hydro-fracturing should take responsibility for causing more earthquakes at places where it is conducted. The injection of fluid can rise the pressure of pores within rocks and keep pushing faults, and cause earthquakes when faults fail to bear the increasing pressure anymore. According to Ian Randall’s article from Science Magazine, a 3.9 magnitude earthquake occurred near Fox Creek, in northwest Alberta, 2 months after the hydro-fracturing was completed. The findings of researchers suggest that the limitation of retrieving fracking fluid increased the pressure of a fault which stretched down to the crystalline basement. (Ian, Randall.) That is to say, hydro-fracturing can cause risen natural hazard which is bad to human activity and result in economic loss. Secondly, fracking is a highly suspected cause for detrimental influence on citizen’s fitness. On the one hand, fracking pollutes …show more content…

To be specific, according to “REPORT: Five Major Health Threats from Fracking-Related Air Pollution”, the large amounts of methane pollution emitted by fracking can lead to global climate change, and methane can actually accelerate global warming more quickly than carbon dioxide. Also, by Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds forming ozone, local citizens are largely endangered with diseases such as, airway and lung inflammation, heart attacks, stroke, etc. Therefore, the air pollution caused by fracking is detrimental in many aspects, from global level to individual’s health (REPORT: Five Major Health Threats from Fracking-Related Air

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