The Pros And Cons Of Fracking

One of the most heated debates in the political and environmental areas is the debate over hydraulic fracturing, or more its more colloquial term “fracking”. Fracking is the process by which normally inaccessible hydrocarbon deposits are made available. First a well is drilled down vertically, once the pipe has reached the shale it begins to bore horizontally for thousands more feet. Then, a combination of water, sand, and various chemicals are pushed out of the pipe at up to 9000 pounds per square inch. This frees the natural gas (a hydrocarbon) to then be pumped to the surface. Fracking is a heated subject for debate because of its prospects and its many dangers. This debate not only applies to the federal government but to people in

Although fracking provides hundreds of thousands of jobs, these are a false hope. The average fracking well has a lifespan of 6-8 years. Thus the workers at a fracking well will only have a job for 6-8 years and then be unemployed; many of the fracking well workers only skill set is that which applies to a fracking well. A prominent fracking problem is the health concerns it introduces. The fracking fluid contains ~94.5% water, ~4% sand, and 1.5% other chemicals (What is Fracking, 2015). The purpose of the 1.5% of chemicals ranges from biocides to friction reducer to iron control; and although 1.5% may not seem like much, it accounts for 260,000 pounds of liquid. In this 260,000 pounds of liquid there are a variety of toxins and carcinogens which can easily spill into the water table and contaminate the water for many miles. There are a multitude of events that could cause leak into a water well; even a small leak could cause illness and potentially death for miles around. One example of this occurred in 2011 in Texas; the flowback waste samples showed that the/re was 1.58 ppm (parts per million) of 1,2-Dichloroethane (Ethylene Dichloride). Ethylene Dichloride is a carcinogen and has a variety of other negative effects, in addition, the EPA maximum safety level for ethylene dichloride is 0.005 ppm, this shows that flowback waste was over 300 times the safe levels for ethylene dichloride (EPA Ethylene Dichloride, January, 2000). Another dangerous fluid in the fracking fluid is naphthalene, an aromatic hydrocarbon, which is toxic in a high levels as well as a mild carcinogen (EPA Naphthalene, January, 2000). Other toxins or dangerous chemicals are in fracking fluid are: 1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene (an aromatic hydrocarbon), aldehyde, heavy aromatic petroleum naphtha (a hydrocarbon-petroleum distillate), formaldehyde (a phenolic resin), quaternary ammonium