The UK government's U-turn on fracking is a threat to our health and environment. [Image: Bigstock]

Fracking? Crazy!

8 January, 2016

“Get ready, cousin, because problems are coming your way…”

That was the message from a relative in Colorado, who has been a vocal and active opponent of ‘fracking’, on hearing that the UK will soon begin drilling for shale gas in this way.

In January 2015 Britain imposed a ban on fracking inside national parks under the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government. But with a new government in May things changed. In December 2015 the UK government voted to loosen up restrictions on fracking. The vote, which passed by a slim 37-vote margin, allows shale gas explorers to start fracking at least 1,200 metres (3/4 mile) below the surface of the ground.

Shale gas drillers can now drill horizontally into deposits situated underneath national parks, with the concession that the wellheads must be located outside the national parks.

So we start the New Year with the spectre of fracking – let quietly into the UK through the back door – hovering over our heads. To get an idea of how widespread it could potentially be check out this scary map from the UK group Frack Off.

Climate changing

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking is a process of drilling into Earth – as deep as two miles – and releasing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals that break open, or fracture, the rock and release the gas trapped inside. Campaigners are opposed to this destructive and risky process for a list of reasons that’s too long to go into here. But some of these are pretty compelling.

Natural gas, for example, is mostly methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. And because methane leaks during the fracking process, fracking may be worse for the climate than burning coal.

A threat to our health

And then there’s the health effects. There have been many studies on how the chemicals used in fracking leech into human water supplies. In a recent analysis Yale School of Public Health researchers demonstrated that many of the more than 1000 chemicals used in fracking – such as arsenic, benzene, cadmium, lead, formaldehyde, chlorine and mercury – are linked to reproductive and developmental health problems. More worryingly, the majority of fracking chemicals, nearly 85%, have never been studied for toxicity in humans.

Amazingly the researchers suggest that, because it contains a mixture of toxins, the wastewater produced by fracking may be even more toxic than the fracking fluids themselves. This led the Yale experts to conclude that more focus is needed to study not just what goes down the well, but what comes back up.

And radioactive

Methane isn’t the only gas that leaks from fracking sites. A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that homes located in suburban and rural areas near fracking sites have an overall concentration of cancer-causing, radioactive radon gas that is 39% higher than those located in non-fracking areas.

More shocking still, in 2011 the New York Times obtained thousands of internal documents from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state regulators and fracking companies, which showed: “the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.”

Water wasting

Fracking requires huge amounts of water too. More than 90% of the water used in fracking never returns to the surface. Because this water is permanently removed from the natural water cycle it’s bad news for people, because we need water to, you know, live… and has been bad news for drought-afflicted US states such as Arkansas, California, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and Wyoming.

Earthquakes

In April 2015 the US Geological Survey released a long-awaited report that confirmed what many scientists have long speculated: fracking causes earthquakes. It showed that, over the last 7 years, geologically stable regions of America where fracking is taking place, including parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, have experienced movements in faults that have not moved in millions of years.

Is this our future?

Fracking sells off large chunks of our future for a bit of short term profit today. It’s driven not by public good but by the greed of powerful gas and oil lobbies. If you don’t know much about fracking it’s time to learn (check this cool interactive graphic and watch the movie Gasland). And if you treasure your health, and our national parks, which ARE there for the common good, it’s time to start shouting about this devastating practice.

Pat Thomas, Editor