Hydraulic fracking is a method of drilling to gain oil and natural gas for the use within the U.S.; this process has been used for roughly 65 years. There are layers of rock beds and shale within the Earths surface, all tightly together. When doing hydraulic fracking, a hole is drilled into these layers of rock about a mile or so down. After there has been a hole made about a mile down, the drilling process then gets turned horizontally for a few more thousand feet. After this well is drilled, it gets cemented and cased, and small whole are made on the walls of the horizontal pipe. Through these small holes, a mixture of  water, sand, and other various chemical additives are pumped to create small fractures within the rocks, and then held open by the sand that was added. This process can be seen in the image below.

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In the U.S. right now, there are more than 500,000 natural gas wells that are active. In America, we have been going through an energy revolution; one of the biggest contributors to this revolution is hydraulic fracturing. The U.S. was having a panic at the scarcity of natural gas and oil, but hydraulic fracturing has granted us large amounts of these fuels. Tight rock formations can lock gas inside, making it almost impossible to get it out, but hydraulic fracturing has made it possible.

Aside from getting an abundance of natural gas and oil within the U.S., hydraulic fracturing has also proved to be better for the environment than other methods of getting these fuels. For instance, when the chemical additives are added to the wells, it is for a specific purpose: they reduce friction, and prevent corrosion within pipes. The reduction of friction is a good thing, because it reduces the strain on diesel powered pumping mechanisms, which in turn reduces the amount of emissions into the air. Having pipes that do not corrode is also very good for protecting the environment.

Hydro fracking also caused gas prices to drop significantly from 2007-2013.

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So, yeah, this is all good and great for the environment, correct? Wrong. There are some serious potential dangers of using the hydraulic fracturing method to obtain natural gas and oil from the Earth. In order to bring the water to the drills that will inject it into the well, there needs to be roughly 400 tanks brought, all by large trucks. These 400 tanks average out to roughly 1-8 million gallons of water. The chemicals that are added to the sand and water to create the “fracking fluid” top roughly 40,000 gallons. Within this fluid there are around 600 toxic chemicals, some of which are: mercury, lead, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde, and more… During the process of fracking, the toxic chemicals placed into the watery/sandy mixture can leak out of the wells into nearby groundwater, along with the methane gas itself. One of the articles I’ve read, “Dangers of Fracking”, states that “Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.”  

Over the course of time that hydraulic fracturing has been done, there have been nearly thousands of cases where city drinking water was contaminated with chemicals and methane gas. Drinking this water can pose a lot of health risks, especially neurological damage. The companies doing the drilling attempt to gather all the chemicals back out of the ground, but only half, or less than half, of them can be; the chemicals that are left in the ground are not biodegradable. The fluid that is excreted from the ground is left in giant pits where it evaporates into the air. This can pose issues in a few different ways: 1) when these chemicals are evaporated, they can create acid rain, 2) the chemicals are damaging to the atmosphere, and 3) they contaminate the air we breathe in.

Above is an image of a hydro fracking well site. As you can see, there are two pits filled with chemicals. Link for Image

Above is a closer look at a fracking site’s chemical pool in Springville, Pennsylvania. Link for Image

In the photo above, a woman is lighting her water on fire due to there being a high level of methane gas in it. As you can also see, this is coming directly out of a sink faucet in her own home. Link for Image

This image shows household drinking water containing glutaraldehyde, one of the chemicals added to the fracking fluid in Pennsylvania.
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Yup, please don’t frack with our water.

Well, that’s reassuring….. And these are the same chemicals getting into our groundwater and evaporating into our air.
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So, yes, hydro fracking has a large amount of economic benefits, but when do the economic benefits out-way our health? Yeah, we can have a good economy, we can have low gas prices, and we can have an abundance of gas, but at the same time, we’re killing ourselves…. and our planet.

Reference #1: What is Fracking?

Reference #2: Dangers of Fracking

Reference #3: What is Fracking and Why is it Controversial