Chemistry In the News, Fracking Waste Affects Water Supply

As of September 25^th an article was posted about scientists from Stanford and Duke University discovering that during fracking there is waste-water in which fracking operations either store in man-made ponds, inject underground, or treat and then store back into rivers, which is where the main problem begins. According to Webster Dictionary, fracking is the injection of a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into shale beds at high pressure in order to rise up and free petroleum resources, like oil or natural gas. As known and seen all around the world many people are against this, but why? Well if you’re from a rural area, like I am, you more than likely receive your bath water, drinking water, washing water from a well to which fracking interferes with because in order to frack, large amounts of water is needed. As these professionals are digging into the ground and breaking shale beds, injecting fluid and releasing gas they are breaking into the water lines, or sources underground affecting the line that runs into others wells. Breaking these sources of water from fracking can affect the flow of water into the well but it mainly contaminates the water the water is also contaminated by waste-water, which is the recent news found in the world today. According to these scientists the waste-water placed back into the streams is treated; however this treatment isn’t as affective as people believe. Many of the waste-water that is put back into streams still contain halides, salts like bromide, chloride, and iodide which come from reacting with the disinfectants used in the purification creating disinfection byproducts. Many of these water sources lead into streams which then lead to wells contaminating the water supply of one’s home, a university, or even a town; affecting the water people bath in, wash their surroundings in and worst of all, drink. With all of these drawbacks the article came to the conclusion “researchers recommend that fracking wastewater should not be discharged into surface waters, even when it is treated.” Though fracking is a controversial topic around the world, it is very risky especially for small towns on one source of water. The risk of fracking causes results in the researchers ending proposal of no longer releasing waste-water period. 

Article was posted to Climate Progress website

" http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/25/3572143/fracking-wastewater-health-study/ " is where this information was received.