Emily Herrmann
Hepting
AP Lang P.5
14 April 2016
How to Stop Our Fracking Problems
For more than 60 years the United States and the world have been fracking. We have been fracking so much that the world production of shale beds has gone up from one percent to twenty-five percent. Fracking is a process that involves the releasing of oil and gas from underground formations that are otherwise to difficult to mine.Fracking creates fractures that extend from wells into oil and gas formations by pumping highly-pressurized fluid, such as; water, sand, ceramic beads, and a mixture of chemicals, into the oil or gas formation. As this fluid holds the underground fissures open, oil and gas flow up the well to the surface.A congressional Democrat …show more content…
In “Fracking is Destroying Our Groundwater” by Tracy Carluccio, The deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network,she explains how the harmful toxins used in fracking get into people’s drinking water and land.”Fracking disturbs, distributes, and carries upward with the fracked gas ‘produced waters’ containing radioactive materials, heavy metals, hydrocarbons such as BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and toluene), bromide, highly concentrated salts, and many other organic and inorganic compounds that, when exposed to our environment, are dangerous health hazards--many are known carcinogens and toxic to biological life,” (Carluccio). When these toxins get into a humans system the effects can be deadly. BTEX, can cause harmful effects on the central nervous system. When this hydrocarbon enters into a plant’s nervous system, it completely wipes it out; kIlling plant life and making humans ill. Fracking causes chemicals to get into the underground water areas that both plants and humans use to stay alive. Our basic necessity, water, is becoming infected by side effects of fracking that is incurable. Fracking is not a good idea when it kills our most important need for human life by making it into the thing that kills us.Cleanup of drinking water …show more content…
Silicosis is one of a family of dust-induced occupational ailments that imposed $50 million medical care costs in the United States in 2007. While these workers have volunteered for these health effects with the job, what about civilians who were forced to stay in their houses near fracking sites? Where is there justice for breathing in these harmful dusts from the air? In fact, Residents living near fracking sites have long suffered from a range of health problems, including headaches, eye irritation, respiratory problems and nausea – potentially imposing economic costs ranging from health care costs to workplace absenteeism and reduced