I found
a peer reviewed article the Environmental Health Perspectives. I related the
article to the one the class read about fracking in Wisconsin. This article
discusses how 68 private drinking wells in Pennsylvania and New York have been
found to be contaminated by methane. This occurred about natural gas drilling
started to occur around those areas. The researchers were measuring for
concentrations of certain isotopes that can be seen in methane and also other
hydrocarbons. This was so the researchers could distinguish between the gases
created from fracking and gases that were created from organic matter. They
found that the wells closer to the drilling sights were more likely to contain
methane that was themogenic. This means that the drilling sights are leaking
into the soil and are contaminating well sights. If this is occurring in New
York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin then there should be enough evidence to
support the stop of fracking.
Holzman, David C. "References." National Center for
Biotechnology Information. U.S. National
Library of Medicine, 01 July 2011. Web. 30
Sept. 2012.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222989/>.
I agree that there is enough evidence to shut down the fracking sites. I read an article saying the fracking companies claim the wells in Wisconsin did not have enough water to take an accurate sample. Although, if researchers found similar results in Pennsylvania and New York the companies should have to stop work until a safer method is discovered.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that there is plenty of evidence that fracking needs to stop! If there is more than one location then it is important to get rid of this quickly! Although there is research being done trying to figure out wether or not contamination is coming from organic matter or fracking if the contamination is being found more closer to drilling sites that is pretty obvious evidence. There really is not any time for law makers to work on this issue in a slow manner considering many people are dealing with contaminated water!
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