How Fracking Is Exposing People to Radioactive Waste, Far Away from Drilling Sites

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/fracking-can-expose-you-radioactive-waste-even-youre-far-away-drilling-site



There isn’t a lot of good news about fracking lately. Another train with volatile fracked crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale exploded in Lynchburg, Virginia igniting a ball of fire on the surface of the James River. Accidents involving these “ bomb trains” are becoming commonplace. So are recent studies indicating serious health risks from fracking and reports linking fracking to earthquakes.

With all that press you may have missed another cause for alarm: radiation risks. The oil and gas-drilling boom, aided by the practice of fracking, has unleashed some potentially scary radioactive stuff into our environment.

Fracking involves injecting large quantities (sometimes millions of gallons) of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure deep underground to break apart shale and release trapped hydrocarbons like oil and gas. But the process can also bring to the surface water that is laced with naturally-occurring radioactive materials that were underground. In small, dispersed quantities low-level radiation is not life threatening, but what happens when those quantities start increasing in the environment, and getting into the water we drink, the fish we eat, and the soil in which our food grows?

Scientists are trying to figure that out. But it’s a difficult process to track since fracking isn’t regulated under most federal environmental laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. That means industry is charge of policing itself a lot of the time.

[quaker bill]

1. Pretty much any sort of mining

produces waste with elevated radiation levels. There is nothing particular about fracking that produces more of it than other types of mining or drilling, other than the fact that there is a lot of fracking going on right now.

Coal mines produce radium, phosphate mines produce radium, strontium, and uranium (as well as other less common radiation sources). Most hard rock mines will produce radiation of some sort at some level.

The levels are generally not particularly harmful, but could be if concentrated, discharged to drinking water sources, or otherwise applied to land surfaces. The deposits are natural, it is only bringing them to the surface which is potentially harmful. Proper landfilling is the right choice here. Put it back where it came from.

[GoneFishin]

2. Pumping millions of gallons of water into radioactive material is an ideal way to spread

radioactivity far away from the drill site, unpredictably and chaotically polluting any and every facet of our environment and food chain.

So fracking has that going for it. Awesome.

[FogerRox]

3. naturally-occurring radioactive materials or Radioactive Waste?