Contaminated Water Supplies, Health Concerns Accumulate With Fracking Boom in Pennsylvania

[Champion Jack]

As the first official research is published that confirms water contamination by hydraulic fracturing, an alarming amount and array of hazardous chemicals and compounds - including arsenic, chloride, barium and radium - are found in Pennsylvania groundwater.
Shortly after a gas company in Donegal, Pennsylvania, began storing fracking wastewater in an impoundment pit, a water well at a nearby home showed some alarmingly elevated levels of barium and strontium.
The Southwest Pennsylvania home sits within 2,000 feet of the impoundment pit, which began leaking in late 2012, Kathryn Hilton told Truthout. Hilton is a community organizer at the Mountain Watershed Association, a nonprofit dedicated to water conservation in the state's Indian Creek Watershed.
In August, 2012, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) test results showed levels of barium and strontium above EPA standards. "Those are hazardous chemicals that can cause health problems when exposed to for extended periods of time," Hilton said.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22407-contaminated-water-supplies-health-concerns-accumulate-with-fracking-boom-in-pennsylvania#.UyWzkgGzrko.email

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. We are such a self destructive species. Sigh. n/t