More than 35% of North Dakota’s natural gas production is being flared/not marketed, due to insufficient pipeline and processing capacity, the US Energy Information Agency reports.”The percentage of flared gas in North Dakota is considerably higher than the national average; in 2009, less than 1% of natural gas produced in the United States was vented or flared. No doubt, many of the effects on animals recorded in this video are from gas flare byproducts, as well as from open waste fluid pits and condensate tanks. This breaks my heart.
From Texan Sharon's excellent blog. here are the results of the private air testing done in the Bakken on the farm in that video. The State has no facilities to test for this wide range of chemicals that keep turning up again and again around our homes, schools and hospitals. There are the links to the health effects caused by each chemical.
I don't know about you, but I find this both depressing and frightening that people and their animals are expected to live in, bathe in, eat, drink and breathe in a sea of noxious pollutants but appear to have no protection or comeback with regards to this industry.
Ventura County, CA, has determined that flaring gas results in emissions of benzene, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, including naphthalene), acetaldehyde, acrolein, propylene, toluene, xylenes, ethyl benzene and hexane. http://www.aqmd.gov/prdas/
A Duke University study published in May found that methane levels in dozens of drinking-water wells within a kilometer (3,280 feet) of new fracking sites were 17 times higher than in wells farther away. Yet states have let companies proceed without adequate regulations. States are flying blind. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now conducting comprehensive field research. Preliminary results are due in LATE 2012. Until then, states should put the brakes on the drillers, especially as the massive glut in gas production results in these dangerous flaring practices.
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