Arsenic-Laced Coffee Good for You

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Arsenic-Laced-Coffee-Good-by-Walter-Brasch-Arsenic_Fracking_Health-140919-113.html

Arsenic-Laced Coffee Good for You
By Walter Brasch
OpEdNews Op Eds 9/19/2014 at 07:21:27

~snip~

But the oil and gas industry want you to believe that 99.5 percent of all the fluids they shove into the earth to do horizontal fracturing, also known as fracking, is harmless. Just fresh river water. Move along. Nothing to see here.

As to the other half of one-percent? They tell you it's just food products. Table salt. Guar gum (used in ice cream and baked goods). Lemon juice. Nothing to worry about, they assure you.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in 2013, identified about 1,000 chemicals that the oil and gas industry uses in fracking operations, most of them carcinogens at the strengths they shove into the earth. Depending upon the geology of the area and other factors, the driller uses a combination of fluids--perhaps a couple of dozen at one well, a different couple of dozen at another well. But, because state legislatures have allowed the companies to invoke "trade secrets" protection, they don't have to identify which chemicals and in what strengths they use at each well. Even health professionals and those in emergency management aren't allowed to know the composition of the fluids--unless they sign non-disclosure statements. Patients and the public are still kept from the information.

What is known is that among the most common chemicals in fracking fluids, in addition to arsenic, are benzene, which can lead to leukemia and several cancers, reduce white blood cell production in bones, and cause genetic mutation; formaldehyde, which can cause leukemia and genetic and birth defects; hydrofluoric acid, which can cause genetic mutation and chronic lung disease, cause third degree burns, affect bone structure, the central nervous system, and cause cardiac arrest; nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, which can cause pulmonary edema and heart disease; radon, which has strong links to lung cancer; and toluene, which in higher doses can produce nausea, muscle weakness, and memory and hearing loss.

Each well requires an average of three to eight million gallons of water for the first frack, depending upon the geology of the area. Energy companies drilling in the Pennsylvania part of the Marcellus Shale, the most productive of the nation's shales, use an average of 4.0--5.6 million gallons of water per frack. That's only an average. Seneca Resources needed almost 19 million gallons of water to frack a well in northeastern Pennsylvania in 2012; Encana Oil & Gas USA used more than 21 million gallons of water to frack one well in Michigan the following year. A well may be fracked several times (known as "restimulation&quot , but most fracking after the first one is usually not economical.

[djean111]

1. Assholes.

[glinda]

2. The disease MDS is near impossible to treat and results from Benzene exposure.

Leukemia and other related bone and blood diseases are rising when once they were more rare. I know about this since my father is dying from it. It is not pretty.