Why Is Fracking Bad

Fracking is a controversial subject as it is both beneficial and harmful. Fracking is more harmful than beneficial as it causes environmental damage. Fracking is a process used by many large companies. Companies that use fracking are Chevron Corp, ExxonMobil Corp, and ConocoPhillips Co. Fracking is used to retrieve gas from hard to get places by injecting fluid at high pressure to fracture shale rocks and retrieve their natural gas.

Fracking is dangerous to America’s water supply, water quality, and to other resources. Due to fracking America’s water supply and quality could be compromised. Fracking is also a large scale operation. Evidence of how fracking is a large scale operation would be the use of 400 tanker trucks to transport all the

Also a well can be fracked up to 18 times which causes the total amount of water to come out to be 72 trillion gallons of water(What1). 1.8-8 million gallons of water used for fracking are mixed with sand and various dangerous chemicals to create the special fluid needed for fracking(What1). This fluid is called fracking fluid and uses an estimated 40,000 gallons of chemicals for each fracture(What1). Some chemicals applied with water to create fracking fluid are lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde. These chemicals are all toxic to humans. Fracking is actually a simple process as the fracking fluid is drilled 10,000 feet underground by a pipeline(What1). The fracking fluid reaches the end of the well where there is a high pressure region which spews the fluid to cause the shale rock to crack. With the shale rock cracked the natural gas is released. Fracking is simple and is an excellent way to retrieve natural

Veronica went through various nosebleeds, headaches, and nausea due to the fracking sites. Wesley and Beth Howard also live in North Texas and Beth in 2011 was pregnant. All the toxic chemicals and pollution could cause Beth’s baby to be born with a deficiency or an illness. Fracking has been found to release polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which if inhaled by pregnant woman can interfere with the development of their child. These hydrocarbons affect the child’s heart and brain development. Pollutants released by fracking sites give a risk of cancer to the population of towns with fracking sites. Benzene, formaldehyde, diesel particulates and PAH’s are all found in the air nearby fracking sites and cause cancer. Thresholds have been set in an effort to safeguard citizens from the pollutants, which has been found useless as the pollutant levels are too high. Workers working in fracking sites are also in danger. Workers can acquire permanent lung damage form their exposure to the fracking sand which contains