Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health

Caitlin Mooney

Mr. Ippolito

2/12/19

Current Event 16

McDonnell, Tim. "Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health." Mother Jones. N.p., 16 Dec. 2018. Web. Feb. 12, 2019. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/heres-what-fracking-can-do-your-health

The article “Here’s What Fracking Can Do To Your Health” by Tim Mcdonnell, explains the problems fracking can cause the environment and humans. Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is the process of drilling into the earth to extract natural gasses. Although this seems to be an easy alternative of oil, many dangerous chemicals like hydrochloric acid and ethylene glycol are being pumped into the earth, while methane and benzene are being released into the air on these sites. Even after the wastewater is contained, there have been many reports of spills. A Colorado study counted 77 fracking wastewater spills that impacted groundwater supplies. Of those groundwater supplies, 90% of them were contaminated with benzene. Not only can groundwater be contaminated but so can drinking water. This happens when the cement casing cracks or leaks, which happens to 2%-50% of fracking wells. according to studies (that the author did not list). Overall this author is trying to spread awareness about the negative aspects of fracking.

In this article, Mcdonnell informs the reader about the dangers of fracking to our everyday society. Because of broken fracking wells methane can get into people's drinking water, even though methane is nontoxic if too much is consumed at high concentrations it will cause death by asphyxiation (when not enough oxygen gets into your lungs). Broken wells also result in flammable faucets nearby fracking sites. Another negative effect on fracking is air pollution near the wells. This has a negative impact on people because some airborne air pollutants like the ones found in one Colorado study are an endocrine disrupter and mess up fetal and early childhood development. Also, some airborne pollutants cause respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

I thought this article was well written and Mcdonnell did a good job explaining the possible reasons fracking can be harmful to someone’s health. But to make this article better I think that Mcdonnell could have listed the studies that found certain information he talked about instead of just saying, many studies found that (information). Also, I think that Mcdonnell could have told the reader more specifics on the process of fracking. But besides those issues, I think that this article was easy to follow and I learned a lot about this nationwide problem. Hopefully, articles like these will be able to raise awareness about the dangers of fracking so production can be stopped before more wells are created.