This is more like

Busted, Part Trois: Tina Casey did not read the USGS report

Estimates put the volume of the Ogallala aquifer at over one million billion gallons of water. It would take some considerate amount of stuff pumped in before we hit a dangerous level.

I am not purposing we damage our water supply, I’m just trying to understand whether this is a real problem or something more like the tinfoil hat panic we’ve seen over floride and smart meters.

“Benzene is among the 20 most widely used chemicals in the United States. It is used mainly as a solvent (a substance that can dissolve or extract other substances) and as a starting material in making other chemicals.

In the past it was also commonly used as a gasoline additive, but this use has been greatly reduced in recent decades.Benzene is also a natural part of crude oil, gasoline, and cigarette smoke.

Benzene is known to cause cancer, based on evidence from studies in both people and laboratory animals. The link between benzene and cancer has largely focused on leukemia and cancers of other blood cells.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety regulations in most workplaces, limits workplace exposure to benzene in the air to 1 ppm (part per million) during an average workday and a maximum of 5 ppm over any 15-minute period.

When working at potentially higher exposure levels, OSHA requires employers to provide personal protective equipment such as respirators.

The EPA limited the percentage of benzene allowed in gasoline to an average of 1% (with a maximum of 5%) as of 1990. As of 2011, this limit is further reduced to an average of 0.62% (with a maximum of 1.3%)

.The EPA limits concentrations of benzene in drinking water to 5 ppb (parts per billion). Some states may have lower limits.

Likewise, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set a limit of 5 ppb in bottled water.”

http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/IntheWorkplace/benzene

A “drop” of benzene in the Ogallala is not likely to hurt us.

Millions of gallons would likely cause some problems.

We don’t know the scale of the problem. I tried to read through the report the claim is based on but my eyes glazed over…

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1197/OF12-1197.pdf

If someone has a good chemistry background perhaps they could translate. Does the report state >5 ppb? Or that trace amounts are staring to show?

Are you a credible source and how would we know?

That’s not an attack, it’s an honest question. I’m befuddled by the lack of a truly objective body who is tracking this problem, or possibly non-problem. I’d love to find a “Consumer Reports” that deals with what is know on a “here’s the facts” basis.

There is hype on both sides of the issue. The natural gas companies refuse to state what chemicals they are using and claim to do no evil. People on the anti-fracking side seem to invent problems at times. I’d really like to know the facts.

I see natural gas as a mixed blessing/curse.

It does release about half as much CO2 per unit electricity genrated as does coal. And does so without the mercury and other pollutants of coal. NG plants are relatively cheap and fast to build. Utility companies are shutting down the worst coal plants (thank you, PBO and the EPA) and replacing with NG generation.

Additionaly, NG plants are highly dispatchable (and suffer a fuel cost). If there’s wind or solar available then the NG plant will get shut down, avoiding CO2 production. Coal can’t be turned on/off quickly and what happens at times is that the coal plant keeps on burning and the wind turbines get ‘parked’.

There’s the leaked methane problem. Possibly/probably fixable. Or at least largely fixable.

Then there’s fracking.

If fracking is screwing up a lot of our water then we’ve got a problem. We might need to put pressure on to stop fracking.

If fracking is screwing up very little of our water then we might want to live with that. We can filter water and after a few years we should be able to remove those chemicals or at least dilute them below the dangerous level.

Best if we mess up no water at all, but if the choice is between a climate ruined for hundreds of years or a small fraction of our water supply contaminated for a decade or two I think we have to vote in favor of stoping runaway climate change.

Facts. I need me some facts….