Blogs > Don't Frack with New York > Weather Channel Expose Highlights Health Impacts of Fracking

Weather Channel Expose Highlights Health Impacts of Fracking

fracking-the-eagle-ford

InsideClimate News, The Center for Public Integrity and The Weather Channel / Image: Lynn Buehring (Credit: Lance Rosenfield/Prime)
View more images on our Flickr site

InsideClimate News, The Center for Public Integrity and The Weather Channel / Image: Lynn Buehring (Credit: Lance Rosenfield/Prime)

InsideClimate News, The Center for Public Integrity and The Weather Channel / Image: Lynn Buehring (Credit: Lance Rosenfield/Prime)

The Weather Channel – along with Inside Climate News and The Center for Public Integrity – recently unveiled the results of an eight month investigation into emissions of air pollutants and related health impacts from oil and gas drilling using of high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Eagle Ford Shale in southern Texas. Their expose, Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale: Big Oil and Bad Air on the Texas Prairie, focused on the recent drilling boom in the Eagle Ford and its impacts on community members, and underscored the dangers of a rush to frack.

The investigation centered on air pollution, community health impacts, and lax state regulation in the Eagle Ford Shale, a 20,000 square mile region in southern Texas that has seen more than 7,000 oil and gas wells since 2008 with another 5,500 on the way. Residents in communities surrounding fracking activities reported numerous health problems including aggravated asthma and other respiratory problems, migraines, nausea, nose bleeds and chest pains.

According to the report, concerns about health problems related to air emissions from drilling – which can include hydrogen sulfide; carcinogens such as benzene; and volatile organic compounds, which can combine with nitrogen oxides to form ground-level ozone, or smog – are compounded by gaps in state oversight. For example, there are only five permanent air monitors in the Eagle Ford Shale, all far from areas with the heaviest drilling and highest air emissions. Many facilities are also allowed to self-audit air emissions without reporting them to the state. This means that Texas regulators responsible for measuring air emissions and policing violators are largely in the dark about the extent of air pollution in the Eagle Ford Shale.

In distinct contrast to the health impacts that the communities exposed to fracking in the Eagle Ford Shale are experiencing, in another part of the “oil patch” – the Barnett Shale in northern Texas – the CEO of Exxon Mobile is opposing a water tower that will be used to supply fracking operations, citing fears that building the tower next to his property will spoil his view and hurt his property values. He has reportedly sued to stop construction of the water tower in his backyard while communities in southern Texas continue to be exposed to polluted air from fracking on a daily basis.

Tell Gov. Hochul to block invasive species at the Erie and Champlain canals
Become a Member