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December 08, 2014 06:34 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 10 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

And, after all, what is a lie?
'Tis but the truth in a masquerade

–Lord Byron

Comments

10 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread

  1. Surprise, surprise!

    The boom in the extraction of oil and natural gas continues across large swaths of the U.S., but not without resistance. Many environmental groups oppose fracking — which uses a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals to unlock hydrocarbon reserves in shale rock — even as the industry maintains that processes like fracking are safe.

    Still, more than 15 million Americans now live within one mile of such oil and gas operations.

    A research paper published Friday in Reviews on Environmental Health pulls together findings from studies that have investigated links between exposures to chemicals associated with fracking — and, in some cases, proximity to fracking operations — and developmental and reproductive problems in animals and humans, including reduced semen quality and increased risk of miscarriage, birth defects and infertility. While the report doesn't provide any new data, the authors say the compilation builds a more compelling case for such connections.

    Among the more than 750 chemicals known to be used in fracking, at least 130 may carry the potential to mess with the natural hormone messengers responsible for critical processes such as sleep, metabolism, growth and reproduction. Even in very small concentrations — say, a couple tablespoons in an Olympic-sized swimming pool — these endocrine disruptors have been shown capable of derailing normal brain and sexual development, diminishing the immune system's ability to fight disease, and other effects. These could be subtle, experts warn, but the life-long consequences could be profound.

    Endocrine disruptors have made headlines in the last few years, as scientists increasingly tie exposures to the chemicals — which commonly lace plastics, herbicides, non-stick fry pans and other consumer goods — with potential harms such as obesity, diabetes and breast cancer.

    But it has been the acute, more obvious health concerns that have drawn the most attention in the fracking debate. A study published in September, for example, found that people who lived close to fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania were more likely to suffer skin and respiratory symptoms compared to those who lived further away. Another study conducted in Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wyoming, and published in October, warned of wells releasing cancer-causing chemicals at levels several-fold greater than federal limits.

    Republicans want a Fracking Free Market and a toothless EPA and let the cancer chips fall where they may.

    1. Yet the city of Greedy (Greeley) has no problem allowing these sites within 500' of schools.Low-income apartment managers don't even know what is spewing out into the air next to their buildings. 

      It's why we need regulations with teeth in them, and people willing to enforce the rules.

    1. I see how old this piece is, denverco, but nothing has changed. It's as accurate now as it was then. Printing this to share with my wife, who left the Repubs right about the time we met (In the late Reagan era), or as she says, "the Republicans left me."

  2. Oil and gas execs, backed by Sentinel and Rick Wagner's whelp over at the good-old-boys patronage farm CMU, are saying there is room for another 10000 wells in the heart of sage grouse and America's 'mule deer factory' if only we can grease the skids to ship it off to China so we can get the consumer cost back up. 

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