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To summarize our findings in three words: Fracking is injustice. “Twenty years ago, we called fracking ‘unconventional’ oil and gas extraction. Now fracking is the norm. As of 2022, fracturing techniques have been used on an estimated one million wells across the United States to shatter rock layers with high pressure water and chemicals to extract the oil or gas trapped inside. Fracking now produces at least 79 percent of U.S. natural gas and 65 percent of U.S. crude oil. Fracking has become, in the United States, the standard method for getting oil and gas out of the ground. But despite its ubiquity, the harm caused by fracking and its ancillary infrastructure are not borne equally by all of us. Over and over again the studies show that, throughout the United States, Indigenous communities, communities of color, and low-income communities are disproportionately injured by fracking because well pads, pipelines, compressor stations, flare stacks, LNG terminals, and gas-fired power plants are disproportionately sited in non-white, Indigenous, and low-income communities. Recent data show that U.S. minorities, particularly Blacks and Latinos, including in Colorado, disproportionately live near fracking wells and flare stacks. The harms caused by fracking includes exposure to toxic air pollution. As documented in more than 100 studies, toxic air pollution accompanies fracking wherever it goes. More than 200 airborne chemicals have been detected near drilling and fracking operations. Of these, 61 are classified as hazardous air pollutants, including the cancer-causing chemicals benzene and formaldehyde. Fracking-related air pollutants combine to make ground-level ozone (smog), which causes asthma, stroke, and heart disease. We found that air emissions from fracking and flaring can drift and pollute the air hundreds of miles downwind. In the lower 48 states, just six states produce nearly three-quarters of the nation’s natural gas and onshore crude oil. They are Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. These six states also experience the highest levels of ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution attributable to oil and gas extraction activities. A 2021 study found that the fracking boom in northeastern Colorado was a significant source of toxic and smog-making air pollutants, including benzene and toluene. As documented by more than 180 studies, fracking has depleted or contaminated water resources, including drinking water sources. Studies provide irrefutable evidence that groundwater contamination has occurred as a result of fracking activities. Spills into surface water have profoundly altered the chemistry of streams throughout entire watersheds, increasing downstream levels of radioactive elements, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors. Demand for water to use in U.S. fracking operations has more than doubled since 2016. The water used for fracking that remains in the shale formation is permanently lost to the hydrological cycle. Studies also show that fracking can deplete streams and aquifers in ways that create water scarcity in drought-prone regions of the West. The result is a public health crisis. As documented in more than 100 studies, public health harms now linked with drilling, fracking, and associated infrastructure are well-established. They include cancers, asthma, respiratory diseases, skin rashes, heart problems, and mental health problems. Again, fracking is injustice. Not all people are equally harmed. In Colorado and elsewhere, pregnant women, infants, children, and the elderly experience more severe health problems. Multiple corroborating studies of pregnant women residing near fracking operations across the nation show impairments to infant health. These include birth defects, preterm birth, and low birth weight. Emerging evidence shows harm to mothers, too. New research shows that pregnant women living near fracking sites suffer elevated risks for eclampsia during pregnancy. New research from Pennsylvania shows that older residents living in proximity to oil and gas wells have shorter lifespans. Fracking is also linked in new research to heart disease.
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