Fracking Hell: The Untold Story

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An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK's Ecologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains?

Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste.

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.

Waste from Pennsylvania gas wells -- waste that may also contain unacceptable levels of radium -- is routinely dumped across state lines into landfills in New York, Ohio and West Virginia. New York does not require testing waste for radioactivity prior to dumping or treatment. So drill cuttings from Pennsylvania have been dumped in New York's Chemung and other counties and liquid waste is shipped to treatment plants in Auburn and Watertown New York. How radioactive is this waste? Experts are calling are for testing to find out.
New York State may have been the first state in the nation to put a temporary hold on fracking pending a safety review, but it allows other states to dump toxic frack waste within its boundaries.

With a gas production boom underway in the Marcellus Shale and plans for some 400,000 wells in the coming decades, the cumulative impact of dumping potential lethal waste without adequate oversight is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And now U.S. companies are exporting fracking to Europe.

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[Jack Hammer]

Flaming well water was natural, nothing to do with fracing, these uneducated morons will believe anything........

[Jack Hammer]

btw, hypocrite, if you don't like fracing, get off the grid, buy a horse, quit buying clothing and food, for all of it requires hydrocarbons somewhere along the line. Go live in a cave hypocrite.

[jjhollier]

There is overwhelming evidence of the negative consequences of fracking and you still support. A professor at Cornell is less educated than you gas guzzling rednecks. Yeah fn right. Thousands of gallons chemically treated water, millions of pounds of sand that is byproduct of coal, just the cost is ridiculous. Whole towns have seen changes in their surrounding environment. Yet no, there is not problem with it, they are just ignorant. Fucking corpratist sheep.

[jjhollier]

I'd rather have water that's safe to drink before clothing and food.  Which I can think of plenty of ways to feed myself without hydrocarbons. Your comment is just ridiculous.

[Jack Hammer]

you? long term stupid....

[klmartin1962]

LOL. Out of all the wells fraced in over 100 years of oil and gas production, do you know how many water wells were contaminated? Zero. None. There are no instances of any contamination from these methods anywhere in the world. It is by far the least invasive of any completion processes. This whole video is a lie, and the examples used here have been proven fake. They were set up specifically for this video and are a fraud. What idiots.

[Cosmo Ray]

short term gains long term pain.....

[larkwick]

FrackNation on the web for honest investigative journalism on this topic

[larkwick]

this video is spreading BS - with the smooth, believeable voice of the british narator... Lies are lies just the same - this video is filled with BS

[larkwick]

this is scare hysteria - of the one million frack wells there is not one report or evidence to support this propaganda in fact the EPA checked and checked again and found NOTHING to support the claims in this fiction

[Mikey Hartman]

theyve been fracking for 50 years.....ppl are idiots

[Jack Hammer]

true