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Q1. If a tanker-load of chemicals is spilled in the forest, and no officially accredited observers are there to document it, did the spill ever occur?
A1. Not if it happened on a gas well pad!
Q2. If a lateral crack forms in the side of an underground aquifer while a gas well is being drilled a mile away, did the drilling activity cause the ruin of that aquifer?
A2. No; the pathway will never be proven because no one has both the resources and the desire to carry out that kind of investigation.
Q3. If the carcinogen 4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide (4-NQO) suddenly turns up in a river near the discharge pipe of a municipal waste treatment plant which accepts gas well flowback fluids, did the carcinogen come from those flowback fluids?
A3. No. Energy companies don’t use 4-NQO as an additive, and they’ve never studied how it is formed underground from the chemicals they do use. And they won’t disclose what those chemicals are.
Q4. When people living downwind of a “holding pond” develop nosebleeds, rashes, labored breathing, nausea, unexplained weight loss and mental confusion, could their symptoms be due to the volatile organic compounds wafting from the pond’s surface?
A4. No. There’s nothing in those ponds but “water, cuttings, sand, soap and canola oil”.
Each of these four questions represents a group of real-life incidents, and they point to extreme avoidance of full-body contact with the truth by energy companies and the regulators who coddle them.
I and scientists like me are trying to strip away the fog, but we should all recognize that the fog is still there. I have yet to witness full disclosure — or anything even close — of chemicals used, incidents which should have been reported, or accurate handling of the statistics regarding those that were reported.
Until some of this clears up, no scientist, no matter how diligent, can claim to have “the objective science”. My $0.02 worth…
Ron Bishop
Tags: science
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