the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 2, 2011
Today energy companies promote natural gas as a clean source of energy. But thanks to their new, profitable technique called “fracking,” it’s anything but clean.
In this new process, more than two million gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped through a well under very high pressures to fracture underground rock and release entrapped natural gas. The fracking process may be efficient for them, but it has many damaging effects.
The biggest damage is done by the chemicals used for fracking. These include very harmful chemicals like benzene, a well-known carcinogen, and fluoride, which can cause bone damage.
Thanks to fracking, these chemicals have already ended up in clean water wells and rivers surrounding the drill sites in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia. And health problems and cancer rates have increased among residents living near these wells.
The water used for fracking leaches naturally occurring contaminants from underground soil, like barium, strontium and radioactive radium, and brings them to the surface. This waste water is highly toxic.
“Clean energy”? Tell that to anyone living near one of the 450,000 active wells that have sprung up over the last ten years.
Fracking: another product of capitalism–poisonous for anyone around. But very profitable for the companies.