(Press-News.org) The organic chemicals in fracking fluid have been uncovered in two new studies, providing a basis for water contamination testing and future regulation. The research, published in Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry and Science of the Total Environment, reveals that fracking fluid contains compounds like biocides, which are potentially harmful if they leak into the groundwater.
The authors behind the new study say it's time for the relatively new science to catch up with the extensive public awareness. They say an increasing research focus on contamination from fracking fluid will lead to more attention and regulation in the future.
Fracking is a process used to release oil and natural gas from underground shale rock. It works by injecting fracking fluid - water with chemicals added - at high pressure into wells to create cracks in the rock. When the pressure is released, oil and gas can be recovered.
The fracking fluid comes back out at the surface as flowback water, which can contaminate the surface water and ultimately the groundwater if it is not properly disposed. Fracking companies add certain chemicals to prevent bacterial growth, for example, but until now the precise organic content had not been established. The new studies discuss the organic constituents, providing a way to detect contamination in the water system and proposing methods to recycle the water safely.
"A few years ago we started thinking that this could be a significant environmental water problem," explained Dr. Imma Ferrer, lead author of the research from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. "In some cases, the fluid has leaked from pipes and into groundwater. Before we can assess the environmental impact of the fluid, we have to know what to look for. If we find out what's in it, we can check if the groundwater is contaminated."
Previous studies have examined fracking fluid for inorganic content, including salt and radioactive elements that come from the rock formations. This new research focuses on organic compounds - the bigger molecules that companies add in to the fluid. The researchers combined two main techniques to identify these organic compounds: liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.
The results reveal around 25% of the organic compounds the researchers believe to be present in fracking fluid. This includes surfactants - molecules that are commonly found in soaps - and biocides - potentially harmful compounds that kill microbes in the fluid and the well casing.
"We haven't found everything, but we think these are the most important organic compounds. We've identified the compounds that are necessary to test for contamination in groundwater and drinking water," said Dr. Ferrer.
"It's really exciting because I realized there had been a lot of research done on inorganic compounds, but the organic ones had been left a little bit aside. We now have sophisticated analytical techniques we can use to investigate this relatively new area, and this is really our chance to use these tools to identify as many compounds as we can."
INFORMATION:
Article details:
"Chemical constituents and analytical approaches for hydraulic fracturing waters" by Imma Ferrer and E. Michael Thurman (doi: 10.1016/j.teac.2015.01.003). The article appears in Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry, Volume 5 (February 2015), published by Elsevier.
"Characterization of hydraulic fracturing flowback water in Colorado: Implications for water treatment" by Yaal Lester, Imma Ferrer, E. Michael Thurman, Kurban A. Sitterley, Julie A. Korak, George Aiken and Karl G. Linden (doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.01.043). The article appears in Science of the Total Environment, Volumes 512-513 (15 April 2015), published by Elsevier.
The articles are available for free on ScienceDirect until end June 2015:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214158815000045
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969715000583
After this time copies of the papers are available to credentialed journalists upon request, contact Elsevier's Newsroom at newsroom@elsevier.com or +31 20 4853564.
About Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry
Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry is devoted to publishing concise and critical overviews of the rapid changes and development in the field of environmental analytical chemistry. The acquisition of good quality chemical data in environmental systems and the sound interpretation of this data is the basis for enhancing our understanding of the environment. TrEAC provides timely coverage of the novel and innovative use of analytical methods for the investigation of environmentally relevant substances and problems.
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/trends-in-environmental-analytical-chemistry/
About Science of the Total Environment
Science of the Total Environment is an international journal for publication of original research on the total environment, which includes theatmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, andanthroposphere. The total environment is characterized where these five spheres overlap.
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/stoten
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions -- among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey -- and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.
http://www.elsevier.com
Media contact
Darren Sugrue
Elsevier
+31 20 485 3506
D.Sugrue@elsevier.com
Every third teenager has suffered from one mental disorder and one physical disease. These co-occurrences come in specific associations: More often than average, depression occurs together with diseases of the digestive system, eating disorders with seizures and anxiety disorders together with arthritis, heart disease as well as diseases of the digestives system. These findings were reported by researchers from the University of Basel and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Their results based on data from 6,500 U.S. teenagers have been published in the scientific journal ...
Genetic research helps to explain why tracing the source of an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that claimed four lives has proven to be more complicated than scientists hoped.
A DNA study of bacteria samples taken from patients infected during the 2012 outbreak in Edinburgh shows that it was caused by several subtypes of the bacteria.
The unexpected discovery means that tracing the source of this - and any future outbreaks - will be challenging, researchers say.
There were 92 confirmed or suspected cases during the outbreak in 2012 in addition to the four deaths. ...
AURORA, Colo. (April 8, 2015) - The U.S. Surgeon General should declare that indoor ultraviolet radiation tanning causes skin cancer, according to an article published today by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Robert P. Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus, is the corresponding author of the article, which says there is enough evidence for the Surgeon General to clearly state that use of indoor tanning beds causes skin cancer.
Dellavalle and his co-authors ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Technological advances in recent decades have transformed most aspects of daily life, and technology now plays a major role in business and society. However, little is known about how perceptions of technology might influence decision-making. Now, University of Missouri researchers have shown that people tend to overestimate the likelihood of new technologies' success; this overconfidence can influence important decisions, such as investment choices.
"Technology has advanced to the extent that people may not understand how a particular technology works, ...
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Regardless of their racial, ethnic, educational or socioeconomic background, women seek help for a frustrating -- and ubiquitous -- feature of becoming "a woman of a certain age:" the need be close to the women's room.
Those are the findings of a large study by UC Davis of urinary incontinence in menopausal women, based on data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a nine- year investigation of diverse menopausal women from six sites across the United States. The study is published online today in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The ...
WASHINGTON, April 8, 2015-- A healthcare, industry-first collaborative blueprint for labor and delivery safety, developed by four leading professional organizations in maternal health, calls for improving communication among clinicians, team leaders, administrators, health care providers, organizations, and patients to ensure fewer risks and better outcomes for mothers and babies.
The four collaborating organizations are the American College of Nurse-Midwives; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal ...
Humans carry an average of one to two mutations per person that can cause severe genetic disorders or prenatal death when two copies of the same mutation are inherited, according to estimates published today in the journal Genetics. The new numbers were made possible by a long-term collaboration between medical researchers and a unique community that has maintained detailed family histories for many generations.
"These records offered a fantastic opportunity to estimate disease mutation carrier rates in a new way that disentangles the effects of genetic and socioeconomic ...
A new study has thrown light on how people can become killers in certain situations, showing how brain activity varies according to whether or not killing is seen as justified.
The study, led by Monash researcher Dr Pascal Molenberghs, School of Psychological Sciences, is published today in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Participants in the study played video games in which they imagined themselves to be shooting innocent civilians (unjustified violence) or enemy soldiers (justified violence). Their brain activity was recorded via functional ...
Dengue is a viral infection spread between humans by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Dengue causes flu-like symptoms, including intense headaches and joint pains.
Published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Professor Cameron Simmons, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said that the discovery could lead to improved strategies to reduce the incidence of dengue.
"We did a 'real world' experiment and allowed mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia and uninfected mosquitoes ...
This news release is available in German. You're up in the mountains, the snow is blindingly white, and the sun is blazing down from the sky: ideal skiing conditions - but any skiers carrying the herpes virus might also have to reckon with the onset of cold sores after their day out. Increased exposure to UV radiation releases free radicals in the body. These put the body under oxidative stress, which weakens the immune system. And that in turn allows the herpes virus to prosper.
Oxidative stress has become a major topic; not only is it implicated in many diseases, ...
