BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

what do they do with the radiation?

The author of the page you linked to seems to be confused.

He quotes a company press release that says the company uses "chemical treatment and filtration" at that plant, and that "no water will be discharged into rivers and streams in the process". Their whole process appears to use distillation. It looks to me like they treat and filter water, then distill it (maybe at a different plant).

Somehow he then summarizes this as "Let's attempt to distill what this means.

They take poisonous liquids from hydraulic fracturing.

They mix it with enough fresh water to meet the standards.

They pour the new diluted poison/water mix back into the water table." But that's not even close to what the company says it's doing. Perhaps he's confusing distillation with dilution?

Of course, it's possible the company isn't doing what it says it's doing. And their process seems to leave the bad stuff in that "99.7% pure salts for water softening". I'm guessing some of those "salts" wouldn't be anything you'd want to add back to anyone's water. (I'd imagine some of those salts could be a wee bit radioactive.)

But there's zero evidence in their press releases that they're doing anything like what this guy's claiming.

Steven's right - The companies press releases say they aren't just diluting then returning.

Of course, it's possible the company isn't doing what it says it's doing.

But wouldn't free market forces combined with fair and balanced reporting prevent companies like this one from lying in press releases?

Vannevar: there is another thread discussing some of the histroy behind the montour trail and fracking:

http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/marcellus-shale-andbikes

I would be interested in knowing if this water remediation plant is on Montour Trail property. If this were the case the Montour Trail Council members who approved leasing the property should also be held accountable for any environmental accidents that occur.

nick - the radiation... it depends what radioactive isotopes they're dealing with, how much radiation is involved - but it's very easy to have radioactive contamination that is measurably radioactive when isolated, but when compared to background levels of radiation (what the planet in that particular place already had before we mucked it up), it's indistinguishable and thus the radiation alone isn't a factor (that's not to say the chemicals in question aren't an issue, just that radiation could be a red herring).

My house, made of local sandstone from a quarry down the road, is slightly more radioactive than my neighbor's house, made of local brick, which is slightly more radioactive than their neighbor's house with clapboard siding. This is like comparing the relative weights of three, two, and one grain of sand. One can do it, but it is pointless.

I'm not saying that's the case with fracking fluids. But I've never seen contamination levels (pcuries? ncuries? not sure what the nice units would be) or mrem/hr levels associated with the water, drilling sites, or dumping sites. I'd love to see meaningful numbers (with units) on that. Those numbers should be publically available, given the controls on radioactive substances that exist in this country.

There's some data in this NY State report from last month. Local papers and the NY Times covered it, but skipped over most of the technical data.

They assert the NY waste water is safe:

Gas well samples included 43 brine (salty waters brought to the surface as a by-product of gas production), 10 scale, two sludge, two water and one soil sample. Only two brine and one scale sample indicated radium isotope concentrations that were greater than 5.0 picocuries per gram (pCi/g) total radium (pCi/ml for liquid samples such as brines). The brine radium results, 0.95 and 24 picocuries per milliliter (pCi/ml) for one sample, and 3.8 and 7.7 pCi/ml for the other (Ra-226 and Ra-228 respectively), pose no threat to public health or the environment. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of road disposal of the brine with the U.S. Department of Energy's (USDOE) Residual Radioactive Material Guideline computer model (RESRAD). The scale result, 11 pCi/g for Ra-226 and 3.8 pCi/g for Ra-228, also poses no threat to public health or the environment due to the low amount of scale deposited in gas plant piping.

An earlier study looked at waste water from North Sea drilling, and found far higher levels of radiation:

The New York State NORM [Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials] concentrations were significantly lower than the North Sea samples, which generated some concern (Smith, 1987; Waldram, 1988). Scale samples from the North Sea oil fields contained Ra-226 at concentrations between 2,000 and 30,000 pCi/g (New York State samples ranged from none detected to 11 pCi/g). Sludge samples contained Ra-226 from 100 to 1,300 pCi/g (from 0.2 to 7.4 pCi/g in New York State). Hence, the North Sea scale samples were more than two orders of magnitude greater, and the sludge samples more than one order of magnitude greater, than those found in New York State.

The article also mentions some earlier PA testing that found levels even lower than in NY.

The company mentioned in the original link removes salts from the waste water. Some of the salts are used for salting roads in the winter. The NY report talks about that:

The wastes from oil and gas drilling operations may contain low concentrations of elevated NORM. Of these wastes, the highest concentrations of radium were found in brines. To determine if disposal methods of these wastes may be of concern to the general public, the BPR [Bureau of Pesticides and Radiation] used USDOE's RESRAD modeling program. The modeling showed that the most common method of brine disposal in New York State, spreading it on the roads to control ice and snow, does not present significant doses to the public. This is true even if it is assumed that all brines contain the highest concentration of radioactivity detected. The resulting dose from this worst-case scenario was estimated at slightly less than 3 mR/year - well below the 10 mR/year standard presented in DSHM-RAD-05-01. RESRAD modeling also showed that abandoned sludge and sediment pits (an unauthorized practice that nevertheless occurs) do not pose any significant dose to the public.

Of course, even if the samples in NY don't show a significant danger, we should test and keep testing PA samples.

I headed West out Noblestown Rd on Saturday. Right next to Settler's Cabin Park I rode through a blasting zone (signs read "turn off two way radios and cell phones). It's totally speculation, but I was wondering if this was related to fracturing, because I couldn't see anything on the surface they'd likely be blasting. Further West, near Joffe / Bulger, I saw what I'm pretty sure was a well being drilled on the surface. Both of these spots were within sight of the Panhandle Trail.

Please don't flip out on the radiation stuff. These are very minor sources.

xkcd on radiation

@stu xkcd on radiation

That is the most useful radiation chart I've ever seen

xkcd is one helluva comic.

@ejwme. I understand most radioactive efflux from fracking is radon gas. Do the regulations cover "natural" products like that?

Radon gas is natural. The release of the gas may not be. With fracking the release of radon is not natural.

(Radon gas is a gaseous element that is a product of the radioactive decay of uranium by way of radium. The radium226 mentioned in Steven's excellent information decays to radon gas.)

The NY data uses picocuries per gram, while the xkcd chart uses Sieverts, but unfortunately they're not directly comparable. The former tells how many disintegrations occur per second, while the latter measures how much radiation harms the body. Converting requires a factor that accounts for the type of radiation, and some computation to determine how much of the energy will be deposited per unit volume, according to this Washington state Dept of Health PDF.

It's good that radiation doesn't seem to be an issue. We wouldn't want to risk some unscrupulous business dumping radioactive drilling waste into our precious rivers. It might contaminate the untreated sewage we already dump there every time it rains a lot....

Even if the radioactivity issue in frac water is a red herring. You still have on aggregate no small amount of all this stuff:

which conventional wastewater treatment or desalination is not equipped to remove.

Fixed link: http://www.pagaslease.com/pdf_downloads/RR-fracfluid-08-12-04.pdf

The Wikipedia page on desalination mentions that there's more than one method of desalinating water. The one on distillation mentions that this technique can be used as part of a process to produce what they call "ultrapure water". You have to include a step for each contaminant you want to remove, it seems, so the trick is to design a process so you can do as many steps as possible each time you heat up the water.

I'm guessing it's technically possible to extract very pure water, even from fracking fluid, if you built a sophisticated enough plant and don't mind expending a large amount of power. Is the company located on the trail doing that, or some more economical compromise that leaves behind some of the junk in Ted's list? Their press material seems to be referring to the sort of processes they'd need to do it right, but I think you'd need to go down Ted's list one by one, and check what they do about each particular compound. Then make sure the oil company doesn't change its formula to include something your treatment plant wasn't built to handle.

bwahahahahahaha 3mRem/yr. You get more than that walking past a chemo patient in the grocery store. Sorry.

Yeah, the radiation levels in the water don't look like an issue. But the chemicals in the water, and the salination, is a HUGE issue. Normally I get really pissed off with riled up uneducated people flying off the handle ... but if that is a resource that can be harnessed to get fracking as a whole ACTUALLY looked at seriously from a public health standpoint, I'm all for it.

I'm not usually a hater, but I hate sieverts. I also can't stand slugs, or leagues. Interestingly enough, I like the unit drachms. But most people don't understand them (thus the fantastic xkcd chart). This could be funny.

Just 1 league from here there's 2 slugs of a substance containing 50 pico curies, leaking 0.5 fluid drams onto the ground a day! We could all be exposed to a nano Sievert each day! Oh Nos! What The Hell Does That Mean?!?!?!?! RUN AND BUY BOTTLED WATER AND FOIL HATS.

Your gas company is turning that swimming hole behind your house into a saltwater cess pool. But it's ok, 'cause you'll get a couple hundred a month for it. Just keep telling the kids to quit drinking it. It's just salts and chemicals, and they never hurt anybody.

How far away is that in cubits?

And what gauge foil should I use?

It isn't necessarily the radioactivity, but many of the radioactive isotopes are toxic (carcinogenic) chemicals in addition to their radioactivity. Cesium gets incorporated into muscle, iodine in the thyroid, strontium in your skeleton, thorium and uranium in skeleton, liver, kidneys, and lungs. When these elements are radioactive and building up in there, the radioactivity sticks around in your body. This is why the irrational folks have been buying up KI tablets lately (though I'm sure they don't really understand why).

Not sure what elements are being released into our water, and I don't have time to read all those reports right now, but it isn't the background radiation that would concern me.

How far away is that in cubits?

More importantly, how long would it take an unladen swallow to fly there?

Mick - I just noticed I never answered your question about the radon gas and whether that's regulated.

I honestly don't know about the regulations of things that occur naturally that are released. I could see an argument along the lines of "but how are we supposed to control it when it's just naturally there?" What you'd be concerned about with radon is the concentration - it's why leaky old houses that have had no radon issues, but are then insullated and sealed for "weather proofing" or energy efficiency then might not pass the test next sale.

dwillen - that's exactly why I'm concerned that this radiation thing is being used... The steps could go like this:

1. Bad things, like salination, chemicals, and radiation are involved.

2. Public notices radiation and freaks out.

3. Corporations explain radiation is from radon, a naturally occuring element that is safe in low amounts and dissipates quickly to harmless levels.

4. Public accepts answers and landowners take "free" money, ignoring the harmless "salt" portion of the pollution, and the too difficult to understand "chemicals" portion.

it's complicated. it's involved. there's chemistry, and geology, and conflicting reports, and nobody who has the time has the understanding, nobody with understanding has time or clout, the people with the clout and money live far far away from the situation and may understand it and simply not care. As a result, nobody knows what's going on except people who don't care, and it's continuing anyway.

The appropriate thickness of foil for this situation is a decibarleycorn, or 0.1 barleycorns. The tolerance is +/- 5 mickeys. However, due to the dire nature of the situation, standard grocery store foil will do until a more appropriate replacement can be ordered from the interwebs.

I don't work in cubits, that's a silly unit.

An African, or European swallow?

I had to.

it's not that complicated - you pay off the governor and then you do whatever you want. no need for any of this fancy "science" to get in the way!

here is a map of natural gas wells in PA that had their waste water tested (from the NYtimes): http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/27/us/natural-gas-map.html?ref=us

as you can see, pure frack water from these sites exceed federal limits for drinking water. this frack water is being put through water treatment plants which are not equipped to remove the uranium, radium, or gross alphas. sure, rivers are big and these levels are diluted and maybe currently below federal standards, but maybe not. with continued drilling this is something we need to be watching closely.

I'd be way more worried about large amounts of benzene rather than radon. Chronic exposure to benzene is pretty much conclusively linked to causing leukemia, and various other flavors of cancer. Unfortunately, I think most of the benzene we're exposed to is from cigarettes rather than drinking water.

don't forget about some sodas: sodium benzoate + ascorbic acid = pure benzene.

The decarboxylation you describe is not especially favorable, chemically. If you frequently leave your soda out in your car for a couple days to bake in the summer heat, then you'll generate a fair bit of benzene. If you buy recently produced soda and store it in the fridge, there isn't going to be a problem with the benzene. There are larger health issues with the chronic consumption of soda. Tough to die of cancer of diabetes gets you first.

You'll likely get more benzene exposure waiting at a bus stop breathing in the secondhand tobacco smoke.

well, obviously you like to prepare your soda differently than me.

In the past 12 years, I can count the number of sodas I've had on one hand.

because you drink pop instead?

I'm guessing that, just as with radioactive materials, not all salts are alike. People like and put salt on their food all the time and probably don't think of it as "bad" except for when it eats away at the fringes of their landscaping or automobiles.

Mostly I drink the contaminated tap water, sometimes with yeast, malt, hops and barley added.

The problem with the salts is when the water gets to the water treatment facility. There, chlorine is commonly used to purify the water. Chlorine + salts = bromides. Bromides = Cancer.

I like salt on my steak. Not so much with chlorine.

There is going to be a protest at an industry event next week.

http://www.marcellusprotest.org.

I like the banner on the front page of the site. Says, "we can't drink money."

Since someone posted the xkcd.org link, I thought I would post this one as well:

http://madartlab.com/2011/03/19/yellow-alert/

As much as I like xkcd, I think this one does a better job of putting things in a way people can understand.

Plus, to quote The Doctor: "I like bananas. Bananas are good."

@ myddryn - that is a great site, but I wish it would show some more things that are known hazards, like chest Xrays or chernoble stuff.

The same is true for xkcd, too. They show radiation on the grounds on Chernoble (within a quarter mile? or the meltdown?) and with 10 mi of three mile island - that makes it difficult to compare.

One might expect for the inverse square law, that being a quarter mile away would be 1600 times the radiation of being 10 miles away, but when radioactive products are released, not just radiation, that might not follow.

ejwme, sometime I might try to grab you at a bike event to ask about this.

Oh! oh! xkcd shows the BED =.1 microseivert! I <3 that geek!

Also Benzene - in Public Health scool (If I recall correctly, I may not) we learned that small dose benzene and other aromatics in the drinking water are usually not absorbed. This leaves it relatively harmless compared with benzene in your shower water, which gets absorbed efficiently by inhalation and is measurably toxic.

So, unless you shower in Coca Cola... (I, myself, prefer bathing in champagne.)

I don't know how long ago you went to public health school, but the mechanism of action for benzene was only recently discovered, and was classified as a class A carcinogen in the mid-late 90s. Before that people would use it sans fume hood. Every professor I've worked for told me tales of them running benzene columns on the bench top.

Turns out it is the one of the more toxic of the aromatics. Even putting one extra methyl on there (toluene) makes it way less toxic, and provides a functional handle for your body to degrade it. When your body tries to break benzene down, it only, and very easily generates a free radical that goes to town on your DNA.

@dwillen was classified as a class A carcinogen in the mid-late 90s.

Thanks.

I went to grad school in the early 90's. And looking at your post, I now recall they were specifically talking about toluene.

I was a chemistry undergrad in the 70's and 80's. (College - the best 6 or 7 years of my life!) Plenty of benzene extractions.

Geeks '?' us!

One might expect for the inverse square law, that being a quarter mile away would be 1600 times the radiation of being 10 miles away, but when radioactive products are released, not just radiation, that might not follow.

as you suspected, it doesn't work quite so simply as that. the radiation itself decreases in intensity by the square of the distance, but this isn't the whole store, as the radionuclides themselves will move. this depends on all sorts of things, including weather patterns, and would become difficult to predict very quickly.

Had a conversation w/ @ejwme about radiation on the viking ride, where she expressed some frustration w/ what was going on in Japan.

According to this article some of the claims are being hyped up. (Particularly about the radioactive water.)

Not sure how much I trust the register about non-IT stuff... but pieces of this line up w/ what I remember from my physics classes. (Of course, those classes were nearly 20 years ago...)

el reg is usually pretty damn good about fact checking and telling it like it is, even on non-it stuff.

As to the Frac-Pure plant, it's at about Mile 12 on the Montour Trail.