Demand An End to Secret Fracking Chemicals!

  • by: Susan V
  • recipient: Environmental Protection Agency

The worst chemicals in fracking cocktails have been kept from the public for far too long. But finally the EPA will consider making oil and gas companies disclose all the ingredients in their secret fracking sauce.

Even though disclosing the chemicals won’t make the process any safer, it will help people living in communities where fracking is used be better informed about how to respond when exposures occur. Where fracking is only being considered as an option, having all the facts will help communities make better decisions.

Toxic chemicals used in fracking aren’t just injected into the ground. They are stored within communities and trucked through neighborhoods. Emergency situations can arise through spills occurring throughout the entire process, and chemicals in fracking wastewater have been linked to health problems and environmental destruction.

An EPA rule to force companies to disclose these chemicals is the best chance we'll get to protect our health and environment. The recent spill in Monroe County, Ohio, where over 70,000 fish died, while Halliburton withheld details about the chemicals for days, serves as a warning that EPA intervention is urgent.

The deadline for public comment will be over soon. So tell the EPA now that you want these secret fracking chemicals disclosed!

We, the undersigned, insist that the public has a right to be informed about all the chemical hazards of fracking.

Just last May, The North Carolina Senate “voted to make it a crime to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,” reported Reuters. And even though big U.S. oil companies in other states are supposedly  considering  releasing more information about fracking chemicals to the public, there’s no way to be sure the same thing that happened in NC won’t happen elsewhere.

Without knowing the exact chemicals being used in a certain fracking facility, citizen’s groups and others “are not able to watch for frack fluids migrating into creeks, rivers and aquifers, because they don’t know what to look for” a chairman of a citizen’s group in Denton, Texas told Bloomberg in 2012. Many others join Briggle in wanting  to know “If frack fluids are so harmless, why do [gas and oil companies] hold onto these trade secrets so strongly?”

The National Resources Defense Council reports that there are now over 15 million Americans living “WITHIN A SINGLE MILE of a fracking site.”

Clearly, as NC has shown, we cannot count on state legislatures to assure that all of those people and the environment are properly protected from the dangers of fracking.

We request that the EPA take strong and immediate action and insist all chemicals in the fracking process are publicly disclosed.

Update #19 years ago
The link to this petition along with all the signatures collected so far --highlighting a few comments - have been posted on the EPA open docket. "Your Comment Tracking Number: 1jy-8do3-pzng."
Please keep the signatures going, and all the rest will be submitted before the September 18 deadline.
Here is the link for individual comments:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2011-1019
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