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The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers

Credit David Gilkey / NPR

A natural gas boom is underway in the U.S., with more than 200,000 wells drilled in the last decade. In states like Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania and here in Louisiana, residents who live close to the natural gas bonanza have the same questions: What kind of pollutants is the industrial activity putting into their water and air, and are those pollutants making them sick?

In this weeklong investigative series, NPR's science desk explores why there aren't solid answers to these questions yet.

Additional Resources

Learn more about the process of drilling for natural gas with Exploreshale.org, an interactive website produced by Penn State.

Extensive information about the Haynesville Shale — a huge repository of natural gas stretching across northwestern and central Louisiana — from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

Shale Play is an interactive database of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania; a collaborative project produced by StateImpact Pennsylvania and NPR.

NPR has delved into the economics of, and controversy surrounding, hydraulic fracturing before, with the 2009 series Exploring Shale: The Quest for Natural Gas.

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The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers
2:03 am
Tue May 15, 2012

Sick From Fracking? Doctors, Patients Seek Answers

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Michelle Salvini (left) and Terri DiCarlo take a break from work outside the Cornerstone Care clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. Mysterious fumes have repeatedly sickened clinic staffers, forcing them to evacuate the building several times.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Environmental health specialist Dr. Michael McCawley (center) and Cornerstone CEO Robert Mt.Joy meet to talk about what's happening at the clinic.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Cornerstone nurse Kay Allen (center) talks with her co-workers. Some staffers stopped coming into the clinic because of the fumes.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
The mystery ailments have prompted the clinic to relocate to a new site 30 minutes away. Here, a staffer sorts through patient files that will need to be moved.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Richard Rinehart, who runs the clinic, wonders whether the natural gas drilling in the area may have something to do with what's been happening.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Dr. Michael McCawley tests soil samples outside the clinic for elevated levels of pollutants.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Receptionists Daralyn Fuller (left) and Miranda Thompson examine soil samples gathered outside the clinic.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
In early May, Cornerstone closed down its offices in Burgettstown, Pa., after two employees were hospitalized. The clinic plans to reopen in McMurray, Pa
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Receptionist Thompson talks with a patient in the doorway of the closed clinic.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Burgettstown is located in a rural corner of southwest Pennsylvania. In the distance, lights mark a new gas well that's being drilled near the Cornerstone clinic.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Michelle Salvini (left) and Terri DiCarlo take a break from work outside the Cornerstone Care clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. Mysterious fumes have repeatedly sickened clinic staffers, forcing them to evacuate the building several times.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 9:48 am

Kay Allen had just started work, and everything seemed quiet at the Cornerstone Care community health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. But things didn't stay quiet for long.

"All the girls, they were yelling at me in the back, 'You gotta come out here quick. You gotta come out here quick,' " said Allen, 59, a nurse from Weirton, W.Va.

Allen rushed out front and knew right away what all the yelling was about. The whole place reeked — like someone had spilled a giant bottle of nail polish remover.

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The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers
11:11 am
Mon May 14, 2012

Slideshow: With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy

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By David Gilkey | NPR

The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers
11:10 am
Mon May 14, 2012

With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy

Next imagePrevious image
Credit NPR
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Hydraulic fracturing lets drillers tap previously inaccessible natural gas reservoirs. Workers at Chesapeake Energy are seen on the job near Towanda, Pa.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A successful fracking operation requires a battalion of drilling rigs, miles of pipe and millions of gallons of water in order to bore through the earth.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Workers stand outside the pump room where water is separated from drilling mud at one of Chesapeake Energy's water treatment facilities.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The thick muddy liquid called "flowback" — a mix of water, toxic chemicals and minerals — is a byproduct of fracking in the Marcellus Shale.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A Chesapeake Energy worker stands next to the control panel that monitors the fracking process.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Rory Sweeney of Chesapeake Energy looks over an active drilling site. Millions of gallons of fluid help crack open fractures in shale, releasing trapped gas.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Chesapeake Energy Senior Director Brian Grove says the industry should have warned people about the messy impact of fracking.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A worker at Eureka Resources, a recycling plant, holds a container of purified water (right) and wastewater from a gas well (left).
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A worker crosses over a water-holding and skimming tank. In 2008, Eureka modified its technology to clean up the peculiar mix of gunk in frack water.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Plant owner Dan Ertel says new regulations over the disposal of polluted water have brought more drillers to his water treatment facility.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Currently, drillers in Pennsylvania reuse about 90 percent of their fracking wastewater to frack new wells.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Trucking is one of the most expensive parts of fracking and companies are looking to replace some transport routes with pipelines.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Demand for natural gas has created a hydraulic fracturing or fracking boom; since 2008 over 5,000 new wells have been drilled nationwide. Workers at Chesapeake Energy, one of the biggest gas companies conducting fracking, are seen on the job site near Towanda, PA.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Andrew Gavin (left) of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission checks the readings from a device set up to monitor water quality at Gray's Run stream, near Williamsport, Pa.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Rocks on the shore of the Lackawanna River in Duryea, Pa., are discolored by iron oxide and sulfur compounds — pollutants left behind by past coal mining in the state.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 9:55 am

In Pennsylvania, there's an industrial revolution going on. Battalions of drilling rigs are boring into the earth to extract natural gas from an underground layer of shale called the Marcellus formation.

And as the wells multiply all along the western end of the state, people worry they may be facing another toxic legacy.

The first one came from coal mining. All over the state, you can see bright orange rivers and streams. The aquatic life was killed by acidic runoff from abandoned mines.

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