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Americas Radioactive Secret
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Rolling Stone
Posted: February 9th, 2020
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-...
In a squat rig fitted with a 5,000-gallon tank, Peter crisscrosses the expanse of farms and woods near the Ohio/West Virginia/Pennsylvania border, the heart of a region that produces close to one-third of Americas natural gas. He hauls a salty substance called brine, a naturally occurring waste product that gushes out of Americas oil-and-gas wells to the tune of nearly 1 trillion gallons a year. At most wells, far more brine is produced than oil or gas, as much as 10 times more. It collects in tanks, and like an oil-and-gas garbage man, Peter picks it up and hauls it off to treatment plants or injection wells, where its disposed of by being shot back into the earth. Through a grassroots network of Ohio activists, Peter was able to transfer 11 samples of brine to the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University, which had them tested in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh. The results were striking. Radium ... is so dangerous its subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each. Four of Peters samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500. Peters samples are just a drop in the bucket. Oil fields across the country from the Bakken in North Dakota to the Permian in Texas have been found to produce brine that is highly radioactive.
Note: In addition to producing this radioactive waste, fracking employs secret chemical mixtures and poisons drinking water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
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