There has been a growing desire among many people to reach for their optimal health potential in body, mind and spirit naturally with healthy lifestyles, good nutrition and spiritual awareness. Sadly, mankind’s careless handling of the environment may often make this impossible. Doctors Health Press reported methods of energy extraction such as fracking could be making people sick.
It appears that the country’s insatiable need for energy may be making Americans sick. In a nation of heavy consumers more and more energy is needed. As energy companies are working daily trying to bring us inexpensive energy it’s quite possible the actual cost for this in terms of human health may be very high. It appears that new methods of energy extraction such as fracking could actually be making Americans sick.
Energy companies have been using alternative ways of getting energy, or what is known as “unconventional oil and gas operations” or UOG operations. These new practices include such things as fracking and oil sand extraction. There may be serious health implications associated with these new methods of getting energy. Near fracking sites there has been an increase in explosions, air pollution, poisonous water, animal deaths, and other disasters. Fracking potentially causes birth defects, infertility, miscarriages, impaired fetal growth, and more.
Fracking combines drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Basically, rock beneath the earth is drilled and cracked to release natural gas from the inside. During the process of fracking chemicals are released into the groundwater and atmosphere as a byproduct. These chemicals are absorbed into the water you drink and the air which you breathe, the crops which you eat, and the feed which is given to livestock.
The University of Missouri School of Medicine reports that researchers have found fracking chemicals disrupt human hormone function. Greater hormone disrupting properties have been found in water which is located near hydraulic fracturing drilling sites than in areas without drilling. The researchers have also discovered that many chemicals which are commonly used in the fracking method of drilling for oil and natural gas are endocrine disruptors.
In other research exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals has been associated with cancer, birth defects and infertility. Therefore the fact that fracking is presently exempt from federal regulations aimed at protecting water and air quality presents us with very serious problems.
