How has the US fracking boom affected air pollution in shale areas?

[Trish]

Our fingerprinting analysis of 2015 data from the newest air monitor in Karnes City, Texas, at the center of the Eagle Ford shale, suggests that less than 40 percent of benzene is still related to tailpipe emissions, its formerly dominant emission source. Instead, over 60 percent is now linked to various oil and gas exploration activities, including gas flaring emissions.
Studies from Colorado and Texas show that elevated levels of benzene in shale areas are clearly correlated with other hydrocarbon gases emitted from oil and gas exploration.


While ozone is distributed relatively uniformly in a region, primary emissions of benzene and other nonmethane hydrocarbons will be at higher concentrations in air next to sources. Therefore, whereas most monitoring stations of ozone are quite representative for a larger area, monitoring benzene far from its dominant sources in shale areas does not provide a representative picture.
The risks for people living in shale areas are elevated by their nearness to well pads. Ongoing health research has revealed that certain minor health effects such as sinusitis, migraines and fatigue, but also hospitalization rates and certain birth defects, are identifiably connected to an area’s well density or a home’s distance to oil and gas wells as a proxy of exposure, warranting more detailed research.

In conclusion, the shale boom has created a new source of large-scale, diffuse hydrocarbon emissions that adversely affect air toxics levels. While the effects are subtle, they happened in areas generally without any air pollutant monitoring, making estimates of trends difficult.

https://theconversation.com/how-has-...le-areas-66190

[Crepitus]

Not terribly surprising. Benzene is nasty stuff. Causes bone marrow irregularities and failure, exposure is cumulative, MSDS says the safe benzene exposure rate is 0.0 or in other words there is no safe amount of benzene to be exposed to.

[Ethereal]

There was a time when I would have simply accepted that environmentalists and conservationists were telling the truth about particular area being polluted. But because of their religious-like commitment to man-made global warming orthodoxy, I have to approach everything they say with a heavy dose of skepticism. This is unfortunate since I am, like them, genuinely concerned about protecting the ecological and biological integrity of the planet.

[Crepitus]

You do know that many made global warming is acknowledged as the actual truth by everyone except the American anti-science right don't you?