Junk Science - Rolling Stone

Fracking oil releases huge amounts of radioactivity. Oh noooooooessssssss. A two-fer

First, from the Rolling Stone:

America’s Radioactive Secret

Excerpted from the article:

One day in 2017, Peter pulled up to an injection well in Cambridge, Ohio. A worker walked around his truck with a hand-held radiation detector, he says, and told him he was carrying one of the “hottest loads” he’d ever seen. It was the first time Peter had heard any mention of the brine being radioactive.

The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine.

Second, from David Middleton writing at Watts Up With That:

“On the Cover of the Rolling Stone” #ExxonKnew: Earth Is Radioactive
This Rolling Stone article reads like the Josh “Gasland” Fox version of the #ExxonKnew fraud with funding from the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s very long, long-winded, loaded with anecdotal information and lots of teeth gnashing & wailing from environmentalists.

1. 1. The fact that Earth is radioactive has never been a secret.
   2. The radioactivity wasn’t discovered in crude oil. Rocks are radioactive. Shale is more radioactive than sandstone. The gamma ray log was developed to detect the difference between sandstone and shale.
   3. The safe disposals of wastewater, drilling mud, drill cuttings and other waste products are regulated by state and/or federal regulatory agencies. This is not something new, secret or mysterious.
   4. Operators who flout the regulations are punished.

The take-aways are that:
#1) - they have known about this radioactivity since at least 1927 when a sensor was invented which uses the shale's natural radioactivity to locate oil.
#2) - there is radioactivity but the quantities are vanishingly small. If you eat a banana, you are eating radioactivity - bananas are rich in Potassium - a vital mineral. Potassium contains a radioactive isotope (K-40) which is present in a 0.01% concentration and
#3) - radioactivity is normal. Too much of anything can be toxic - even drinking too much water can be fatal.

Another political hit-piece disguised as science reporting. Funded by the SPLC of all places - not good people.