Chemical Toxicities

Hydro-fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) operations utilize various chemicals, many of which are toxic and have recognized or suspected health effects to humans, animals, or plants. Most of these chemicals are intended to be injected deep underground, nominally below any aquifers of potable water used for sustaining life on the surface. The hydro-fracturing industry maintains that these chemicals usually stay at the approximate depth(s) at which they were injected, but via spills, improperly sealed or seismically-damaged containment collars, or overflows of waste pits, some of these chemicals may reach the aquifers from which potable water is being drawn.

Chemicals

Hydro-fracturing well chemical disclosures made to FracFocus.org use, for the most part, use the Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number (CAS RN^®) as a “key” for each disclosed chemical. For example, the CAS RN^® for caffeine is “58-08-2”, where the last number, in this case a “2”, is a check digit used to verify the validity and uniqueness of the entire number.

Health Effects

GoodGuide maintains a pollution information website entitled Scorecard that has a Health Effects sub-site. It is from the comma-separated-value (CSV) files available for download from this sub-site that the “blended” files cited below are derived. Scorecard does provide information as to its methodology of assigning “recognized” and “suspected” toxicities to the chemicals listed in the “Source Files” below.

Source Files

The following links are the source files used to derive the CSV files appearing in the “Blended Files” section below:

• Cancer, Recognized
• Developmental, Recognized
• Reproductive, Recognized
• Cancer, Suspected
• Cardiovascular or Blood, Suspected
• Developmental, Suspected
• Endocrine, Suspected
• Gastrointestinal or Liver, Suspected
• Immunotoxicity, Suspected
• Kidney, Suspected
• Musculoskeletal, Suspected
• Neurotoxicity, Suspected
• Reproductive, Suspected
• Respiratory, Suspected
• Skin or Sense Organ, Suspected

Blended Files

The following links are “blended” files derived from the “source” files above. The “blended” files are intended for use by analytical programs, databases, or search engines. The “blended” files below are combined elsewhere with other FracFocus “report” and “disclosure” files, as extracted by SkyTruth.org, so that disclosed chemicals can be more easily associated with their respective recognized and/or suspected health effects.

• Blended, Sorted
• Blended, Grouped
• Blended, Flattened, Boolean
• Blended, Flattened, Numeric

Programs/Scripts

The following Python 3 project/script is used to generate the “Blended Files” above from the aforementioned “Source Files”.

• Project(s), Spyder 2.3 IDE, Mercurial version control, hosted at BitBucket
  • PyHealthEffectsCsvLoader
• Script(s), Mercurial version control, hosted at BitBucket
  • HealthEffectsCsvLoader.py