The fracking industry likes to call its product “natural gas,” but the natural consequence of its activity is the production of billions of gallons of cancer-causing wastewater.
A new study published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology titled, “Malignant human cell transformation of Marcellus Shale gas drilling flow back water,” is the first study of its kind to confirm widely held suspicions concerning the carcinogenicity of fracking pollution.
The new collaborative study was conducted by scientists at esteemed institutions in both the U.S. and China and found that so-called “flow back” fracking wastewater induced malignant changes in human bronchial epithelial cells consistent with the cancerous phenotype. The same fracking wastewater was injected into mice, with 5 of the 6 developing .2 cm to .6 cm tumors as early as 3 months after injection, and with the control mice forming no tumors after 6 months. The authors concluded that their results indicate “flow back water is capable of neoplastic transformation in vitro,” i.e. fracking wastewater is capable of producing cancer in mammals.
