Types of Fracking and Mining
By: Kaylee Held and Britney Estridge
Fracking
Effects on the environment? 1 to 8 million gallons of water are needed to complete the job of fracking. It takes about 400 trunks to transport the gas. Many harmful chemicals are used, such as lead, mercury, methanol, and radium. The drinking water near the gas wells are contaminated, there have been many cases of health problems do to the water. These problems include sensory, respiratory and neurological damage. The left over gas that is not captured releases VOC's into the air and damages the ozone. To sum it all up fracking causes many environment safety issues and health hazards.
Mining
Surface Mining
Open Pit Mining:Open pit mining is a technique of extracting minerals or ore from the earth by opening up a pit of borrow. The old pits are sometimes converted to landfills for disposal of solid wastes.
Mountain Top Removal Mining: Mountain top removal mining is a form of surface mining that involves the mining of a summit or summit ridge of a mountain. The coal seems are taking out of the mountain by removing the land above the seem. Removing the layers aggravates the rock placement and they have to bring the mountain top to another area. This causes a lot of dust and sand to fly into the air at removal sites so most of the workers may end up sick.
Subsurface Mining
Drift Mining: Drift mining is mining an ore or material by going underground, like a cave for example. This is a major safety issue because the underground mine could collapse killing hundreds of people at a time. It is also a hazard for the workers to be breathing in the dust and dirt from the mine, causing them breathing problems.
Shaft Mining: Shaft mining is the method of excavating of vertical tunnel from the top where there is no access to the bottom. They release toxic amounts of minerals and heavy metals in the soil and water around mining site.