气候变化领域集成服务门户

Pennsylvania is the nation’s second largest natural gas producing state, behind only Texas, and like Texas, the state is facing significant problems disposing of billions of gallons of “produced water” that is mixed with sand and proprietary extraction fluids and blasted miles beneath to extract gas from tiny pores in the shale. The brackish wastewater, which comes up with the gas and is five or more times saltier than seawater, is laced not only with the toxic drilling chemicals but natural substances from deep underground—benzene, arsenic and radium 226 and 228, both radioactive isotopes, among others.