Radioactivity and gas wells

‘No threat to public’

By FRITZ MAYER

UPPER DELAWARE VALLEY — The rocks in the Marcellus Shale not only hold an abundance of natural gas, they also contain quite a bit of radioactivity. It comes in the form of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials, which the drilling industry refers to by the acronym NORM.

Is NORM harmful to human health?

Not according to Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Penn State University. In a phone interview, Engelder said humans encounter a lot of NORM in their everyday lives. It is abundant, for instance, in the sea. NORM can be found in rocks such as granite. As the rocks break down over time, the NORM makes its way to the sea. So when people are swimming in it, he said, they are literally swimming in an ocean of NORM, but, he said, it has not caused any concern.

In gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, millions of gallons of water laced with sand and other materials is used to “frack” the rock thousands of feet below ground. During that process, NORM will be released. It will then rise to the surface as the fracking water is recovered and stored in large pits.

Engelder said if other materials that might be in this mix were excluded, he would have no trouble diving into a pool of just water and NORM. “You basically have something that might be a little more concentrated than seawater, but if it was just the water with only this stuff added to it, you wouldn’t be afraid of it,” he said.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation shares that view.

In a report based on studies done in 1996, the DEC wrote, “The concentrations of NORM found on oil and gas production equipment and wastes pose no threat to the public health and the environment.” The report can be found at www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/23473.html.

A 1994 study by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Oil and gas management found essentially the same thing.

Critics, however, have charged that NORM in built up materials on drilling equipment might pose a threat to workers in the field.

The DEC’s report, however, said the state tested 80 samples from oil and gas equipment and waste; all were found to have levels of radiation that do not pose a health or environmental threat.

In fact, regardless of the existence of NORM in it, the wastewater produced from wells, which is also called brine because it is filled with salt, among other things, is considered by some to be safe. Safe enough, in fact, that according to Ashur TerWilliger, president of the Chemung County Farm Bureau, wastewater from wells has been spread on dirt roads to keep the dust down.