Fracktivists Encourage City to Ignore Their Air Quality Tests & Accept Results from Tests Conducted by Residents

Results from air quality tests performed by three different residents in Colleyville, Texas suggest that fracking has released high levels of dangerous chemicals into the air.  Fracktivists were quick to latch onto these results and use them to call for action against fracking.

A closer look reveals that it may not be so cut and dry.  Colleyville officials had already paid for longer and more in-depth testing which revealed no dangerous emissions.  Dr. Kenneth Tramm of Modern Geoscience performed those tests, and he calls into question several aspects of the tests conducted by the landowners and the guidelines they used to classify the results as dangerous.  For example, they compared the chemical readings from a short-term testing method to the long-term health levels set by the state rather than the Air Monitoring Comparison Values which should be used for such tests.  When the levels are measured against those standards they fall well below the safe value.

Tramm isn't the only one who questions the results.  One area resident said that GD Air Testing, the laboratory who oversaw the landowner paid testing (which was organized by an anti-fracking group) is not National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Conference accredited to perform studies on carbon disulfide - which was one of the chemicals pointed to as a fracking by-product - and said that since it is a common laboratory solvent, proper care must be taken in analyzing it.  Tramm agreed that GD's reading of carbon disulfide probably didn't exist at all but was just an artifact of the laboratory method used.

The residents and GD Air Testing are standing by their conclusions, though, saying that Titan Operating, LLC, the company who had conducted fracking operations in the area, has violated ordinances on air pollution and should be stopped.

Read the fracktivists' article here, which not surprisingly doesn't mention any of the questions raised about the report.

Read a more balanced report here, which looks at the results as well as Dr. Tramm's results.

View the website for Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project, the organization who organized the residential testing in Colleyville, by clicking here to see the report and another article on the story.

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