Forscher warnen vor negativen Gesundheitsfolgen durch Fracking in der Friedensregion British Columbia

Just a quick personal story. I really started thinking about environmental issues when I was working as a fracker in my early twenties. Back in the early 2000s, I left my hometown and headed to the Alberta oil patch looking for better money. I basically walked in off the street and got offered an $80,000-a-year job plus bonuses as an ironhand on a frack crew. I had no clue what the job actually involved.

One day on site, frack fluid blew out of a blender unit and sprayed my coworker and me. I managed to tuck my chin so it mostly soaked into my clothes, but he wasn’t so lucky, he took it straight to the face. We were rushed into the med shower, stripped down, and hosed off immediately. Once they realized how bad his injuries were, he was airlifted to Edmonton. I was sitting in the data van after with my supervisor and asked what the big deal was about the fluid. He said, “That stuff is corrosive and carcinogenic.” I remember just staring at him and saying, “And we’re pumping this into the earth?” It honestly hadn’t fully hit me before that what we were doing might be seriously harming the environment. That moment stuck with me. Not long after, I quit, I just couldn’t justify being part of it anymore.

It honestly doesn’t surprise me at all that people are getting sick. They say the well heads are sealed with cement, but I still know people working in the industry, and failures absolutely happen. The regulatory bodies in Alberta and BC have been heavily influenced by the fossil fuel industry for years, so it wouldn’t shock me if there was a massive cover-up or a look the other way going on at an institutional level.