Fracking Chemicals

    An article in the August 6 issue of Chemical and Engineering News says that the Natural Resources Defense Council is making a play for federal control of chemical compounds used by drilling companies in the fracking process for production of gas and oil. Present control is under the jurisdiction of the individual states.
    The Natural Resources Defense Council is a private environmental advocacy group. It's recommendation would make sense if there were the probability that contamination at any one point would lead to a broad sustained health and safety effect over several states. An example, would be sulfur dioxide from power plants being blown by the wind to other states. However, that seems to not be the case.
    The other aspect is that even if we can justify some sort of federal control, it need not involve revealing the identity of fracking chemicals used by a specific company to the public at large. If federal controls were to be applied, the obvious controlling agency would be EPA. It could determine what standard fracking chemicals were in common use and approve those which appear to have no negative health effects. Many natural thickening agents, such as gums, starches, pectins, agar-agar and gelatin also have food use and should obviously not cause a safety and health problem. Guar gum is one substance which is widely used in fracking and is also used as a constituent of ice cream.
    Surface active agents are also used in fracking. Many of these have application in household use, such as dishwashing formulations and hand soaps. The EPA could prepare a list of what they considered satisfactory materials.
    If any company proposed to use a material not on the list, it could petition the EPA for confidential know-how approval, in which case the EPA might require some special health and safety data in order to be satisfied that the material would not be a hazard to the public. This would be a reasonable position, but because of the cost requirements for supplying such safety and health data for EPA approval, the identity of the material and especially the submitted safety and health data must be kept confidential as private know-how and not allowed to drift into the hands of possible competitors. If competitors want to use the company's health and safety data for their own product approval by the EPA, they should be able to obtain the desired information only by commercial negotiation with the original owner. An alternative would be to develop their own data.