Hazardous “forever chemicals” used in Colorado for fracking, report says

By Judith Kohler | The Denver Post | February 7, 2022

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“Long-lasting chemicals with links to cancers and other ailments have been used in Colorado to frack oil and gas wells, a national health and environmental organization says in a new report.

Physicians for Social Responsibility said an analysis shows that a class of chemicals called PFAS, or ‘forever chemicals,’ were used in nearly 300 oil and gas wells in the state and might have been used in many more over the past decade.

Besides fracking, the report said the chemicals were used in enhanced oil recovery techniques to extract oil later in a well’s life.

Dusty Horwitt, author of ‘Fracking with ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Colorado,‘ said in a call Wednesday with reporters that PSR worked with an independent data scientist to analyze the chemicals reported by oil and gas companies on the FracFocus. The database is a national registry managed by two associations of state officials.

Of 12,000 Colorado wells whose fracking chemicals were listed as trade secrets on FracFocus from 2011 to 2021, more than 3,200 used ‘surfactants,’ according to the report. Horwitt said the substances could have been fluorosurfactants, in the PFAS family and used in fracking in other states.”…

This content provided by the PFAS Project.