University Times

The Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC) at the Graduate School of Public Health has convened a group of experts to address the impact of Marcellus Shale drilling with the launch of www.Fractracker.org, a web-based tool for tracking and visualizing data related to gas extraction.

Conrad Dan Volz, director of CHEC and a faculty member in environmental and occupational health, said: “For the first time, experts across many disciplines will be able to collaborate directly with communities and citizens in the collection and analysis of data that track the impact of drilling at the Marcellus Shale. This will help guide future research and policies related to this issue.”

Fractracker, hosted by the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds and managed by CHEC, was funded by the Heinz Endowments. The system is designed to assess documented and predicted impacts of gas extraction and correlate them with the geographic location of wells and production facilities.

Economic, environmental and public health concerns have been raised concerning gas extraction at the Marcellus Shale, a sedimentary rock formation that may contain trillions of cubic feet of methane gas, as well as other explosive gases and vapors. Some of these issues include road infrastructure degradation; explosions and blowouts; effects on agriculture, hunting and fishing; water contamination from the disposal of waste into surface waters, and human exposure to volatile organic compounds.