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Mar 13, 2015 / in Blog Articles

According to the Environmental Working Group the recent discovery of high levels of benzene in wastewater from oil and gas fracking operations in California turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. An extensive review of a year-old state data has found that wastewater from hundreds of fracking operations was heavily contaminated with a toxic stew of chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive harm and nervous system damage.In addition to the known carcinogen benzene, tests of wastewater samples found chromium-6, lead and arsenic – all listed under California’s Proposition 65 as causes of cancer or reproductive harm – in 35-to-50 percent of the samples.

The wastewater also carried, on average, thousands of times more radioactive radium than the state’s public health goals, as well as elevated levels of potentially harmful ions nitrate and chloride ions. From a South African perspective this is alarming because the “go-ahead” has been given for fracking in the Karoo. This information certainly gives activists ammunition to continue their quest to have fracking banned.

We at Filcon Filters are concerned about any possible activity which can endanger the water supply given that South Africa is labelled a water stressed area. Filcon Filters promotes the recycling and reuse of waste water. Filcon manufactures a range of centrifugal separators, automatic self flushing filters, purge and Y strainers which can be used for removing suspended contaminants in water.