Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Natural Gas Fields
Monday, September 19, 2011 - 11:01
in Earth & Climate
On a summer evening in June 2005, Susan Wallace-Babb went out into a neighbor's field near her ranch in Western Colorado to close an irrigation ditch. She parked down the rutted double-track, stepped out of her truck into the low-slung sun, took a deep breath and collapsed, unconscious.A natural gas well and a pair of fuel storage tanks sat less than a half-mile away. Later, after Wallace-Babb came to and sought answers, a sheriff's deputy told her that a tank full of gas condensate--liquid hydrocarbons gathered from the production process--had overflowed into another tank. The fumes must have drifted toward the field where she was working, he suggested. [More]