{"id":2972,"date":"2014-09-15T15:36:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T20:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2972"},"modified":"2014-09-15T15:36:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T20:36:07","slug":"tracing-groundwater-contamination-above-shale-gas-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/tracing-groundwater-contamination-above-shale-gas-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing groundwater contamination above shale gas fields"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2969\" style=\"width: 721px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase6473d5e1cb0ca8b28a.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2969\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2969\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase6473d5e1cb0ca8b28a.png\" alt=\"A diagram of seven scenarios that may account for the presence of elevated methane gas levels in shallow aquifers. (Credit: Darrah et al.)\" width=\"711\" height=\"372\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase6473d5e1cb0ca8b28a.png 711w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase6473d5e1cb0ca8b28a-300x156.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2969\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A diagram of seven scenarios that may account for the presence of elevated methane gas levels in shallow aquifers. (Credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/jrnls\/pnas\/pdfs\/pnas.201322107.pdf\">Darrah et al.<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A new study shows that methane leaks in drinking water wells around shale-gas wells in Pennsylvania and Texas come from failures in the integrity of gas well construction, and not from the drilling or hydraulic fracturing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The authors developed a new technique to look for the concentration of noble-gas isotopes in \u00a0drinking-water samples to determine the methane&#8217;s origin: methane leaking from the well will have a 1,000 times less helium and neon isotopes than methane slowly leaking naturally from the underground. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This research could help people determine the origin of the gases contaminating their drinking water.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2014\/09\/12\/1322107111.abstract?sid=253cc468-a180-4a49-9155-3acc26e24ed8\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0published in\u00a0<em>PNAS\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>September 15, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Thomas Darrah, The Ohio State University, Ohio<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study shows that methane leaks in drinking water wells around shale-gas wells in Pennsylvania and Texas come from failures in the integrity of gas well construction, and not from the drilling or hydraulic fracturing. The authors developed a new technique to look for the concentration of noble-gas isotopes in \u00a0drinking-water samples to determine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[31,644,215],"class_list":["post-2972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-climate-change","tag-energy","tag-environment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase6473d5e1cb0ca8b28a.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-LW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2973,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972\/revisions\/2973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}