First used in the 1940s, “hydraulic fracturing” or simply “fracking” is a technique for extracting natural gas by injecting high pressure water, sand and chemicals into rock formations to break open fissures in the rock so that oil or natural gas may be extracted.
Now, fracking may be in danger of violating the REACH Regulation according to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). The European Commission stated that none of the REACH registration dossiers submitted for substances commonly used in the process had fracking listed as one of their uses. As such there are no specific exposure scenarios or risk-management measures for these chemicals, which include Acrylamide (which was added to the REACH candidate list in March 2010). Therefore oil exploration firms using SVHC in fracking would be obliged to produce additional information demonstrating that they are using them safely. Although fracking in the EU is currently limited to exploratory procedures, several countries (including the United Kingdom and Poland) are keen to develop commercial operations.
Fracking has also recently received some bad publicity when it was blamed for causing two minor earthquakes near Blackpool earlier in the year.
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