This letter provides a first-order estimate of conventional air pollutant emissions, and the monetary value of the associated environmental and health damages, from the extraction of unconventional shale gas in Pennsylvania.
Phenol, a deadly chemical used in Aristech Chemical Corp.’s process of drilling, is known to cause internal burns, muscle spasms and organ failure. Environmental regulators suspect that the chemical is somehow drifting upward in one the of company’s sites. If...