Are your organic foods being doused in fracking chemicals?

VIDEO:  Watch this to see Fracking Pollute Organic Farming

Are your organic foods being doused in fracking chemicals? Probably so, if they come from California
A series of shocking new reports reveal that 45,000 acres of California crops are being irrigated with recycled fracking water, with some samples showing levels of petrochemicals higher than those found at oil spill sites.

The program is a good deal for oil companies, which view the water as an expensive nuisance. And it’s a bargain for the water districts.

There’s a certain amount of WTF to all this — because we don’t even know what’s in this fracking waste, at least not until June 15. That’s when California’s fracking regulations kick in and force oil companies to disclose the chemicals they are using. I mean, maybe just wait to find that out before using it to water our cherries?

Here are the key points from the story:

Over the last two years, Scott Smith, chief scientist for the advocacy group Water Defense, collected samples of the treated irrigation water that the Cawelo Water District buys from Chevron. Laboratory analysis of those samples found compounds that are toxic to humans, including acetone and methylene chloride — powerful industrial solvents — along with oil.

They found methylene chloride aka dichloromethane at 56 parts per billion. The EPA’s safe drinking water level is 5 ppb.

Bottom line: I certainly don’t want solvents in my food, and I’ll be watching this carefully. But it’s not going to change the way I eat, or what I feed my toddlers, right now. If there is any exposure to these chemicals, it’s going to be sporadic and short lived. If 1-in-10 molecules from that high reading make it into the food, that’s around the EPA’s level for drinking water.

At the same time, that measurement of methylene chloride (the only measurement level given in the article) seems ridiculously high. For Pete’s sake, let’s not make our bodies the dumping grounds for fracking waste.

Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron is responsible for recycling the toxic fracking wastewater, which contains more than 200 chemicals including diesel, biocides and benzene, before selling it to farmers at a fraction of the cost of fresh water.