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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (896234)10/24/2015 8:54:00 PM
From: Brumar891 Recommendation

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FJB

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You're contradicting the geologist quoted in the article:

... Clive Mitchell of the British Geological Survey to back up their assertion, but Mr Mitchell dismissed their claims, telling The Times: “It’s tantamount to scaremongering. It’s inaccurate and misleading.”

He said that industrial workers who breathe fine silica dust could develop the lung condition silicosis, but those particles were over 50 times smaller than sand grains.


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The type of silica you're probably thinking of is silica dust like that is encountered/produced in hard rock mining. That is breathable and causes silicosis and it likely does cause cancer. But fracking said isn't that fine. Fracking sand is washed to wash out fines. Look at it below ... people aren't going to breath in this ...plus it's pumped INTO the wells and ends up thousands of feet underground and stays there embedded in cracks in the shale formation:

Close-up view of frac sand (on the right) and a typical sand of similar grain size (on the left). Notice how the frac sand has a very uniform grain size, nicely rounded grain shapes and a uniform composition. It is also a very tough material that can resist compressive forces of up to several tons per square inch. Grains in this image are about 0.50 millimeter in size. Photo © BanksPhotos, iStockphoto.

A Crush-Resistant Sand for Oil and Gas Wells

"Frac sand" is a high-purity quartz sand with very durable and very round grains. It is a crush-resistant material produced for use by the petroleum industry. It is used in the hydraulic fracturing process (known as "fracking") to produce petroleum fluids, such as oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids from rock units that lack adequate pore space for these fluids to flow to a well.
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Most of the frac sand consumed is between 0.4 and 0.8 millimeters in size.

Rock units such as the St. Peter Sandstone, Jordan Sandstone, Oil Creek Sandstone and Hickory Sandstone have been potential sources of frac sand material. These rock units are composed of quartz grains that have been through multiple cycles of weathering and erosion. That long history has removed almost all mineral grains other than quartz and produced grains with very round shapes. This is why sand dredged from rivers, excavated from terraces or removed from beaches is unlikely to produce a good product.
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geology.com
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