Hydraulic fracturing (also called hydrofracking or fracking) is a process in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground to break apart rock in order to release oil and natural gas.
The US EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program requires facilities in certain industries that manufacture, process, or use significant amounts of toxic chemicals, to report annually on their releases of these chemicals. Hydraulic fracturing is currently not a TRI-covered industry and so is not represented in TOXMAP.
EPA scientists are conducting a study of hydraulic fracturing to better understand any potential impacts on drinking water and groundwater. Congress has released a report on hydraulic fracturing (PDF, 156 KB) [Download Acrobat Reader] that lists 29 toxic chemicals used in fracturing (see Table 3 of this report). Click on the links in the table below for additional information on these chemicals:
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The TOXMAP Toolbar lets you search TRI releases, Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) sites by contaminant, or TRI facilities and Superfund NPL sites by ZIP code-- all from your browser search box.
For installation help, see the toolbar's Help and Troubleshooting page, or contact us.
]]>The TOXMAP widget allows you or your users to launch a TOXMAP search from your blog, wiki, or Web page. Enter a ZIP code into the widget to see a map of TRI facilities and Superfund NPL sites, or click "More info" to go to the TOXMAP home page.
To add the widget, you must be able to edit your Web page. (If you need help in adding a widget to your Web page, contact your Webmaster or service provider.) For the TOXMAP widget, copy and paste this code into your Web page:
<iframe frameborder="0" width="170" height="100" id="toxmapwidget" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/widgets/toxmapWidget.html"> </iframe>
The EPA Widgets page provides other environmental widgets.
]]>Other recent changes include:
TOXMAP now contains updated cancer and other mortality data. TOXMAP also now shows more detailed roads at a variety of map scales. Roads and other reference data can be hidden from maps via the Other Data subtab.
Other recent changes: