Endocrine disrupting activity associated with hydraulic fracturing

 描述（由申请人提供）：数千种人造化学品有可能破坏人类的内分泌系统。被称为内分泌干扰物（EDCs），它们可以对生殖，新陈代谢和许多其他身体系统造成负面影响。人类暴露于内分泌干扰物的一个潜在来源是通过使用天然气和石油水力压裂过程中使用的数百种化学品。据报告，在整个过程中使用了750多种化学品，其中包括100多种已知或疑似干扰内分泌的化学品。这些化学品和废水从工艺中溢出和泄漏是常见的。重要的是，这一过程在2005年被豁免于多项联邦监管法案，包括《安全饮用水法》、《清洁水法》和《清洁空气法》，这使得对这一过程的监管主要由资金不足和人员不足的各州负责。我们的总体假设是，水力压裂和钻井作业污染地表水和地下水的内分泌干扰物。我们最近发现了水力压裂与地表水和地下水中内分泌干扰活性升高之间的关联。在加菲猫县，来自钻探密集地区的水比钻探稀疏参考地点的水具有更大的激素活性。在 在目前的提案中，我们的目标是将这种分析扩展到50个地点，以确定这种关联是否广泛适用，并确定负责EDC活动的化学品。我们将建立水质措施，并使用法医地球化学工具来确定水样中是否存在水力压裂液。固相提取后，将使用报告基因测定法测量雌激素、雄激素和甲状腺受体活性。我们将使用空间分析来确定EDC活动是否与钻井的接近度相关。接下来，我们将通过生物测定指导的分馏，然后进行化学分析来鉴定内分泌活性化合物。必须确定水力压裂作业是否对水产生内分泌干扰物，以确定这一过程对人类健康的总体潜在影响。完成拟议的研究将导致更全面地了解水力压裂作业对钻井密集地区地表水和地下水的潜在EDC贡献。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Thousands of manmade chemicals have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system in humans. Termed endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), they can cause negative effects on reproduction, metabolism and many other body systems. One potential source of human exposure to EDCs is through the use of hundreds of chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil (fracking). More than 750 chemicals are reportedly used throughout this process, including more than 100 known or suspected endocrine disrupting chemicals. Spills and leaks of these chemicals and wastewater from the process are common. Importantly, the process was exempted from multiple federal regulatory acts in 2005 including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act, which leaves regulation of this process largely with individual underfunded and understaffed states. Our overall hypothesis is that fracking and drilling operations contaminate surface and ground water with EDCs. We recently found an association between fracking and elevated endocrine disrupting activity in surface and ground water. Water from drilling dense areas had greater hormonal activity than drilling sparse reference sites in Garfield County. In the current proposal we aim to expand this analysis to 50 sites to determine if this association is broadly applicable and to identify chemicals responsible for the EDC activity. We will establish water quality measures and use forensic geochemical tools to determine if hydraulic fracturing fluids are present in the water samples. After solid-phase extracted, estrogen, androgen and thyroid receptor activity will be measured using reporter gene assays. We will use spatial analyses to determine if EDC activity is associated with proximity to drilling. Next, we will identfy endocrine active compounds by bioassay-guided fractionation followed by chemical profiling. It is essential to determine if fracking operations are contributing EDCs to water in order to determine the overall potential impacts of this process on human health. Completion of the proposed study will result in a more thorough understanding of the potential EDC contribution of fracking operations to surface and ground water in drilling-dense regions.