Oil and Food – Perfect Mix

So let’s see how much of our food is in jeopardy.  Fracking wastewater and crop irrigation.  What could go wrong?

99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots.

A new report by researchers at PSE Healthy Energy, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of the Pacific sheds light on a very troubling practice in the field of Big Ag — the use of oil industry wastewater for irrigating food crops.

Would you water your garden with the wastewater from an oil field? No. So why does California allow this practice in industrial agriculture?

“This disturbing scientific report identifies dozens of hazardous chemicals used in oilfields supplying waste fluid to water California food crops and recharge drinking water aquifers. People in the Central Valley could be drinking these oil industry chemicals right now, and current water-testing procedures wouldn’t detect these dangerous substances. Given these shocking findings, California regulators should immediately halt the use of oil-waste fluid in any procedure that could contaminate the water we drink or the food we eat,” said John Fleming, a staff scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.