Glowing Reports

Mere scientists are once more making a nuisance of themselves by calling for, of all things, regulation of the shale-fracking industry. Shale-frackers are exempt from America's Clean Water Act, and the industry has pledged to self-regulate its waste production with, it appears, the usual splendid results. A team from Duke University in North Carolina has published a study of Blacklick Creek, which feeds into a water source for cities in western Pennsylvania. The wastewater from shale-fracking was found to contain radium levels two hundred times greater than normal: a level which "would normally be seen at licensed radioactive disposal facilities". The scientists have warned of "bio-accumulation" once the pollution gets into the food chain, and have recommended that Britain's greenest government ever impose "environmental regulation" to prevent it. Fortunately, Britain's minister for the environment is no ivory-tower theorist but a positive thinker who will, no doubt, soon be telling us that increased consumption of radium will help Britons to see one another better during the long winter nights.