Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have uncovered evidence that gas and oil workers may be exposed to dangerously high levels of respirable crystalline silica while performing hydraulic fracturing operations known as “fracking.”
In preliminary data presented last month during a meeting of the Institute of Medicine on The Health Impact Assessment of New Energy Sources: Shale Gas Extraction, Eric Esswein said that nearly half (47%) of the workers sampled were exposed to levels of silica above OSHA's permissible exposure limits with almost 80% of those sampled exposed above NIOSH's recommended exposure limits.