"The fracking industry says its operators strictly adhere to regulations, and it has “no greater priority” than ensuring worker and community safety." 

"When Tom McKnight started working for the oil and gas industry as a truck driver in Ohio more than 10 years ago, he attended an orientation where someone in the class asked about the possibility of radiation exposure from fracking waste. The instructor told them there was more radiation risk from their cell phones than on the job. 

“He just broomed it under the table,” McKnight said. “They said it absolutely is not [radioactive].”

McKnight would later learn that the company had misled him: The waste and wastewater generated by fracking can be highly radioactive and toxic, especially in the Marcellus Shale, the formation beneath Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and New York that supplies fracking wells with gas.

Years later, after he was diagnosed with cancer and doctors found nodules on his lungs, McKnight wondered if his illness was triggered by his time working for the fracking industry. He’ll likely never know the answer to that question. But he wishes he had been warned about the hazards of the waste."

Kiley Bense reports for Inside Climate News June 29, 2025. [2]