The amount of produced water discharged from all offshore drilling operations, such as those in the Gulf, is around 175 million barrels per year.10 In order to reach this amount in Marcellus drilling, all of the 430,000 gallons of wastewater produced by over 22,000 wells (10 times the amount predicted by the NY DEC to be drilled in any given year) would have to be discharged into New York waterways every year. However, the Gulf of Mexico holds approximately 660 quadrillion (1015) gallons of water. New York has far less water than that, so its capacity to dilute and disperse the chemicals
in wastewater is much lower than the Gulf of Mexico. In general, the smaller the water body receivingthe discharge, the more affected the ecosystem will be by the radium in the discharge. These differences would change the amount of radium
fish would be exposed to in New York in comparison to the Gulf of Mexico, so while this study suggests that there is little danger, repeating this study using model conditions similar to New York State would tell us more about how radium would
affect New York’s waterways.