@eric3579 and @eoe
There have been studies that show that eating unwashed fruit and vegetables can be bad for you, even deadly, thanks to pesticides and contaminants.
There are also studies showing that growing them (in the way we do with artificial fertilizers, pesticides, deforestation, and diverted water) is bad for the environment, so indirectly bad for you. That said, meat production is much worse for the environment.
Not disagreeing with you, just sayin'...nothing's perfect. ;-)

This sounds like another great reason to grow your own produce. Then, with the exception of airborne chemicals you can't avoid, you can know what's gone into your own food, and decide for your self which chemicals are acceptable and which aren't. Strawberries are fairly easy to grow. I have 4 large beds of them, all started from one $3 6pack 5 years ago and grown on cheap, plentiful poo, not man made chemicals. Egg shells and horticulture oil work as good as most pesticides, and do no harm. I still lose 20% to pests, but I just grow 300% more than we can eat, so no problem.
I get not everyone can subsistence farm at home, but almost everyone has a window they can put a potted strawberry in....or a pineberry (a new variety, pineapple flavored strawberries).

They ignored the fact that other crops are grown next to the berries that may absorb the toxic chemicals, and that other chemicals are put on those other crops that also drift to the berries, contaminating them with other poisons. I'm glad they did at least mention direct neighborhood contamination.

Unfortunately, there have at least been numerous accusations that they hooked propane up to the water lines and other trickery to film Gasland, so it does not have a shining clean record of being fair and impartial.
That said, I think there is plenty of independent evidence that water contamination has occurred, and it at least appears that it increases the likelihood of earthquakes exponentially, even in areas that have no recorded activity. At best, we don't know the long term effects, and I think we should be cautious until we do since the possible consequences are so terrible and irreversable.

*lies

The entire video is designed to convince watchers that it's "safe" because they use casings and cement, and that it doesn't contaminate because of these methods. They say exactly that, how we "safely " extract and deliver oil...History has proven it's not safe to drill or transport and does contaminate groundwater and surface land/water, therefore 'propaganda'. If they had not used the word "safe" I might give them more of a pass.
It is informative to an extent, but is also designed as propaganda with so many glaring ommissions of fact, and downright lies (like their incomplete list of chemicals), not a technical teaching tool.
I note they pretend to tell you what's in the fluid, but in reality it's a trade secret they won't even tell the fed, and have purchased exemptions from the laws governing drilling and contamination so they never have to tell anyone what it is, and are exempt from prosecution when they contaminate.
I also note they never mention earthquakes.

To me, this is like a meth head telling people they should try Krocodile, it's cheaper and you can make it at home! They ignore the fact that it kills you pretty fast.
You can support anything if you ignore the damage it does and only look at the good. When you do that, it's called propaganda.

Agree with @Fairbs...this is total self serving fracking propaganda and nothing more.
It is good they take some steps to not pollute.
It is ridiculous and terrible that they pretend the steps they take are fool proof and all inclusive. They have failed repeatedly (almost consistently) causing irreversible damage FAR more expensive than fracking is profitable. If they had to pay to really completely clean up even one contaminated aquifer, it would cost more than they could ever make off of the entire US gas reserves, and would never be completed because it's impossible to do.

15% of the fluid recovered means up to 85% of the toxic fluid is being pumped up through fractures, some of it into the water system. Even if only 10% makes it there, that's millions of gallons of unknown, poisonous contamination of our water systems.
True, aquifers may sit mostly at higher levels, but they have channels and fractures that reach below the level of the fracking, making a channel for the toxic drill fluid to enter the water table. Pretty simple to understand.
Also, the method used to fracture the rock is pulsing huge pressures through the tubes. Under those conditions, steel 'casings' flex (and sometimes rupture) and concrete fractures, destroying any 'seal' it could have made or, at best, creating channels outside the casing for the toxic fluid to travel up and out of.
I see many reasons this is not a viable industry without exemptions from legal and environmental regulations, which should never be granted to anyone.

If I was going to worry about toilet aerosols it wouldn't be in my own bathroom where my toothbrush might get contaminated with a barely detectable sample of my own shit. I'd worry about breathing the air in the men's room at my local football stadium where there are 30 urinals and 20 toilets all being used by guys who have been stuffing their faces with chili dogs and nachos and drinking way too much beer.

Well, that's bad and is only getting worse, but they are FAR from alone.
For instance, while the reservoir they showed looked to be about 40-50ft below full, I recently drove over Lake Shasta in N California, and it looks to be 200-250ft low! This is also due to 'climate change', which is turning what has historically been a wet rain forest into a desert.
We are already having water wars in our state. They WILL become violent eventually. Our dwindling sources of water in the North are being diverted to the far south...and somehow they pay less for our water than WE do! WTF?!?
And we are quickly draining aquifers nation wide, making it harder and harder to drill a well IF you are allowed to.
And insanely, where fresh water is not becoming scarce, we seem to be intentionally contaminating it so it's unusable, both above and below ground.
Just don't fool yourselves into thinking this is only a third world problem...it is not. First worlders use MORE water than those in the third world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Klog-Pfms

Its how they end up cleaning gasoline contaminated soils anyway, just run it through a giant tumbler and burn off all the fuel.

Interesting. My other half's Russian and despises the separate taps. I knew about not drinking from the storage tank, but what I hadn't considered is the backwash concept, where one household's unclean water could contaminate the mains.

It just seems to me that this is myopic, short term thinking (by the military, not you) that actually hurts their operational effectiveness by
1)being wasteful when a simple box to catch empties could be designed to be failsafe, light, and maybe even function as 'armor' when full and flotation when empty. Also (and far more important to the military), every dollar saved by 'recycling' the brass is a dollar that could be spent on more and/or better equipment for soldiers.
and 2)creating hostility towards your forces in those that may have been neutral or even on your side, before their child was burned over 90% of their body by the shells falling out of the chopper, or their straw home burned down, or their fields/rice patties/hog pens are now full of burnt 'propellant' (not always gunpowder, and often more contaminating than gunpowder) and hot brass, ruining or contaminating them permanently when it could be prevented so easily. They have put big money into trying to create a less toxic 'bullet' out of carbon/other exotics, knowing it's an issue world wide. (I don't know how far that's gone yet.) I can't understand why they would ignore the other part of the bullet?

I see your point about 'informing' the public, but that could be done just as easily and maybe better with a go-pro (or a few) and commentary, no?
True enough, it may not have been the only escape chopper or trip, but make no mistake there was a HUGE shortage of escape methods, not everyone got a ride out, and there's no reason to short change the victims or require more dangerous trips in and out just so one reporter can see first hand instead of on video....not that I see.

They don't catch shells because it is just something else to deal with. Military operations cause a lot of waste and contamination (the bullets are lead as an example). It would be superfluous to worry about the casings and just take up more space and crew time.

The reason they take reporters is because it helps the public see and support what is going on. Having public support behind these sort of things is important. Also most western nations have pretty strong freedom of the press rules.

Yes, he took up some space, but it isn't like that is the only helicopter they sent. This isn't a case of "one chopper and then the rest of you are screwed." They are sending more flights. That same chopper probably went back, after refueling and rearming, for that matter.

Whenever I see videos where they're shooting from a helicopter, I wonder why they don't catch their empties. That's a lot of hot brass they're dropping all over, wasting shells and contaminating whatever's below them. Why?
I agree, this reporter both has balls of steel and is obnoxious, but my thought was he could have simply given one of the military a go-pro instead of going with them, and 3 more children (or 2 thin adults) could have been saved.

I think it normally depends on the mountain. As I see it, most people have an issue with destroying mountains for things like mining because 1) they disagree with the reasoning for it, 2)it's in places where people can see the damage, and more importantly 3) those 'mountains' are often much lower altitude and are decent habitats for critters with significant water runoff that's contaminated by 'mountain top removal'. When you're talking 9-10K feet up, beyond the tree line, there's far less habitat being destroyed (granted, something likely lives there that's now dead or displaced). That means it's not 0 damage done, but far less damage to what most people consider important. Very few people care about damaging the rock itself, mostly Shinto and Buddhists I would guess. Personally I find this a good trade off of damage vs possible gain, but of course I don't live there.
I'm wondering how this is better than the VLTA http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt/
I expected there to be no more giant telescopes made now that they know how to combine smaller ones to simulate large ones. I wonder why they went this way on this project?

Nuclear, when located away from population zones and areas of high seismic activity is a much better alternative to fracking. It doesn't carry any caveats in contaminating or draining aquifers and not being a fossil fuel it doesn't have the carbon emissions cost. Unfortunately Three Mile and now Fukushima have made that unlikely.

I do agree with Mikus that it needs to be put in perspective. The other point is that while not ideal, fracking is a much better alternative to coal in terms of emission cost.

It's actually slightly more complicated still. With the power supply he's using, a DC power supply, he could turn it up to 100+ volts and hold both leads without issue (not touch them to his tongue, but hold them in his hands would be fine). I've done exactly that before; I could feel a slight amount of discomfort as current flowed through my fingers at both leads (the point of highest current density in the circuit that is my body), but it could otherwise be said that it 'tickled'. I've also had experiences once or twice in my life where I accidentally touched 120V AC, and it most certainly did NOT tickle, it HURT.

What people don't realize about humans (and even regular tap water) is that both are actually highly resistive to DC current, in the megaohms region. Once you get to 10's of Hz, for example 60Hz, 100V starts becoming quite deadly. The capacitance in our body (and in water with ion contaminants) allows current to flow much more readily when you get to alternating current of at least that minimum frequency. The net effect is that your body's resistance decreases as the input frequency increases.

Yes, it is 'current that kills', and even more accurately 'current density that kills', but it's the amount and frequency of voltage applied paired with the frequency specific resistance of the system that determines how much current will flow.