STUDY: WORLD'S SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION MAY BE UNDERWAY

FRACK FLUID IS DANGER TO COMMUNITY

Pennsylvania environment officials are racing to clean up as much as 8,000 gallons of dangerous drilling fluids after a series of spills at a natural gas production site near the town of Dimock last week.

The spills, which occurred at a well site run by Cabot Oil and Gas, involve a compound manufactured by Halliburton that is described as a "potential carcinogen" and is used in the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing, according to state officials. The contaminants have seeped into a nearby creek, where a fish kill was reported by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP also reported fish "swimming erratically."

The incident is the latest in a series of environmental problems [2] connected to Cabot’s drilling in the Dimock area. Last winter, drinking water in several area homes [3] was found to contain metals and methane gas that state officials determined leaked underground from Cabot wells. And in the spring, the company was fined for several other spills, including an 800-gallon diesel spill from a truck that overturned.

BP TRIES TO STOP LEAK AS U.S. OIL SLICK SPREADS

British oil giant BP has used robotic underwater vehicles to try to cap a leaking well and prevent a growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico from developing into an environmental disaster.

Satellite images showed the slick had spread by 50 per cent in a day to cover an area of 1550 square kilometres although officials said on Sunday some 97 per cent of the pollution was just a thin veneer on the sea's surface.

BP has dispatched skimming vessels to mop up the oil leaking from the debris of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which sank on Thursday, still blazing almost two days after a massive explosion that left 11 workers missing presumed dead.

MORE THAN 200 WHALES ARE TRAPPED IN THE CANADIAN ARTIC

There are more than 200 Narwhal Whales in Canada's Artic trapped by winter ice and they face starvation or suffocation. Hunters from the village of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island discovered them near Bylot Island on November 15th.

Local hunters are allowed to harvest only 130 whales each year for food. These are the standards by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.Hunters have been given authorization to cull them because it's unlikely they will survive the winter according to Keith Pelley, department spokesman.

There were over a dozen areas where they could come up for air but they weren't large enough for them to squeeze through.