"The gas industry has taken drinking the Kool-Aid to an absurd new level.

A lobbyist with the Colorado Oil and Gas Association appears in a new film defending the safety of the compounds blasted underground to free up wells, a process known as "fracking."

"I have fracking fluid taken right out of a fracking truck. I've had it in my mouth. I've tasted it. And I'm just fine," says Kathy Hall in "Split Estate," a documentary that premiered over the weekend.

Let me start by noting this is Hall's stunt — no one asked if she'd taken a swig — not mine. (I must admit, though, I've spent a good bit of time wondering how much COGA paid for her mouthful of highly toxic industrial fluids.)

"It's nothing you'd want to put in your mouth. That's as foolish as drinking raw sewage — and probably far more dangerous," says Dr. Theo Colborn of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, a Paonia-based group studying the health effects of drilling.

Most wells in Colorado are injected with fracking fluids. The compounds are known to contain a host of chemicals that can leach into groundwater and interfere with neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory and immune systems, Colborn and others say.

Drilling companies have tightly concealed their ingredients, saying that having to disclose them would force them to reveal trade secrets.

"It is much like asking Coca-Cola to disclose the formula of Coke," one Halliburton executive testified.

Dick Cheney's infamous 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted fracking juices from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the law protecting water supplies. That exemption is known as the "Halliburton Loophole," after the fracking giant the former vice president once headed." More>>>>

See and hear the trailer for the infamous comments (about the two minute mark):