Little pink bits

Read more about the Komen/Baker Hughes frack-for-the-cure effort here. Watch a little promotional video about it here. And then share the contents of your heart with Susan G. Komen headquarters: right over here.

As the story explains, when the pink drill bits are shipped in their boxes (and, yes, the boxes are pink, too), they come packed with information about “breast health facts, breast cancer risk factors and screening tips.”

And exactly whose breast cancer awareness quotient will be bolstered out there on the well pad? Inside the trailers and the trucks? Down on the drilling floor? Up on the derrick?

“The hope is that the roughneck who cracks open that container learns a little more about the disease that afflicts 200,000 women per year.”

Here’s what I’m wagering that roughneck does not learn from the literature shipped with his drill bit this October: I’m betting he does not read about the recent study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that found dangerous levels of benzene in the urine of workers in the unconventional (aka fracking) oil and gas industry. Benzene is a proven human carcinogen.