ANTI-FRACKING campaigners are hosting a meeting to highlight potential dangers they believe are caused by the controversial drilling procedure.

Frack Free York has invited a water engineer, Peter Rolinson, to speak about water pollution issues they believe arise when drilling for shale gas during a meeting at the Fulford Arms, on Thursday.

The method involves drilling deep underground and blasting a mix of water and chemicals to release shale gas.

However, the group believes drilling has potentially harmful consequences if the aquifer, an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, becomes contaminated if drilling equipment breaks down.

John Cossham, chairman and founder of the group, said: "What I'm aware of is that well bore casings fail sometimes.

"Some of them fail immediately and some fail fairly soon after they are built and others fail some years down the line.

"When you put high pressure waters into the well bore and it fails it can leak into the aquifer.

"We have Peter Rolinson who is going to come along and talk to us about pollution.

"He is a professional water engineer and works for a company as a water expert.

"We want to know what the problems could be from an expert's point of view.

"He is more informed than me and anybody else I know, so I'm looking forward to hearing about it."

The meeting will be held three weeks after THIRD energy UK Gas Limited (Third Energy), a gas development and production company, said it would be applying for planning permission to frack the KM8 well at Kirby Misperton, in Ryedale.

Residents can attend the meeting at the Fulford Road pub from 7.30pm.