Revealed: how a UK firm is spearheading growth in trade of US fracked ethane

Ineos is driving exports with potentially far-reaching environmental and social repercussions

“My children started getting sick,” says Lois Bower-Bjornson, a campaigner at the Clean Air Council in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

“My oldest son had rashes all over his body. His ears, his eyelids, everywhere. My youngest had terrible nosebleeds, it was so bad that he became anaemic and would almost pass out. He would wake up bleeding.”

Bower-Bjornson blames her children’s health problems on the 36 fracking wells that surround her property in the greater Appalachian region of the US. She also places some of the responsibility on Ineos, a British company privately owned by British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the co-owner of Premier League football club Manchester United.