The so-called Halliburton Loophole, named after the oil and gas services company once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, means that the industry can use fracking fluid containing chemicals linked to negative health effects including kidney and liver disease, fertility impairment, and reduced sperm counts without being subject to regulation under the act.

While environmentalists and public-health campaigners have long called for closing the loophole, they haven’t known how many of the regulated chemicals are used by the industry, how often the industry reports their use in its fracking disclosures, what quantities of the chemicals are used, and how often the industry chooses not to identify its chemicals on the grounds that they are proprietary.

Now, some of that data is publicly available in a study by researchers at Northeastern University and three other colleges. The paper, published in its final form in February, reports that the industry uses 28 chemicals regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and discloses them in up to 73 percent of its reports of fracking activities to FracFocus, an industry-sponsored database.

Between 2014 and 2021, the industry used 282 million pounds of the regulated chemicals, a number dwarfed by the 7.2 billion pounds of chemicals that were reported but not identified on the grounds that they are proprietary or trade secrets, the paper said.

Standing for long periods of time is part of the job description for servers, cashiers and retail employees – and managers want it that way. In the 1960s, Ray Kroc, the CEO who took McDonald’s from a small-time local chain to a global franchise, had a catchphrase: “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.” Today, it’s still uttered by bosses in kitchens and warehouses to deter workers from slacking off – or merely taking breaks.

It’s a uniquely American ethos. Cashiers in Europe, and notably at the German grocery store Aldi, are welcome to sit down during their shifts. Zay said a British friend who had visited the US recently was jarred by the sight of workers constantly on their feet: “Why are they all standing?”

The same rules do not apply, obviously, to people with desk jobs. (Though sedentary workers face their own share of ailments that come from a life of sitting down from 9 to 5.)

“I think it’s a very classist thing,” Zay said. “No one would dare criticize a lawyer for sitting on the job. But in retail or the service industry, when the job is deemed to be unskilled labor, people get irrationally offended when they see you sitting.”