It’s surprising to think there are points on which oil and gas companies and opponents of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, might agree. Especially this point: companies should be able to trace water contamination to a particular fracking operation. That’s been the case with two new tracer technologies designed to fingerprint fracking operations, however.

“People [with contaminated wells] usually say [I know it was fracking] ‘because I’ve got methane in my water,’” Andrew Barron, a technology developer, told High Country News last month. “[But] it’s difficult to discern whether it’s from one source or another. It may turn out it was Halliburton that contaminated your water, and in another case, it may turn out it’s the municipal dump that’s dumping into a stream that has ground water close to it.”

Barron and his colleagues at Rice University and the University of Alberta have created a process in which nano rust particles would be injected into fracking fluid before injection into the well, according to NPR’s StateImpact. These particles could be collected and identified by a “magnetic fingerprint” wherever fracking contamination is suspected. Graduate students at Duke University developed a similar system, BaseTrace, which uses synthetic DNA to perform the match.

The tracers, which are still being field tested, could help provide some piece of mind for fracking opposers and possibly some good will or vindication for frackers.

“This technology is another way for our industry to add a level of transparency to what we do and gain the public’s trust,” Christina Fowler, a spokesperson for Southwestern Energy, wrote to HCN in an email.

Public trust might be a lofty goal considering recent uproars over an abandoned 2011 Environmental Protection Agency study that correlated fracking with drinking water contamination, and University of Texas findings that connect high levels of arsenic with fracking. But with time, perhaps, the addition of such tracers can lead to more informed decision making at the very least, Barron said.

“If the general public and the states have the information, then you can make a decision [about drilling in certain locations],” he told HCN. “Irrespective of which direction you come from, the information is important.”