Finds that there are no individuals with public health expertise among the members of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, the Maryland Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission, and the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Natural Gas Subcommittee.
Health
Bamberger, Michelle and Robert E. Oswald. “Impacts of gas drilling on human and animal health.” New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. Vol. 22. Iss. 1. January 2012.
Documents animal and owner health problems with potential links to shale gas drilling.
Describes the expansion of drilling and fracking for shale gas as “an uncontrolled health experiment on an enormous scale.”
Analogy between oil and gas industry and tobacco industry also merits excerpting:
“The oil and gas industry has typically rejected this analysis and has approached the issue in a manner similar to the tobacco industry that for many years rejected the link between smoking and cancer. That is, if one cannot prove beyond a shadow of doubt that an environmental impact is due to drilling, then a link is rejected. This approach by the tobacco companies had a devastating and long-lasting effect on public health from which we have still not recovered, and we believe that a similar approach to the impacts of gas drilling may have equally negative consequences.”
Colborn, Theo et al. “Natural Gas Operations from a Public Health Perspective.” International Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment. September 2011.
Study found that 25 percent of chemicals known to have been used in fracking fluids are implicated in cancer; 37 percent could disrupt the endocrine system; 40 to 50 percent could cause nervous, immune and cardiovascular system problems; and more than 75 percent could affect the skin, eyes and respiratory system, resulting in problems like skin and eye irritation or flu-like symptoms.
Madsen, Travis et al. Frontier Group and PennEnvironment. Research and Policy Center. “In the Shadow of the Marcellus Boom.”: How Shale Gas Extraction Puts Vulnerable Pennsylvanians at Risk.” May 2011.
The study examined Pennsylvania’s more than 3,000 gas fracking wells and found permitted well sites within two miles of 320 day care centers, 67 schools and nine hospitals.
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