Concerned Health Professionals of New York and the Physicians for Social Responsibility have issued their fourth report compiling scientific evidence of health impacts, water contamination and climate risks of hydraulic fracturing—aka fracking. One of the key conclusions of their Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking: A pile of evidence indicates that no amount of regulations is capable of preventing harm from the process.
A group of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, doctors hand-delivered the report to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat who has been criticized by environmental advocates for failing to seek stronger regulations or an outright ban on fracking. The doctors asked the governor say yes to a call from the Pennsylvania Medical Society for a fracking moratorium. Ecowatch noted:
"As the primary author of the Pennsylvania Medical Society's resolution on a moratorium on new gas drilling, today's new edition of the compendium only confirms why we should stop drilling," said Walter Tsou, MD, former president of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility, past president of the American Public Health Association and former health commissioner of Philadelphia, and author of the Pennsylvania Medical Society's unanimous resolution for a moratorium on fracking. "The scientific evidence only points to precaution in continuing this practice."
The fracking process pumps millions of gallons of pressurized water containing sand and chemicals underground to break up rock and release oil and natural gas. Ninety percent of today’s natural gas wells in the United States employ the process, which was invented nearly 70 years ago but whose use has surged in the past decade and a half. About half of the oil production in the United States comes from fracking now, compared with almost none 15 years ago.
More than 900 peer-reviewed studies have been carried out on the impacts of fracking, and most of them have considerable potential for negative outcomes, including significant health risks.
The authors of the report collected findings from scientific studies, media investigations, and government and industry reports and studies.
In the introduction, they note:
"Scientific studies have demonstrated that drilling and fracking can increase risk of cancer, respiratory conditions and migraines in communities surrounding fracking sites. Fracking pollutes the air, water and land in nearby towns and cities, and has resulted in explosions and earthquakes. There are least 17 million Americans living within one mile of a fracking site, whose lives will be negatively impacted and potentially shortened, by fracking."
The injection of extreme volumes of fluids—now typically three to five million gallons or more per well—create significant deformations in the shale that are translated upwards, a mile or more, to the surface. Along the way, these “pressure bulbs” can impact in unpredictable ways faults and fissures in the overlying rock strata, including strata that intersect fresh water aquifers. [...] Well sites leak far more methane and toxic vapors than previously understood, they continue to leak long after they are decommissioned and abandoned, and the leakage rate is wildly variable, with four percent of wells nationwide responsible for fully half of all drilling and fracking-related methane emissions. Predicting which wells will become superemitters is not possible, according to a 2016 survey of 8,000 wells using helicopters and infrared cameras. Further, much of this leakage is engineered into the design, as when vapors are vented through release valves in order to regulate pressure. [...] Similarly, no set of regulations can eliminate earthquake risks. In the words of a recent article in Texas Journal of Oil, Gas, and Energy Law, “earthquakes sometimes occur when subsurface formations are properly fractured….[T]he risk of earthquake damage is not substantially mitigated by the exercise of due care when fracking fluids are injected into the ground.”
Those are just two of the dozen trends the compendium’s authors have found. The others are:
- Fracking threatens drinking water.
- Drilling and fracking emissions contribute to toxic air pollution and smog (ground-level ozone) at levels known to have health impacts.
- Public health problems associated with drilling and fracking, including reproductive impacts and occupational health and safety problems, are increasingly well documented.
- Natural gas is a bigger threat to the climate than previously believed.
- Earthquakes are a consequence of drilling and fracking-related activities in many locations.
- Fracking infrastructure poses serious potential exposure risks to those living near it.
- Drilling and fracking activities can bring naturally occurring radioactive materials to the surface.
- The risks posed by fracking in California are unique.
- The economic instabilities of fracking further exacerbate public health risks.
- Fracking raises issues of environmental justice.
- Healthcare professionals are increasingly calling for bans or moratoria until the full range of potential health hazards from fracking are understood.