More Research Needed on Health Effects of Drilling/Fracking, Says CDC

A government scientist, Dr. Christopher Portier recently said, that much more research is needed to determine the possible impacts of shale gas drilling on human health and the environment, research that should include all the ways people can be exposed, such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals. Portier is director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

He said that research should also include “livestock on farmed lands consuming potentially impacted surface waters; and recreational fish from potentially impacted surface waters.”  Other federal and state agencies are studying the impacts of gas drilling on air and water. Portier indicated that the science on the issue isn’t settled yet.

“We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health,” he wrote. “More research is needed for us to understand public health impacts from natural gas drilling and new gas drilling technologies.”

He also suggested pre- and post-testing of private drinking water wells near drilling sites. So he recognizes that drilling and fracking are placing existing and future water wells at risk of contamination.

Another prominent scientist said the answers won’t come quickly. Duke University researcher Rob Jackson is reported as follows: “I think it will take three to five years to sort through this.”   But, that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence of water contamination by drilling in some communities – Wyoming, for example, or Dimock in northeast Pennsylvania. “On the other hand, a handful of cases of contamination is not enough to shut down an industry,” he said. “What’s safe in Oklahoma might not be an acceptable risk somewhere else, where the population density is higher.  And you have different geology.”

Tagged as: contamination, drilling, environmental impacts, fracking, health effects, marcellus shale, water wells