Doctors Puzzled over Sickness from Fracking

Dr. Charles Werntz of WVU

STEVE INSKEEP, NPR RADIO HOST:

All this week National Public Radio (NPR) is taking a deeper look at the natural gas boom in the United States. This boom is supplying America with cheap, abundant energy and pumping billions of dollars into the economy. But there are questions about what the gas boom is doing to our air and our water.

Tuesday on MORNING EDITION, we’ll hear from sick patients living near gas wells and the doctors searching for answers.  This program can now be read on the Internet, some highlights of which are shown below:

Sick From Fracking? Doctors, Patients Seek Answers

Kay Allen had just started work, and everything seemed quiet at the Cornerstone Care community health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. But things didn’t stay quiet for long.

“All the girls, they were yelling at me in the back, ‘You gotta come out here quick. You gotta come out here quick,’ ” said Allen, 59, a nurse from Weirton, W.Va. Allen rushed out front and knew right away what all the yelling was about. The whole place reeked — like someone had spilled a giant bottle of nail polish remover. This sort of thing has been happening for weeks. Mysterious gusts of fumes keep wafting through the clinic.

Richard Rinehart, who runs the rural clinic, can’t help but wonder whether the natural gas drilling going on all around the area may have something to do with what’s been happening. Doctors like Julie DeRosa, who works at Cornerstone, aren’t sure how to help people with these mysterious symptoms.

Dr. Sean Porbin, a private doctor who advises the project, gives the project’s nurse practitioner advice when she needs it. But Porbin is skeptical that many people are getting sick from the drilling, which is commonly called “fracking.” There are about 5,000 new wells in Pennsylvania.

In the meantime, patients and doctors don’t have a lot of options. In western Pennsylvania, a lot of them are referred to Charles Werntz at West Virginia University. Werntz, an occupational medicine specialist, is used to dealing with chemical exposures. Lately, he’s seeing more people who live near the drilling. But for now, he says he can’t really do much more than offer basic advice: Drink bottled water, air out the house, leave your shoes outside. If it’s still too bad, move — if possible.

The next day, people got sick again, and the clinic had to be evacuated once more. So they’ve moved the clinic to temporary offices until someone figures out what’s going on.

Wednesday on Morning Edition, NPR’s Jon Hamilton will report on researchers who think they have a good shot at answering whether drilling is making people sick.