Every month new evidence implicates horizontal hydraulic fracking
Guest Editorial from Dr. Val Arkoosh, Penn Live, November 7, 2021
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to infect Pennsylvanians and hurt our communities, it is hard to focus on anything else. But as a physician and public health professional, I will not sit back and watch the lack of urgency in Washington on the other escalating public health crisis hurting Pennsylvanians: climate change. This is both an issue of public health and Pennsylvania’s economic future.
Treating patients over two decades, I came to realize that many of the things most impacting them were things outside the exam room and climate change is one of the clearest examples.
People are dying from extreme heat and certain diseases are showing up where they’ve never been before. There are kids who can’t drink water in their neighborhoods or play outside because the air is too dirty for them to breathe. And Pennsylvanians, including in recent months, are being killed in extreme weather events.
But just as we’ve seen COVID deniers undermining the science behind vaccines and masks, we see politiciansin Washington who refuse to accept the science behind climate change or refuse to treat it like the urgent health crisis it is. President Biden is making climate change a domestic priority and repositioning the U.S. as a leader again. But we also have a serious problem in Washington when one U.S. Senator can kill meaningful methane emission rules in the spending bill that could put us on a stronger path.
It is time to be bold. Our kids’ futures, our economic growth, and our national security depend on it. We need to ban fracking, starting with an immediate ban on all new permits and quickly banning fracking near homes and schools. We need to hold polluters accountable for the harm they are doing in our communities. We also need robust testing of water near homes and schools around fracking sites.
Last year, Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a grand jury report , which detailed testimony of dozens of Pennsylvania homeowners who live near fracking sites. The reports reinforced what we’d been hearing for years — children with nosebleeds and chronic fatigue, families with nausea and dizziness, dead livestock, and sludge clogging well-water pumps.
And following an alarming analysis by Physicians for Social Responsibility on the use of PFAS or “forever chemicals” in fracking sites in six other states, an analysis by the Philadelphia Inquirer found that between 2012 and 2014 at least eight Pennsylvania fracking wells used these dangerous chemicals, which have been linked to major health hazards like cancer and low birth weight.
Beyond the clear public health need, this is also about taking the future of our Commonwealth’s economy into our own hands so we can ensure the green jobs of the future are created here in Pennsylvania, not in other states and not in China. Pennsylvanians deserve our share of the sustainable clean energy jobs we are creating today and will create tomorrow.
It just makes sense for our economy and where we know this is headed. For decades, we have seen industries in Western Pennsylvania get the rug pulled out from under them — just look at what’s happened with coal and steel. If we don’t accept the fact that the same will be true of fracking jobs, we risk getting left behind.
Investments in clean energy like solar and wind, efforts to make our infrastructure more energy-efficient and sustainable, and electrifying public transit will create manufacturing jobs here at home and ensure we can lead the way in this fight. We need to incentivize the production of these technologies in American factories by union workers, and give workers in the fossil fuel industry the training to enter this workforce, building the clean energy economy of the future.
Banning fracking will not solve every problem, but it will prevent people from getting sick and must be a priority in creating a healthier Pennsylvania and tackling this climate crisis.
It will take someone with my health background and experience to fight for these pro-public health policies in the U.S. Senate, which needs a science truth-teller right now more than ever. We can’t let ongoing attacks on science and facts hold us back in this fight. I won’t.
>> Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH, is the chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.
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