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CDC official: More study of gas drilling’s health effects needed
A top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official is calling for wider study of the potential public health effects of natural-gas development, comments that will likely embolden opponents of the widespread drilling method called hydraulic fracturing.
“Studies should include all the ways people can be exposed, such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals,” said Christopher Portier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, in an email to The Associated Press.
“We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health,” he said. “More research is needed for us to understand public health impacts from natural-gas drilling and new gas drilling technologies.”
But Portier, according to AP, said that research should also examine “livestock on farmed lands consuming potentially impacted surface waters; and recreational fish from potentially impacted surface waters.”
Portier’s comments add a new wrinkle to the ongoing lobbying and political battle over expanded production of gas from shale formations tapped through fracking.
Fracking involves involves high-pressure injections of water, chemicals and sand into rock formations, which open up cracks that enable trapped gas to flow. The method has created a natural-gas boom in many states, but it carries with it concerns about pollution.
Environmentalists are pressing for tougher federal regulation, including the overturning of a 2005 law that exempts fracking from key Safe Drinking Water Act regulations.
But natural-gas industry officials call the method safe and say drilling opponents are vastly overstating the risks.
Fracking is sensitive terrain for the White House amid competing political pressures to expand domestic energy production and toughen regulation.
The administration has repeatedly emphasized its support for expanded domestic gas drilling.
But it has also begun moving on several fronts to expand oversight, with planned rules on chemical disclosure, wastewater and air pollution (more on that here, here, here and here).
