Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Fracking
Stop It! Fracking Can't be Done in a way that doesn't Threaten Human Life

Stop It! Fracking Can’t be Done in a way that doesn’t Threaten Human Life

OtherWords 08/02/2019

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

By Barbara Gottlieb | –

Over 1,500 reports show there’s simply no safe way to do it — and it’s harming us all every day it goes on.

Science. Evidence. Facts. Do these even matter anymore in U.S. policy? They should — especially when it comes to issues that affect our health and environment, like fracking.

Concerned Health Professionals of New York and my organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, recently released a remarkable compendium of research on the subject. It summarizes and links to over 1,500 articles and reports and has become the go-to source for activists, health professionals, and others seeking to understand fracking.

The new studies we looked at expose serious threats to health, justice, and the climate.

A 2018 study in the Journal of Health Economics, for instance, found that the babies of Pennsylvania mothers living within 1.5 miles of gas wells had increased incidence of low birth weight. Babies with low birth weight (under 5.5 pounds) are over 20 times more likely to die in infancy than babies with healthy birth weight.

Babies exposed in utero to fracking are likely to face additional challenges throughout their lives. They may suffer long-term neurologic disability, impaired language development and academic success, and increased risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Other researchers are finding that fracking wells and associated infrastructure are disproportionately sited in non-white, indigenous, or low-income communities.

A study published this year in Ecological Economics analyzed the socio-demographics of people living near drilling and fracking operations in four high-fracking states: Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It found strong evidence that minorities, especially African Americans, disproportionately live near fracking wells.

They don’t just face disproportionate exposure to toxic emissions, leaks, and spills. They also have fewer resources — like health insurance, medical services, or income security — that would help them protect their health.

But you don’t have to live near wells and pipelines to be at risk. We all face harm from fracking’s impact on the climate.

So-called “natural gas” is 85-95 percent methane, a short-lived but highly potent greenhouse gas. Over its first 20 years in the atmosphere, methane traps about 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide. That 20-year timeframe matters: Scientists tell us that’s about the time we have to slash our greenhouse gas emissions and begin pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, as the research we collected finds, methane leakage rates from drilling and fracking operations have “greatly exceed” earlier estimates. A 2018 analysis of methane leaks across the U.S. found leakage rates to be 60 percent higher than reported by the EPA. A 2019 study in southwestern Pennsylvania found some gas emissions to have been underreported by a factor of five.

Overall, how bad is fracking? The Compendium states that “public health risks from unconventional gas and oil extraction are real, the range of adverse environmental impacts wide, and the negative economic consequences considerable.”

It concludes: “Our examination of the peer-reviewed medical, public health, biological, earth sciences, and engineering literature uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health.”

The logical conclusion is that, for health, justice, and a livable world, the time to stop using fracked gas is now.

Via Otherwords.org

Barbara Gottlieb is the Director for Environment & Health at Physicians for Social Responsibility, www.psr.org. She participated in the pre-publication review of the Compendium.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comments:

The Ring of Fire: “More Than 1,500 Studies Show That Fracking Is A Threat To Human Life”

Filed Under: Fracking, Health

About the Author

OtherWords OtherWords is published by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. All told, their freely syndicated op-eds reach millions of readers each year in the heartland communities often overlooked by traditional national media. They cover politics, policy, and social issues from a progressive but non-partisan perspective.

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Are Cyberattacks and Iran's Port Explosion the First Salvo in Disrupting U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks?
  • Trump, the Suez Canal, and the end of Eisenhower's World Order
  • My Palestine: An Impossible Exile
  • Rümeysa Öztürk freed, as Judge Warns of Grave Threat to Free Speech
  • When Politics Leaves Reality Behind

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved