By Don Hopey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pennsylvania Medical Society has called for a moratorium on new shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing and is urging the state to establish an independent health registry and start studying fracking’s public health impacts.
“We do support a moratorium at this point because of questions that have been raised,” said Charles Cutler, a Montgomery County doctor of internal medicine and the newly elected president of the 16,000-member medical society. “Those questions now point to the need for a registry and more science and research to give us a better understanding about whether fracking is safe and what the risk is.”
The society’s 300-member House of Delegates unanimously approved a resolution at its annual meeting Sunday in Hershey calling for the fracking moratorium, registry and research.
Dr. Walter Tsou, past president of the American Public Health Association and the author of the resolution, noted that a similar resolution was rejected three years ago, but now “growing evidence has shown its increasing deleterious effects outweighs any economic benefit.”
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