From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):
The fracking boom sparked stories of health scares across rural Pennsylvania: kids with burning rashes, farmers with chronic headaches and nausea, more difficulty breathing from asthma.
These symptoms took parents and health professionals in communities near fracking operations by surprise. But newly released EPA documents showed they approved use of more than 40 chemicals with health risks as early as 15 years ago.
The EPA is supposed to be looking out for our health, not rubber-stamping frackers’ junk science. Tell them to put our public health first, not polluters, at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=23923.
The newly revealed information is damning. The EPA requested safety tests less than 10% of the time for chemicals used to frack within yards of Pennsylvanians’ homes. And one manager asked the author of a 2004 study that initially found risks of drinking water contamination from fracking “Can’t you say something positive about it?” then made the researcher soften the study’s language.1,2
It’s time for the EPA to put citizen’s health first.
Pennsylvanian families, especially children, have paid the price for the rampant expansion of dangerous fracking, exposed to known risks like poisoning of the brain, lungs, and liver.
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Scott Tong, “Documents show undisclosed EPA health concerns on fracking chemicals,” Marketplace, November 14, 2017.
- Neela Banerjee, “Special report: How the U.S. Government Hid Fracking’s Risks to Drinking Water,” StateImpact, November 22, 2017.
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