By Jon Hurdle, Yale Environment 360, November 17, 2022
This bears out what DCS has been saying since our inception in 2008: Fracking is hazardous to your health! We have worked with Concerned Health Professionals of NY, the late Dr. Theo Colborn, founder of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) and many others to spread the word about the dangers of fracking. We filed an Amicus Brief in the US District Court for the Middle District of PA (January, 2017) and an Amicus Brief in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (March, 2017) to better inform these Courts about the adverse human health impacts of fracking.
DCS helped lead the successful fight to achieve a BAN on fracking in the Delaware River Basin and is now working to BAN the import of toxic frack waste into the Basin. None of these accomplishments would have been possible without your support. Your donation today helps us continue this important work.
Since the hydraulic fracturing boom began almost 20 years ago, there is more and more evidence of a correlation between fracking and health issues such as childhood cancer and the premature death of elderly people to respiratory issues and endocrine disruption. For example:
- This summer, a Yale School of Public Health paper showed that children living near Pennsylvania fracked gas wells are 2 to 3 times more likely to contract acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) than those who live farther away.
- In January, a Harvard study found that seniors who live near or downwind from fracked gas wells have a higher risk of premature death, compared to those who do not live near wells.
- In April, the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York published its most recent compendium of findings demonstrating the risks and harms of fracking. Since 2014, the compendium has tallied 2,239 peer-reviewed papers that found evidence of harm, with nearly 1,000 of those papers published since 2018.
- Dr. Ned Ketyer, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, says: “There are enough studies now that show that fracking threatens the health of workers and communities and threatens the mental and physical health of people who work nearby and children who go to school nearby.”