When the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sent an inspector to look into the Parrs’ case and collect air samples, he was sickened as well. The Texas Attorney General’s office sued, and Aruba ended up settling for $108,000. The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s hostility to examining the health effects of fracking is just the latest development in a series of policies and laws that make it easier to make money from fracking — at the expense of public health. For instance, a Pennsylvania law makes it illegal for doctors to tell their patients which fracking chemicals are poisoning them, to protect the secret blends they inject into the earth. Drillers like it because they assert it helps them compete against one another. But it also makes it very difficult for residents to build the case for the health effects of a particular chemical, or even the health effects of fracking generally. As Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach (D) told Mother Jones in March of last year, “The importance of keeping it as a proprietary secret seems minimal when compared to letting the public know what chemicals they and their children are being exposed to.”
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 22:25:06 +0000
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