Sandra Steingraber – national conference on the public health effects of fracking that was convened by a new group of doctors and scientists called Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE).

Friends,

Here attached is a new report from me on the public health threats posed by fracking–and the human rights dilemma posed by researching them.  It represents the expanded and footnoted version of the talk I gave last week at a national conference on the public health effects of fracking that was convened by a new group of doctors and scientists called Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE).

There was lots of press coverage, with the signature message: “We need to hit the pause button on fracking and maybe also the stop button.”

The keynotes addresses were provided by senior officials within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (a federal agency) and the Children’s National Medical Center.

You can find video documentation of the various presentations, along with powerpoint slides at the PSE website:

http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/site/view/971

You can also access my talk through the url link above.

The written transcript is longer than the remarks I actually delivered because I wrote a much longer speech than could fit within my 20 minute time limit and so delivered only about 2/3 of what I had written.  Also because I speak from handwritten phrases (rather than a typed-up script), this is not a verbatim transcript.  But it’s better.  And also fully referenced.

Feel free to post and distribute if you find useful.

The title of my talk “Taking the Handle Off the Fracking Pump” is intended to reference the British physician John Snow who, in 1854, on the basis of partial evidence and in the absence of absolute proof, took the handle off a public water pump that he believed was the source of a cholera outbreak in London.  Later, it was revealed that the drinking water well was located only a few feet from a leaking cesspit whose well casing had crumbled.  Dr. Snow intervened to save lives first and then documented the mechanism for harm and route of exposure after the fact.  At the time, very few public health officials accepted the germ theory of cholera causation.

I believe this story, which is legendary within the field of public health and epidemiology, has resonance for the anti-fracking movement.

In the attached remarks, I also come down hard on the idea that the risks to health and environment from fracking can be successfully “mitigated.”  I argue that mitigation is a myth.  At best, it simply delays human exposure rather than prevents it.  Mitigation cannot decrease the amount of toxic material created or liberated by fracking.

“Mitigation builds time bombs with longer fuses.”

I also try to connect the global climate change concerns regarding methane with the toxic exposure concerns regarding  its extraction.  Within the United States, climate change and toxic trespass are addressed by two very different groups of activists with their own history and culture, and there has been very little communication or cooperation between the two groups. Happily, that segregation does seem to be dissolving a bit over the last year.