Natural gas boom advances with little study of public health effects, report finds
▻http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/02/27/14302/natural-gas-boom-advances-little-study-public-health-effects-report
The new study [▻http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es404621d ], led by John Adgate at the Colorado School of Public Health, examined available research on the environmental, social and psychological impacts of shale gas drilling. It was the first time anyone had tried to tackle the question in a systematic way, Adgate said.
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Regulators are well aware of the knowledge gap. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office [GAO] — an investigative arm of Congress — reviewed more than 90 studies from government agencies, the industry and academic researchers and concluded that oil and gas development “pose inherent environmental and public health risks, but the extent of these risks … is unknown, in part, because the studies GAO reviewed do not generally take into account the potential long-term, cumulative effects.”