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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPennsylvania health officials ordered to ignore fracking-related health complaints
Live near one of the more than 6,000 fracking wells drilled in Pennsylvania within the last six years? Suffering from skin rashes, nausea or nosebleeds, and worried that nearby drilling is to blame? Dont bother calling the Department of Health, which apparently isnt concerning itself with these sorts of things.
Pennsylvania, situated atop the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale, has been a focal point of the nations fracking boom, the potential health impacts of which we know little. And according to a damning report from NPR State Impact, the state has dealt with that lack of information about the health risks of fracking not by studying the health risks of fracking, but by ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.
According to two former workers with the state Health Department, who are now retired, employees who received phone calls from residents concerned about health risks were ordered to ignore them:
There was a list of buzzwords we had gotten, [Tammi Stuck, who retired from the Department of Health two years ago] said. There were some obvious ones like fracking, gas, soil contamination. There were probably 15 to 20 words and short phrases that were on this list. If anybody from the public called in and that was part of the conversation, we were not allowed to talk to them.
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http://www.salon.com/2014/06/23/pa_health_officials_ordered_to_ignore_fracking_related_health_complaints/
SamKnause
(13,043 posts)cesspool of secrecy and corruption the U.S. has become.
Worshipping the almighty dollar at all costs is a disease.
It is destroying this country and many others around the globe.
cali
(114,904 posts)myrna minx
(22,772 posts)PCIntern
(25,347 posts)Corbett better lose, is all I can say...
DFW
(54,057 posts)He then got to gerrymander a compliant state legislature and House delegation. He and Toomey should be gone soon.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Rod Beauvex
(564 posts)I more pissed at the people who follow the orders than the people who give them.