Hurting our health?

Doctors say natural-gas drilling lacks research

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Public-health advocates and doctors on the front lines of Pennsylvania’s natural gas-drilling boom are attacking the state’s new Marcellus Shale law, likening one of its provisions to a gag order and complaining that vital research money into health impacts was stripped at the last minute.

Doctors say they don’t know what to tell patients who suspect their ailments are related to nearby gas-industry activity because of a lack of research on whether the drilling of thousands of new wells — many near houses and drinking-water supplies — has made some people sick.

Yet when legislative leaders and the governor’s office negotiated the most sweeping update of the state’s oil and gas law in a quarter century, they stripped $2 million a year that included funding for a statewide health registry to track respiratory problems, skin conditions, stomach ailments and a host of other illnesses potentially related to gas drilling.

Studies are urgently needed to determine if any of the drilling has impacted human health, said Dr. Poune Saberi, a University of Pennsylvania physician and public-health expert.

“We don’t really have a lot of time,” said Dr. Saberi, who said she’s talked to about 30 people around Pennsylvania over the past 18 months who blame their ailments on gas drilling.

Last week, as the controversy simmered, the Department of Health refused to give The Associated Press copies of its responses to people who have complained that drilling had impacted their health.

That lack of transparency — justified in the name of protecting private medical information — means that the public has no way of knowing even how many complaints there are or how many are valid.

Working out of public view, legislative negotiators also inserted a requirement that doctors sign a confidentiality agreement in return for access to proprietary information on chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process.

Though environmental groups and Shell Oil Co. alike pushed it, doctors and public-health advocates say they weren’t consulted and had no idea it was in the bill.

State officials say the rule, which mirrors federal regulations in place for decades, is meant to give doctors explicit access to drilling firms’ secret chemical cocktails.

But Pennsylvania’s leading medical association contends it may have a chilling effect on research as well as on doctors’ ability to diagnose and treat patients who have been exposed to carcinogens and other toxic substances.

“If there’s this confidentiality agreement that you need to sign off on, how open are you to share that information, whether directly with the patient, or with the state, or for research?” said Dr. Marilyn J. Heine, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society. “There is some ambiguity. The law isn’t identifying what the limitations are.”

The law, which takes effect Saturday, includes a new “impact fee” on gas drillers, stronger environmental protections, and mandated online disclosure of chemicals used in fracking, the technique that’s allowed drillers to reach previously inaccessible gas deposits deep underground. A challenge to the constitutionality of the disclosure restriction is part of a broader lawsuit filed March 29 against the gas-drilling law.

To frack a well, drillers blast millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals down the well bore to crack open shale deposits and release the gas trapped inside.

Environmentalists and some residents believe the chemicals have polluted drinking-water supplies. The industry says there’s no proof.

The Pennsylvania law, borrowed from new regulations in Colorado, exempts proprietary fracking formulas but instructs drillers to hand over the “specific identity and amount of any chemicals claimed to be a trade secret” to any health professional who needs it to treat a patient who may have been exposed.

In return, the doctor is required to hold the information in confidence.