"I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice," says Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa. The new law, she says, not only "hinders preventative measures for our patients, it slows the treatment process by gagging free discussion."
Below is a graph of the chemicals used in fracking that are associated with health risks, as provided by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
(Author's note: This graph expresses established health risk from fracking-related chemicals; this does not include the greenhouse-gas implications on climate change, also inherent in fracking.)
These are the chemicals -- known carcinogens, neurological toxins and endocrine disruptors among them -- which Governor Corbett would rather hide from Pennsylvanians in the service of promoting the natural gas industry.
Dr. Jerome Paulson, director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., called the new law "unprecedented" and "detrimental to the delivery of personal health care and contradictory to the ethical principles of medicine and public health."
Physicians, says Paulson, "have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect the health of the public, and this law precludes us from doing all we can to protect the public." He has called for a moratorium on all drilling until the health effects can be analyzed.
Got an unusual form of lung cancer, dude? Hair falling out, Madame? (This happens -- google: "Dimock, Pennsylvania," for starters. ) What's that -- the children at school are getting sick? And did you mention that the school gets it's drinking water from a well near a new mining site?
Don't bother asking the doctor, he isn't allowed to discuss.
-- by order of the Mullah - I mean, Governor.
Source: Planetsave (http://s.tt/182nZ)
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