Why health professionals reject natural gas

PSR’s report, Too Dirty, Too Dangerous: Why Health Professionals Reject Natural Gas, based on summaries of recent medical and scientific studies, clearly conveys the health threats that accompany use of methane as a fuel. Here are some of the key findings it reports:

• Proximity to fracking operations are associated with congenital heart defects, increased risk of high-risk pregnancy and premature birth, worsening asthma, and increased rates of hospitalization for cardiac, neurological and cancer-related problems.

• Methane accelerates climate change. It is more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over its first hundred years in the atmosphere—fully 86 times more potent over its first 20 years.

• Methane has been found to leak from fracking wells, equipment, and pipelines at rates that make it worse for the environment than coal. Those leakage rates, if sustained, move us closer to climate catastrophe.

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