Activists claim fracking – cancer link in Pennsylvania
More than a hundred groups and hundreds of individuals from Pennsylvania have signed onto a letter to the state’s governor, calling for an official investigation into recent reports of rare cancers in counties heavily impacted by shale gas development over the last decade. The letter also calls for the Governor Tom Wolf to suspend all gas drilling permits until the investigation shows that fracking is not the cause of what appears to be an emerging public health crisis.
The letter was prompted by an investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which documented at least 46 children in four counties in southwest Pennsylvania who have suffered from rare forms of cancer since 2008-- including at least 27 cases of Ewing sarcoma, a form of bone cancer that only affects between 200 and 250 people across the entire country each year.