More than 100 physicians urged the Obama administration on Thursday not to approve the construction of liquefied natural gas export terminals until more is known about the health effects of hydraulic fracturing, the drilling process that has opened the way for a big increase in domestic gas production.
A group called Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy, which conducts research into unconventional natural gas production, organized a petition arguing that exports of natural gas would increase such domestic drilling, known as fracking, exposing more people to chemicals that might damage their health.
The petition, signed by 107 doctors, public health experts, environmental scientists, and academics, cited a growing number of anecdotal reports associating fracking with adverse health risks through human exposure to water, air and soil.
Despite reports that some people living near gas-drilling operations are suffering from respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal ailments, there is no established body of scientific evidence establishing whether fracking
contaminates the local environment, the physicians noted.
Until policymakers and public health officials determine whether fracking is dangerous to human health, they argue, the government should not allow the development of the 15 new export terminals that have been proposed by the gas industry. The government has so far approved one export terminal, proposed by Cheniere Energy, in Louisiana.
“There is a paucity of objective, evidence-based epidemiological research,” Dr. Madelon Finkel, a professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, said during a conference call with reporters.
The petition follows the publication on Dec. 4 of a government study concluding that the economic benefits of LNG exports would outweigh the impacts of the higher domestic prices that may result. The report has encouraged speculation that more projects will be approved.
The demand for exports has risen from a recent boom in domestic production resulting from the use of fracking in combination with horizontal drilling, which has allowed the industry to exploit vast shale gas reserves at an affordable cost. Energy companies are also lured by sharply higher natural gas prices overseas.
The natural gas industry denies there is any link between fracking and environmental contamination, arguing that the chemicals used to help release gas from shale beds are injected into the ground through multiple layers of steel and concrete and released into the shale beneath thousands of feet of impervious rock.
Dan Whitten, a spokesman for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, dismissed the physicians’ concerns.
“There is no basis in fact or science for the assertions made by this group,” Mr. Whitten said in a statement. “Natural gas is produced safely and responsibly every day, and that production is governed by extensive federal, state and local regulations.”
But Dr. Adam Law, a physician at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y., said that researchers were finding measurable levels of pollutants from the gas industry in the air and water that are associated with the risk of illness, and that the first studies describing such exposure were entering the medical literature.
Seth Shonkoff, executive director of the physicians’ group, said that a current investigation into fracking by the Environmental Protection Agency would not fully establish whether fracking is safe because it is concerned only with its effects on water.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the petition.