Fracking and the burning question of regulation

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/fracking-and-the-burning-question-of-regulation

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With respect to Professor MacDonald (Letters, 22 August), a recently published analysis of peer-reviewed literature between 2009 and 2015 demonstrates that 84% of the studies contain findings that indicate public health hazards, elevated risks or adverse health outcomes in fracking areas, all of which were confident no doubt that their regulations were world class. There are similar high levels of anxiety concerning water and air quality in fracking areas.

The professor does not share with us what it is, other than the industry’s assertion, that makes our UK system of regulation, not yet tested for shale, so watertight. Her last paragraph sits ill from an academic and hardly withstands the most cursory scrutiny: how can an untried system be world class – despite the “study after study undertaken in the UK by renowned universities”? How do we know? It is not enough that Public Health England “recognise that concentrations [of radon released by fracking to the environment] are not expected to result in significant additional radon exposure”. What kind of assurance is this?David Cragg-JamesYork

• Professor MacDonald gives the game away when she says that we are safe from radon gas “as long as the shale gas industry is properly regulated”.

Any commercial activity that may produce environmental harm or health problems should not need to be regulated: its owners and managers should run their activities so that we do not need them to be regulated.

But, of course, regulation is needed because they do not, and we therefore have every right to be suspicious of them when there is widespread awareness over many decades of the private sector trying to influence the level of regulation, get away with as much as possible and in some cases ignore it.

Her comment implies that if there is not “proper regulation”, whatever that might mean, the industry will indeed get away with as much as it possibly can.Terry CannonResearch fellow in climate change, Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex

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