CDC weighs in on fracking

First, let me say: WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? Second, let me say: I guess this is a good thing but I just can’t get too excited about it.

Dr. Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says tests are needed to determine the “possible” impacts of shale gas drilling.

“We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health,”

Really?

Here’s what another guy said:

“I think it will take three to five years to sort through this,” Duke University researcher Rob Jackson told AP in an email.

Raise your hand if you find that comforting. Yeah, me neither.

It’s all so complex.

“This poses an extremely complex problem for epidemiology researchers, given the range of possible environmental exposures that are currently not well defined,” he said.

In layman’s terms, that means that if a person who lives near a gas drilling site gets sick, doctors don’t have enough information to say whether the drilling or other environmental or physical factors are to blame.

Here’s a hint for you: If the chemicals in your blood match the chemicals in the air and the chemicals in the air are from the gas well in your yard, then the rash all over your body might be from… Oh man, I just can’t connect all those dots.

I think we should wait around until a bunch more people get cancer because that’s how we do things. Remember cigarettes and the Big Tobacco Mafia?

UPDATE: I had to come back and embellish with another picture.

CDC to the Fracking Rescue!!!

 

Read this and you’ll feel lots better: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

Oh yeah, I forgot. Here’s the link to the CDC article.