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Taking a Deeper Look at the Facts about Fracking

Powerful industries have always invested substantial resources to hide the health risks associated with their products. The hydrofracking industry may be joining the likes of tobacco and soda companies in their efforts to obscure science, mince words, and bend facts to their liking.

The struggle between private interests and the public's health is not a new one. As David Michaels describes in Doubt Is Their Product, powerful industries have always invested substantial resources to hide the health risks associated with their products. It seems that the hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," industry may be joining the likes of tobacco and soda companies in their efforts to obscure science, mince words, and bend facts to their liking.

It seems that the fracking industry likes to delineate between the wellbore process and the hydraulic fracturing process and pretend that the two events are completely independent of one another—as if somebody just happened to drill a well, and the hydraulic fracturing folks just happened to be nearby with their water, sand, chemicals, and pumps. While the industry is correct that hydraulic fracturing is not a form a drilling, drilling must take place for hydraulic fracturing to occur. The holes wouldn't get drilled if the fracking wasn't going to take place.

Read more about The Public's Health.