GEAI calls for study of Public Health impacts of Fracking

GEAI members are very concerned about the recent revelations concerning the main contractor (CDM Smith Ireland) of the EPA-led research on Fracking, as published in an article by Ronan McGreevy in today’s Irish Times.

“The confirmation of strong links between CDM Smith and the oil and gas industry calls into question the independence of the researchers and the trustworthiness of any research results,” said Dr Aedín McLoughlin, spokesperson of GEAI.  “This research study was initially proposed to assist Government to make policy decisions about fracking in Ireland.  Instead what we have is a study led by a company engaged in promoting fracking in Europe and focussed on developing regulations that could enable the fracking industry to operate in Ireland.  There is no policy dimension at all in the study.

The main issues of concern to us all are the impacts of fracking operations – exploration and development – on Public Health.  The vast majority of submissions to the EPA concerning this research demanded a full study of such impacts and only lip service is currently being paid to those demands.

We now call on the Government to immediately commission a full study of the Public Health impacts of Unconventional Hydrocarbon Exploration and Extraction, led by the Public Health Division of the Department of Health and HSE, including a review of all peer-reviewed literature on the subject such as was carried out in New York State recently.  Such a study is vital to the development of policy on Fracking. ”