To: Governor Tom Wolf
Governor Wolf, Investigate Spike in Childhood Cancers in PA Shale Fields
Karen Feridun
Direct your Department of Health to immediately begin an investigation into cancers diagnosed in all counties where shale gas drilling, fracking, and infrastructure buildout has occurred following the recent Pittsburgh Post Gazette series “Human Toll: Risk and exposure in gas lands”. This is a public health crisis that requires immediate and significant action. We further call on you to suspend permitting of gas drilling activities until it has been demonstrated that shale gas activity was not the cause.
Why is this important?
We delivered a letter making the same demands of Governor Tom Wolf almost exactly a month ago. More than 100 organizations and 800 individuals signed the letter. On June 19th, two days after we submitted the letter electronically, the Better Path Coalition and its partners hosted a brown bag briefing at the Capitol on new research on health and climate impacts of shale gas development. We hand-delivered the letter to the Governor's office, along with copies of the reports we discussed.
The night before our event, we were excited to see the headline that said Governor Wolf was considering an investigation, but the next day, just hours after receiving the paper copy and the reports, I received a letter from Governor Wolf saying that there would be no investigation. "We will continue to research and study the evidence from Pennsylvania, and closely monitor the academic literature as it develops elsewhere," he said. (Read the letter here, http://bit.ly/WolfReply)
We need much more than that.
We need to know if rare cancers are turning up in other areas of the state where shale gas development has been active.
We need to know if rare cancer diagnoses have spiked in other age groups.
We need to know what parents of healthy children must do to make sure their kids aren't cancer patients by the time they're in their 20s.
We've created this petition as a companion to the letter we delivered last month and are asking for Pennsylvanians and non-Pennsylvanians alike to sign it.
(Read the Post-Gazette's gripping Human Toll investigative report to learn more http://bit.ly/PGHumanToll.)