The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project is no objective research organization and its recently announced health study isn’t anything of the sort. Rather, it’s a community organizing project – against natural gas development.

If I issued a research report proclaiming that natural gas development only rarely resulted in cases of methane migration, what do you think the chances are the news media would report the results without mentioning my long-standing role as an advocate for the industry? If you said they were on par with the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, you’d be generous in the extreme. Yet, this how propaganda put out by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project last week was treated in much of the press.

The Associated Press (AP), for example, in an otherwise reasonably balanced story, never addresses what the real nature of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, only describing it as follows:

The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project has been trying to help people who feel they’ve been sickened by natural gas drilling or processing for about 18 months in one county south of Pittsburgh.

The work is potentially important because it’s one of the first long-term attempts to monitor drilling-related health impacts, and it could help other groups identify possible symptoms.

The story goes on to indicate “the project found 27 cases where people in Washington County believe they were hurt by nearby drilling — seven cases of skin rashes, four of eye irritation, 13 of breathing problems and three of headaches and dizziness.” It is, in other words, little more than a collection of a handful of anecdotes from people who believe natural gas development is to blame, with absolute no data on causation to back up any of it. Talk about a sham report! Yet, it got AP play, albeit with some balancing comments from critics.

http://naturalgasnow.org/environmental-health-project-an-example-of...