Doctor not allowed to warn patients of hazardous fracking chemicals, federal judge rules

Thursday, November 07, 2013 by: PF Louis
Tags: fracking chemicals, gag order, doctors

(NaturalNews) Recently, a small town Pennsylvania doctor was denied the right of access to information about specific chemical types and quantities used in fracking to better handle poisoned patients or warn them of the toxic potentials from fracking well sites near them.

Although the gas and oil fracking industry does reveal general chemical ingredients on a public registry site, fracfocus.org, that appears to be industry-friendly, the industry reserves the right to keep exact recipes on specific wells undisclosed to protect "trade secrets."

This is the same claim that Monsanto uses to hide the exact ingredients in their herbicide Roundup, thus prohibiting specific analysis from being done by outside sources. And the industry continually uses government to enforce their demands with enforceable laws.

Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez of Dallas, Pennsylvania, petitioned the court to grant him access as needed to information about chemicals used at wells in the area in order to help his patients. Dallas, Pennsylvania, is a small town in probably the most fracked area of the Northeastern USA.

One of his patients was devastated by toxins from a nearby site, and he has treated several others affected by pollutants from fracking.

That's what motivated Dr.Rodriguez to legally penetrate statewide legislation that enforces a gag order on medical professionals which keeps them from revealing specific fracking chemical components to their patients.

Dr. Rodriquez's suit against the state's officials was dismissed by Federal District Judge Richard Caputo, who simply honored Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission head Robert Powelson's request for dismissal.

Whether you think the doctor's claim to disclose fracking chemicals to patients is righteous or bogus is not the point. The point is that government cooperates with and protects large corporations. That's not socialism, that's fascism, according to the father of fascism, Benito Mussolini.

Explaining fracking

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is usually done in the northeastern states to get at natural gas deposits and in the southwestern states for oil that couldn't be accessed by normal drilling.

The energy industry claims that America has a lot of both to be recovered with the latest advances in hydro-fracturing technology.

The term "frack" was derived from the gas and oil industry's abbreviation of fracturing, "frac," which is the process of hydraulic fracturing deep shale rock to free natural gas and oil deposits.

It's not a new process, but it's been been recently "improved" with deeper access, up to 10,000 feet down, and horizontal drilling/piping that can extend a mile or more at that depth. Here's a graphic illustration (http://illinoisissues.uis.edu).

The industry claims that the process is too deep to affect ground water. But the amount of water shipped in for the process to one well can exceed a million gallons. Once used with its toxic chemical mixture, that water is wasted completely.

But some of it goes on the ground nearby and into nearby creeks or ponds, permanently ruining that water, as well as emitting toxic and carcinogenic fumes into the atmosphere.

Independent research has also isolated air pollution near fracking sites that exceed EPA limits five fold. Metropolitan areas in Texas that are surrounded by fracking fields have experienced greatly exacerbated air pollution problems ever since fracking was increased in those areas.

A rural Pennsylvania resident was offered over $200,000 by an energy fracking group to lease a portion of his land, which he ultimately refused.

His curiosity about the procedure led to him producing the video documentary Gasland, in which he documented fracked ranchers', land owners' and nearby residents' horror stories as well as state governments' tendencies to protect the oil and gas industry's fracking endeavors.

A more recent documentary, FrackNation, is challenging the veracity of Gasland. There's something very suspicious about the FrackNation production crew.

Suggestion: Ignore that controversy and get the straight story from a retired EPA scientist/whistleblower with this live videotaped lecture (http://www.youtube.com).

Sources for this story include:

http://www.courthousenews.com

http://www.courthousenews.com

http://illinoisissues.uis.edu

http://illinoisissues.uis.edu

http://fracfocus.org

Exposing FrackNation's debunking of Gasland: http://desmogblog.com