August 13: Science has shown that fracking is risk to human health

YET again John Dewar (The Yorkshire Post, August 3) continues to treat the residents of Ryedale as if we are fools who should just accept that we are going to be guinea pigs for the high-risk fracking industry.

For example, he claims that the “hydraulic fracturing project should take no more than six weeks”. This is misleading. Whilst the fracturing is scheduled to last six weeks, this is only one small part of the overall project. The remaining elements of the project such as the pre-stimulation work, production testing, production and restoration will last up to 10 years – as stated in the planning application.

Furthermore, he fails to even mention the fact that once the frack test at Kirby Misperton is complete Third Energy intends to introduce up to 950 shale gas wells across 45 sites in Ryedale – a figure he himself stated in a recent debate in the House of Commons.

Mr Dewar also states that the chemicals used in the fracking fluid can be found in “food and household products”. This is simply not the case. For example Third Energy intends to use 200 tonnes of ‘frac sand’, a product linked to fatal lung diseases such as silicosis. This is confirmed in the Third Energy planning application submitted to North Yorkshire County Council.

To date, more than 550 peer reviewed papers have been published and in recent years 84 per cent of these have concluded that fracking may have an adverse health impact on humans, not to mention our environment.

Nearly 80 per cent of these were published since 2013, providing a more up-to-date picture of the risks associated with fracking. Furthermore, many superseded the Public Health England and Royal Society papers referred to in John Dewar’s article.

The data contained in these peer reviewed scientific papers is widely considered as the reason why the state of New York has decided to implement a ban.

I have many other problems with John Dewar’s article but I would simply ask the reader to spend 20 minutes online. Google ‘fracking’ and read the peer reviewed papers and interviews from those living near fracking wells and decide for yourself if you think fracking really is safe and suitable for Yorkshire.

I, for one, am convinced that fracking is detrimental to our health and poses a significant risk to our environment and is not a legacy I want to leave our children and grandchildren. It’s time for the UK to follow New York’s lead and ban fracking.