Kay Allen is a nurse who deserves some answers. She works at a health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. -- in the southwestern corner of the Keystone State where the rolling hills are now pockmarked with fracking wells in a natural-gas gold rush. In one sense, Allen and her co-workers at the Cornerstone Care community clinic are like a lot of health care professionals across the suddenly overwhelmed Marcellus Shale region of Appalachia: They've seen an increase in visit from anxious neighbors who are worried that symptoms such as increased headaches, dizziness, rashes, difficulty breathing, and various and sundry aches and pains might have something to do with these new wells, polluting the air that they breathe or the water that they drink. Lately, however, the medical worries of the fracking belt have really hit home for Allen and her co-workers. On a number of recent occasions, ghastly fumes -- the nurse compared it to a massive spill of nail-polish remover -- have overcome the waiting room at the rural clinic. On one occasion, Allen told a reporter for National Public Radio, the stench was so powerful that one of workers gagged and threw up; just when the office workers thought it was ...
↧