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Pernicious posturing

An open letter to columnist Tom Fletcher. Re: Suzuki is the Don Cherry of television science, Feb. 26.

An open letter to columnist Tom Fletcher.

Re: Suzuki is the Don Cherry of television science, Feb. 26.

Let’s see now, of the following, which do you possess?

UNESCO Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal, Right Livelihood Award, which is considered an alternate Nobel Prize? The University of B.C. Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000?

Have you received 25 honorary doctorate degrees from across Canada, the United States and as far away as Australia? As well, are you an officer of the Order of Canada?

No? None of the above?

Of course, the person that has been the recipient of all of the above is none other than David Suzuki – the person you chose to rail against in your last garbage contained in the Feb. 26 Peace Arch News.

You are so obviously a fan of the oil and gas companies by way of your cohesiveness in suggesting all that do not are categorized as an anathema.

A few ‘rants’ back, you were disparaging to Theresa Spence and the IdleNoMore movement (A real hero for aboriginal people, Jan. 8).

Your reference to gas drilling and fracking as “Science, meet Hillbilly Handfishin’” is totally out of line.

It takes up to eight million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job. Six hundred chemicals are used in fracturing fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde.

During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby ground water.

You are pernicious in spouting off: “Moms rally against a gas well near a school in Eire, Penn.… an elderly Quebec woman sobs on camera, convinced that a nearby gas well will trigger a relapse of her cancer.”

Methane concentrations are 17 times higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling, as well as cases of sensory, respiratory and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.

Your pitiful summation is “which suggests that more likely sources are cigarettes or exposure to disinfectants.”

Only 30-50 per cent of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.

The waste fluid is left in open-air pits to evaporate releasing harmful volotile organic compounds into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain and ground-level ozone.

In the end, hydraulic fracking produces approximately 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of numerous environmental, safety and health hazards.

Fran Manary, Surrey