Health risk perception and shale development in the UK and US

Abstract

In this paper, we examine discourse in public deliberations in pre-development locales in the UK and US about advantages and disadvantages of future shale development (‘fracking’). We aimed to understand how people anticipate potential health effects, broadly construed, of environmental toxicity and disturbance in the context of planned, but not yet implemented, energy development. In day-long deliberations with small, diverse groups in two cities in each country (London, Cardiff in the UK; Los Angeles, Santa Barbara in the US), participants discussed impacts on health and well-being using three main rubrics: ‘It’s money or health’, ‘Why take chances?’ and ‘Beyond the tipping point’. Throughout, participants framed health as an intrinsically moral issue, with collective responsibility as a dominant normative frame. We identify the concept of compound risk to underscore effects of multiple risks and hazards on people’s sensibilities about anticipated future health and environmental harm. The findings demonstrate how and why diverse publics in pre-impact sites in both countries saw shale extraction as high stakes development that poses significant, often unacceptable, risks to human and environmental health and well-being. Risks extended beyond toxicity to broad threats to health, including, for some, the end of life as we know it on the planet. Overall, participants’ discussions of health were more connected to social categories and their underlying moral principles than to technological details. This work contributes evidence of blurred boundaries between environment and health as well as the importance people place on social risks in the context of proposed energy system change.

Keywords:

• health risk perception
• shale development
• fracking
• deliberation
• environmental and bodily health
• social risk

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the US National Science Foundation in Cooperative Agreement SES-0938099 and research grant SES-1535193. Supplemental funding came from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 640715, and the UK Energy Research Centre under Grant EP/L024756/1. Additional support came from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the ‘María de Maeztu’ programme for Units of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552). Views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these institutions. We would like to thank all of our participants in the US and UK, without whom this research would not have been possible. We would also like to thank L. Stevenson, A. Hasell, Z. Horton, R. Sposato and E. Roberts for assistance in workshops, and I. Feeney for assistance in bibliographic research, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [SES-0938099,SES-1535193]; EU Horizon 2020 [EU/640715]; UK Energy Research Centre [EP/L024756/1]; Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities [MDM-2015-0552].