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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | May 22, 2013 01:24 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Greg Vitali |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | The Marcellus Public Health Protection Act |
| In the near future, I intend to introduce legislation that would amend Title 58 to create the Marcellus Public Health Protection Act. This legislation would expand the duties of the Pennsylvania Department of Health by requiring the Department to detect and prevent health problems related to unconventional gas operations. Specifically, the bill would, among other things, require the Department to establish a surveillance system that would collect, analyze and disseminate health data on unconventional gas operations, perform a standard epidemiological evaluation comparing an area of intense drilling with a control area, and conduct a long-term study on the health impacts of unconventional gas operations. In addition to the disclosure of intentionally added chemicals, this bill would require drillers to disclose chemicals present in drilling fluids that were not intentionally added or those that occurred incidentally during the course of drilling operations. Disclosure of these fluids is currently not required. The bill would also clarify the physician “gag order” by explicitly stating that physicians may share trade secret or confidential proprietary information with other health professionals or regulatory agencies for health care purposes. |
Introduced as HB1579