In May, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans to double the capacity of Canada’s electricity grid by 2050, using natural gas in the name of “powering Canada strong.” Almost all Canadian natural gas these days is derived from hydraulic fracturing — known as fracking — an industrial process involving large amounts of water laced with chemicals pumped long distances underground.

Many of the chemicals used in fracking are harmful to humans and include carcinogens such as PFAS (commonly referred to as “forever chemicals”) and endocrine disruptors.

These chemicals can leak into the environment through spills, pipes that eventually erode and crack, and evaporation into the air when stored in open wastewater ponds. The toxicity of this chemical mix is further exacerbated by naturally occurring radioactive materials and heavy metals unearthed from deep underground during the fracking process.

Another source of health harms from residential proximity to this industry is air pollution from diesel traffic, compressor stations and the venting and flaring of methane and other volatile organic gases — all of which are integral to shale gas extraction.

Residential setback regulations

Jurisdictions where fracking takes place acknowledge the potential harms from living nearby active wells through a key regulation termed a “residential setback” — defined as the minimum allowable distance between where a person lives and the construction of an active well.

As part of an ongoing study, we recently examined setback distances in two Canadian provinces (British Columbia........

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