"New Yorkers shouldn't become unwilling data points in a mass health experiment, " says Sandra Steingraber, the ecologist-biologist author of Raising Elijah and Living Downstream. "I want to be able to tell the 3,300 people diagnosed with cancer today, and the 3,300 people diagnosed tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, that we're not sending toxic chemicals that interfere with hormonal and cellular functioning into the water aquifers."

Last weekend on my radio program, "Connect the Dots," I interviewed Steingraber, a cancer survivor herself, whose in-depth study of the dense and interlocking frontiers of science, health, environment, and public policy, has led her to champion caution prior to incurring mass health risks.

With recent evidence that fracking chemicals can migrate far from a frack site, should people have to play "believe it or not" with the safety pronouncements made by gas industry P.R. and advertising campaigns? As a scientist, Steingraber argues that instead we need scientific studies. Calling herself scientifically conservative, she suggests that elected officials and regulators shelve fracking until independent scientists have taken the time to gather the data, and analyze the health and environmental impacts. But the economic imperative of gas companies is not to wait, but to exert pressure upon politicians.

Steingraber points out that data about impacts can be gathered in the neighboring frack boom state of Pennsylvania. But she argues that the benefit of the doubt should rest with public safety not with gas companies. Because if New York were to proceed with fracking, but without studies, it would be the first time that sizable urban populations will have been placed at risk for exposure to fracking chemicals. Studies show these chemicals can migrate over distances in water, while ozone causing air pollution travels even farther.

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