I'm inclined to side with the EPA on this assessment but I just have this feeling in my gut that they've really downplayed the risk.

I live in NJ, and if you look at the trouble over in eastern PA you'd think it's a serious situation too. I mean these communities less than 100 miles away are having issues with their tap water bursting into flames... Yes the water is catching fire. People are getting chemical burns in their showers. Incidents of brain cancers have spiked in the past few years. Sinkholes out of nowhere and explosions occurring regularly... Plus they have old coal miles that have been burning for decades underground, now fracking waste is seeping into them. Marine ecosystems are failing, fish are unsafe to eat, storm water runoff is killing agriculture....

But hell, the EPA says things aren't that bad and it might not even be the hydrofracking that is to blame, regardless of the time frame correlations and mountains of 'coincidental' data tying fracking operations to issues in nearby communities.

All I know is I treat PA like Mexico now, don't drink the water. I don't buy any PA spring water, most sources are right in the heart of fracking territory, and I don't eat the fish or any local meats (we can't eat Jersey fish anyway thanks to all the Superfund sites). It's akin to the industrial armpit of NJ in the early half of last century (1900s), rampant pollution and a lack of accountability/consequences. Now half the state is covered in environmental 'no go' zones where decades long remediation projects are required to clean them up. There are still traces of Agent Orange in the waterways outside of NYC, 40+ years later.