Melissa Leo Brings Life to the Words of a Fracking Victim

By Jon Bowermaster, Take Part

20 August 12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9783Dg1QRk

Academy Award winning actress Melissa Leo brings life to the words of a fracking victim in the American Rust Belt.

hen Jamie Frederick bought her home outside Youngstown, Ohio, a little more than three years ago, she was unaware that her neighbor had already leased his land to a natural gas company. Neither did she know that the gas company had already fracked the shale beneath her home.

When she first started to get sick - blinding headaches, nausea, mystery illnesses that ultimately took her gall bladder - she had no idea the two were related. But they were.

While the human health impacts of fracking are still being documented, the natural gas industry shrugs off any such claims of a connection, contending there is no proof. Medical studies are underway to prove the linkage, but that will take years. In the meantime, it is not a stretch to imagine that pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals into the earth and groundwater will inevitably, and adversely, impact both land and man.

Fredericks went public with her story last January on the steps of the capitol building in Youngstown; she is a reluctant symbol of the growing relationship between fracking and people getting sick.

In May, Academy Award winning actress Melissa Leo put life to Fredericks' words near the steps of a different capitol, in Albany, New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo is right now considering lifting his state's moratorium against fracking.

Leo's audience in Albany included state capitol workers - lobbyists, legislators, and staffers - as well as New York-based musicians Natalie Merchant, the Felice Brothers, Joan Osborne, Citizen Cope, John Sebastian and more.