Providing yet more proof of the falsity of the anti-fracking fracas, a study performed by Public Health England (PHE), an agency within Britain’s Department of Health has found that hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” as a means of tapping into vast underground resources of natural gas poses few emissions-related health risks when operations are run properly. The study, which examined fracking operations in countries including the United States, also found that “[c]ontamination of groundwater from the underground fracking process itself … is unlikely.”

This comes on the heels of another recent study that showed fracking hardly poses the grave greenhouse gas emissions threat that ecofascists claim. Unfortunately, the truth – however often confirmed – is unlikely to mollify anti-fracking alarmists, who have said the process does everything from ignite tap water to cause bowel disease. (And that’s not even mentioning all those fracking-induced traffic accidents. Seriously, folks, we can’t make this stuff up.) What the truth does do, however, is make it more and more difficult for fracking’s foes credibly to fight the facts with little more than fiction.