Cliff Willmeng, Boulder County Fractivist

Colorado’s top public health officials rejected the latest made-up claim made by Colorado fractivists that oil and gas production was causing birth defects in a West Slope county.

You can expect to see a story about it buried behind the comics in The Denver Post tomorrow with a byline belonging to someone other than Bruce Finley. Finley’s bias would never let that happen.

Based on innuendo from a number of secret documents and bold proclamations from people who refused to be named, the frack banners been outspoken about a spooky new trend of large numbers of sick babies in Garfield County.

Fracking causes birth defects!

State investigators have urged caution about the claim, which did not of course stop the fractivists or their scribes in The Denver Post news room from repeating the claim.  But a funny thing happened on the way to proving that oil and gas production is killing babies.

After a thorough review of the data, state health regulators say the assertion about fetal anomalies is untrue.   As in, another fractivist lie spread around the world by anti-fracking correspondents like Bruce Finley.

Here is the summary:

– There is no data, local or statewide, that tracks fetal anomalies, so the argument that Garfield County had a larger than normal number of babies born with anomalies was apparently just made up.

– A thorough review of babies born with fetal anomalies in Garfield County showed no connection to oil and gas, or any other shared cause or possible source for that matter.

– Cliff Wilmeng and Bruce Finley are liars (Ok, that part we inserted).

From the state health department report:

Within the cohort, 40% of the cases were residing in the same location at the time of conception and their ultrasound. The staff was unable to reach the remaining cases for response. We mapped the maternal residences in comparison to active oil and gas well locations, and found that the majority (70%) of the cases lived greater than 15 miles from an active well. The remaining 30% were between 5 to 8 miles from the nearest active well.

We conclude that there is not one single environmental or genetic or substance-related factor that will explain these rare prenatal outcomes. While individual mothers may have had individual risk factors, no common pattern among all or even most of the mothers emerged.