In this paper, we examine discourse in public deliberations in pre-development locales in the UK and US about advantages and disadvantages of future shale development (‘fracking’). We aimed to understand how people anticipate potential health effects, broadly construed, of environmental toxicity and disturbance in the context of planned, but not yet implemented, energy development. In day-long deliberations with small, diverse groups in two cities in each country (London, Cardiff in the UK; Los Angeles, Santa Barbara in the US), participants discussed impacts on health and well-being using three main rubrics: ‘It’s money or health’, ‘Why take chances?’ and ‘Beyond the tipping point’. Throughout, participants framed health as an intrinsically moral issue, with collective responsibility as a dominant normative frame. We identify the concept of compound risk to underscore effects of multiple risks and hazards on people’s sensibilities about anticipated future health and environmental harm. The findings demonstrate how and why diverse publics in pre-impact sites in both countries saw shale extraction as high stakes development that poses significant, often unacceptable, risks to human and environmental health and well-being. Risks extended beyond toxicity to broad threats to health, including, for some, the end of life as we know it on the planet. Overall, participants’ discussions of health were more connected to social categories and their underlying moral principles than to technological details. This work contributes evidence of blurred boundaries between environment and health as well as the importance people place on social risks in the context of proposed energy system change.

在本文中，我们研究了英国和美国开发前地区在公共讨论中关于未来页岩开发（“压裂”）的利弊的论述。我们旨在了解人们如何在计划中但尚未实施的能源开发环境中预期对环境毒性和干扰的潜在健康影响（广义上讲）。在每个国家（伦敦，加的夫在英国，洛杉矶，圣巴巴拉在美国），在两个城市小，不同的小组一天的讨论，与会者讨论了有关健康和使用三个主要评鉴福祉的影响：“这是金钱还是健康'，'为什么要冒险？”和“超出临界点”。在整个过程中，参与者将健康视为内在的道德问题，以集体责任为主导的规范框架。我们确定复合风险的概念强调多种风险和危害对人们对预期的未来健康和环境危害的敏感性的影响。调查结果表明，两国影响前遗址的公众如何以及为什么将页岩开采视为高风险开发，对人类和环境健康及福祉构成重大（通常是不可接受的）风险。风险已超出毒性，甚至威胁到健康的广泛威胁，包括某些人在地球上所知的生命终结。总体而言，参与者对健康的讨论与社会类别及其基本道德原则的联系更多，而与技术细节无关。这项工作提供了环境与健康之间界限模糊的证据，以及人们在拟议的能源系统变化的背景下对社会风险的重视。