Andrew C. Revkin

The actor Mark Ruffalo, who lives near the Delaware River in upstate New York, campaigning against shale gas drilling in 2011.






On Twitter early this morning, I had a productive exchange about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s decision to ban shale gas development in New York with Mark Ruffalo, the actor best known for playing the Marvel comic character Hulk.

After years of gauging the environmental, medical, economic and political risks of hydraulic fracturing, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is moving to ban this method of extracting natural gas from shale deposits in New York State.

[Update, 9:30 p.m. | See the end of the post for an excerpt from the state health study that underpinned the decision.]

New York State environmental officials last year compiled an internal list of more than 1,500 places where soil or water had been contaminated with M.T.B.E., a gasoline additive that makes water taste like turpentine and is a possible cause of cancer and other health problems.

The tally of M.T.B.E. sites is more than three times the number reported publicly in the state's toxic-spills database, which real estate buyers and suppliers of drinking water use to spot contamination problems.