I READ Paddy Keenan’s letter in yesterday’s Advertiser with interest.

As a keen reader of history, I thought that reasoning sounds familiar. Back in the 1800s and 1900s the industry experts claimed that coal was safe. Thousands died extracting it, and globally millions are still dying from the air pollution it produces.

In the early 20th century the petro-chemical industry claimed that their fuel was harmless. Again untold numbers are still dying every year from the effects of volatile organic compounds, oxides of nitrogen and microscopic particulates as a result of breathing in air pollution from vehicles.

Young children are being condemned to asthma and other respiratory problems in cities all over the world.

In the 1950s we were told by the experts that nuclear energy was clean and safe. Try telling that to the inhabitants of Cumbria, Five Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima, let alone the legacy of disposal of nuclear waste that will be with humankind for thousands of years into the future.

So-called experts associated with fracking assure us that there is no risk of pollution.

Here in the South of England, the majority of our water comes from the chalk aquifer, where the water has been filtered through the porous rock for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Contamination of that aquifer is already happening through human carelessness.

To claim that there will be no risk of contamination from drilling through the waterbearing rock to reach the oilrich shale beneath, is clearly nonsense.

What they mean is that they will do everything reasonable – and economically viable – to minimise that risk.

The history of the effectiveness of those controls elsewhere in the world has not shown a 100 per cent customer satisfaction level, especially in the early days of the use of fracking.

Clean, fresh water is likely to be one of the major issues globally in the years to come, and here in the UK we are very fortunate to have relatively plentiful supplies.

My concern over the proposed developments on fracking in the South East of England is not over the concept itself. It is over the mechanism to oversee the safety controls involved in minimising pollution risks.

At present, those controls lie within the remit of the industry concerned. It is my view that the industry should fund a totally independent body with suitable experts, drawn from both academia and the engineering community, to be responsible for monitoring both the planning of controls and the policing of them.

We want to avoid the risk of a Piper Alpha or Deepwater Horizon occurring locally, which could blight the lives of local people for generations to come.

Mark Grainger (Environmental Protection Consultant – retired), Belle Vue Road, Andover