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An influential Senator yesterday accused oil companies of prevaricating over providing data to American regulators about the safety of crude by rail trains.

In a landmark report to Alberta’s energy regulator, a panel of experts has concluded that odours from a controversial tar sands processing plant are linked to human health impacts.

It has taken some 300 lead scientists three years to collate the evidence. Many other scientists collaborated in the research. Their combined efforts stretch to 2,600 pages, contained in 32 volumes, and have been signed off by hundreds of officials from 115 countries.

The mayor of Albany, the capital city of New York State, has become the latest elected official of a major American city to demand that the Federal government increase the regulatory oversight of crude by rail trains.

Fracking operations at one site in the state of Ohio remain suspended until further notice after five small earthquakes over a period of twenty four hours earlier this week.

US regulators reacted to the string of recent crude by rail accidents yesterday by ordering that companies shipping crude out of North Dakota's Bakken fracking fields must undertake extensive testing for signs of dangerous volatility.

This is getting embarrassing. Another month, another crude by rail accident in the US. Yesterday a 120-car train carrying tar sands oil derailed in western Pennsylvania.

Slowly the science is catching up with fracking. Nearly every month a new scientific paper is published warning of the serious ecological or health harm caused by the controversial process.

As the debate on fracking heats up in the UK, politicians are keen to point out that the process is safe. The influential Conservative MP Peter Lilley appeared on TV the other night and arrogantly dismissed any concerns with fracking. “Any problems with the environment, safety and health can be satisfactorily managed”, he told the audience.

Ten years from now we could be seeing over four times more crude oil transported by rail throughout the US and Canada, some 4.5 million barrels per day. Are we comfortable with that?