A coloring book portrays fracking as having no downsides.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Terry the "Fracosaurus," featured in a natural gas drilling company's fracking coloring book for children, seems nice enough, but he's hiding some shady scientific stats the industry isn't advertising in its greenwashing campaign to reel in kid support.

As reported today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the coloring book, published by Talisman Energy and handed out at community picnics in Northeastern Pennsylvania, features rainbows, sunshine, trees, deer, and other wildlife. One page reads: "Natural Gas is a clean-burning fossil fuel. It is one of the cleanest, safest, and most useful of all energy sources." (Read the complete fracking coloring book story and see the entire fracking coloring book in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.)

The truth of the matter is that virtually every non-industry-funded study released is finding major public health threats related to natural gas drilling. Here are just a few; for more details see our previous story, 5 Facts about Fracking Every Family Needs to Know:

• Natural gas drilling wrecks the air. Natural gas drilling turns clean country air to smog. Even if drilling and the fracking process run completely according to plan, with no leaks, no methane migration into drinking water wells, no explosions, and no issues with the resulting wastewater, air pollution from fracking is inevitable. It's part of the process, as huge condensate tanks and compressor stations release toxic hydrocarbons like benzene, toluene, xylenes, and ethylbenzene (BTEX) into surrounding communities. At high levels, exposure to BTEX vapors may cause irreversible damage. That, paired with the toxic chemicals used in the initial drilling process, make it very harmful to live in the vicinity of a drilling operation, Colborn says. Her study in the International Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment found that 36 percent of the identifiable chemicals used are volatile, meaning they become airborne. Among those, 93 percent have been shown to harm the eyes, skin, sensory organs, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, or liver.

• Natural gas isn't even clean. Natural gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels, but in the course of its entire life cycle, it's actually worse than coal, long touted as the dirtiest of our fossil fuels. Because fracking involves mixing millions of gallons of water laced with chemicals into the ground at high pressure, it creates fissures in the shale that release the natural gas. Life cycle analysis expert Robert Howarth, PhD, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, discovered that anywhere from 3.6 to nearly 8 percent of the methane from shale gas drilling escapes through venting and leaks. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Howarth's latest life cycle calculations updated in January 2011 find that when considering the burning of natural gas, along with the methane leaks that fracking creates, shale gas produces 1.20- to 2.1-fold more greenhouse-gas emissions when compared to coal during a 20-year time period. Methane leaks are worse during the actual fracking process, but they continue to slowly seep over long periods of time. When considering this, natural gas is on par with coal with regard to greenhouse gas production over a 100-year period, the Cornell research shows.