Speaking of Michael Greenstone, he's also been charged with investigating the health effects of fracking. That's an interesting question, and hopefully he gets thorough data and can write a good paper, but I wasn't impressed by his prior analysis of Superfund. He claims that program was pretty much a waste since property values didn't immediately jump after the land was cleaned up. Seems to me that 1) environmental damage is usual initially sited in pretty poor areas to begin with (hence the environmental justice movement); 2) perception counts for a lot and being near a cleaned-up toxic site still doesn't sound like a very attractive place to live, whether or not the "cleaned-up" label applies.
