Another day, another study suggesting that natural gas drilling—at least as practiced right now—is not particularly good for the environment and public health. Inside Climate News reports on a new study, conducted on over one million births in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale region. The findings are depressing.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, provides some of the most compelling data to date linking the process of hydraulic fracturing to negative health effects. It found that babies born within 3 kilometers of fracking sites were less healthy than those born farther away, and that babies born within 1 kilometer saw the largest effects.
"We have pretty good evidence of a causal effect of health outcomes and fracking—not just a correlation," said lead author Janet Currie, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University.
Does this mean that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) sites lead to unhealthier children? Not necessarily, but we can all agree that it should, at the very least, give people “pause.” The study also attempts at getting around the usually racist, bogus claims by oil and gas industry-funded think tanks that attack scientific studies such as this.
Being able to compare babies born in the same community but living at different distances from fracking wells was key, Currie said. "They have the same racial composition, the same education—it's all people living in rural areas, for the most part. So we're comparing apples to apples," she said.
In some cases, the researchers were actually comparing babies born to the same woman. Of the records examined, 594 of the infants born within 1 kilometer of a fracked well had a sibling who was born before fracking began, allowing the scientists to compare the birth weights among children born to the same mother. A larger group, 3,538 infants, lived between 2 and 3 kilometers from a well and had an unexposed sibling.
While the study doesn’t propose a specific reason for these adverse affects, there are other studies suggesting that fracking sites are polluting the air—which could result in adverse affects on humans. I mean, I’m no scientist, so I couldn’t tell you how POISON isn’t good for humans.