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Study: Living Near Fracking Correlates With Increased Hospital Visits
New submitter Michael Tiemann writes: An article published in PLOS One finds increased hospital admissions significantly correlate with living in the same zip code as active fracking sites. The data comes from three counties in Pennsylvania, whose zip codes mostly had no fracking sites in 2007 and transitioned to a majority of zip codes with at least one fracking site. While the statistical and medical data are compelling, and speak to a significant correlation, the graphical and informational figures flunk every Tufte test, which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, with open data and Creative Commons licensing, the paper could be rewritten to provide a more compelling explanation about the dangers of fracking to people who live within its vicinity, and perhaps motivate more stringent regulations to protect them from both immediate and long-term harm.
Failtroll. Diesel doesn't light on fire like that.
It's probably a reference to Edward Tufte who wrote The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. If you follow the second link and look at some of the charts used, they're not very useful because they completely fail to convey the data in a useful and meaningful way.
Also, I wouldn't call the statistics overly compelling either. They ran enough tests that they were likely to come up with at least one positive result. What they should do is use the few positive results that they've recorded here and verify them by conducting the same experimental procedure in different locations where fracking is also occurring to see if the same results are being seen.
I worked in the Bakken oil/gas fields during the first two years of the boom, having grown up in the area.
It wreaks utter havoc on a community. Huge numbers of strangers move in, heavy equipment swarms all over the countryside, traffic goes from light to gridlock, all social and other services are crushed under the load, and the local economy turns upside down. In short, it's very stressful for pretty much everybody. It would not surprise me at all if a boom in local oil/gas development raises stress related problems (like heart attacks and mental health issues.)
But I don't see any evidence (or rational) supporting an assumption that the fracking portion of this larger whirlpool of human activity and chaos is in of itself the cause. The correlation makes sense for less exotic reasons.
1) An incredibly small population.
Which describes all fracking sites exactly - they are in remote communities.
2) An incredibly dangerous working environment.
No, it does not have to be "incredibly" dangerous. Just MORE dangerous than work in the surrounding area, which if you are in some remote mostly bedroom or farming community is absolutely going to be true for any complex mechanical complex which has frequent shipping and operation. "Hospital visits" is extremely vague and can include something like a small cut which most people would just patch up but which a company has to send to a doctor for examination for legal reasons.
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