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Study Finds Higher Rates of Premature Birth Near Fracking Sites (jhsph.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have published a study (abstract) noting that pregnant women are more likely to give birth prematurely if they live close to fracking sites. The researchers used data from 40 counties in Pennsylvania, in which 10,946 babies were born between January 2009 and January 2013. They compared the data with the fast spread of fracking sites across the state — thousands have been built since 2006.
"The researchers found that living in the most active quartile of drilling and production activity was associated with a 40 percent increase in the likelihood of a woman giving birth before 37 weeks of gestation (considered pre-term) and a 30 percent increase in the chance that an obstetrician had labeled their pregnancy "high-risk," a designation that can include factors such as elevated blood pressure or excessive weight gain during pregnancy. When looking at all of the pregnancies in the study, 11 percent of babies were born preterm, with the majority (79 percent) born between 32 and 36 weeks."
"The researchers found that living in the most active quartile of drilling and production activity was associated with a 40 percent increase in the likelihood of a woman giving birth before 37 weeks of gestation (considered pre-term) and a 30 percent increase in the chance that an obstetrician had labeled their pregnancy "high-risk," a designation that can include factors such as elevated blood pressure or excessive weight gain during pregnancy. When looking at all of the pregnancies in the study, 11 percent of babies were born preterm, with the majority (79 percent) born between 32 and 36 weeks."
I'm not discounting the possibility that there may be a causal relationship here but from what I see of the article and abstract they only looked at data between 2009 and 2012. Is it possible that these sites have a preexisting condition that would cause higher levels of preterm birth? They should expand their data analysis to a larger period before the fracking occurred. This way we can at the very least see if there is a stronger correlation here and move forward.
Exactly. What they've done is managed to replicate this study that socioeconomic factors impact premature births by finding something that correlates with low socioeconomic status and then not adjusting for it.
In the same manner, you could do a study that receiving welfare or jobless benefits causes premature births, or not having a second car causes premature births, or living near railroad track causes premature births, etc.... basically anything which also correlates with low income/living in the poorer part of town.
From the abstract: "There were no associations of activity with Apgar score, small for gestational age birth, or term birth weight (after adjustment for year). In a posthoc analysis, there was an association with physician-recorded high-risk pregnancy identified from the problem list" In other words, the babies weren't obviously less healthy, but there were more high-risk pregnancies (high risk factors happen before the wells began, at the start of pregnancy) associated, almost as if the premature births and well placement correlation was from some other outside cause...
Bottom line, if you have a choice over an area of where to put a fracking wellhead, you're going to pick the cheapest place to put it, which will correlate with lower income for the neighbors.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Right, no way that unknown chemicals entering the air and water could have any effect. And the fracking companies would surely hand over samples of the chemical soup they use to researchers for rigorous testing, it's not like they've repeatedly refused to even reveal the contents. Oh wait...
Science doesn't start with explaining the mechanisms behind unexplained phenomena - it starts with confimring that there *are* unexplained phenomena and then searching for the mechanisms.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Ben & Jerrys won't even release the trade secrets of their ice cream formulations to the public. Why should the frackers release their trade secrets to hostile scientists?