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Living Near Fracking During Pregnancy Linked To Poorer Newborn Health

This article is more than 6 years old.

The closer pregnant women live to fracking sites, the greater the potential health risks may be to their developing fetus, suggests a new study published in Science Advances December 13. But the study has enough limitations to tamp down anxiety among expecting moms who live near fracking sites. It’s not necessary to run away from home until giving birth if you’re around the corner from fracking.

In the study, infants born to women living within a 1-km radius (just over a half mile) of a fracking site during pregnancy had a 25% greater risk of having a low birthweight, defined as under 5.5 lbs. Those born within 3 km (nearly 2 miles) of a fracking site also had a slightly increased risk of low birthweight, but it was about one third to one half the risk seen in women living within 1 km.

“The results of our analysis suggest that the introduction of fracking reduces health among infants born to mothers living within 3 km of a well site during pregnancy,” the authors wrote. “There is little evidence of health effects at further distances, suggesting that health impacts are highly local.”

The overall risk of low birthweight among all the infants in the study overall was on par with national rates. The findings are based on an analysis of more than 1.1 million single-child births in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2013, and they line up with similar studies comparing infant health and air pollution.

About a quarter of the infants included in the study were born to women living within 15 km of an active fracking site while pregnant. Across the U.S., an estimated 65,000 babies are born each year to mothers living within 1 km of a fracking site.

“Fracking” is a colloquial term for hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and natural gas from the ground by shooting extremely high-pressure injections of water, sand and chemicals into the bedrock. The high pressure breaks up the bedrock — creating and expanding fractures — to make it easier to get more oil and gas from the nearby well.

Emerging research has suggested possible negative health effects from fracking due to air and water pollution, including water contamination from the chemicals used in the fracturing fluid. Chemicals found in higher concentrations in the air near fracking sites include “nonmethane hydrocarbons, methylene chloride (a toxic solvent), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” all of which have been linked to poorer fetal health, the authors noted.

However, this new study cannot show that being near fracking sites causes poor health for mothers, babies or anyone else. The findings only reveal that average birthweight drops the closer newborns’ mothers lived to a fracking site. The researchers made multiple statistical adjustments to their data to take into account other factors that could influence birthweight, but it’s always possible other factors they didn’t consider might explain the findings.

The study also did not explore how being exposed to fracking might harm health. The authors speculate that air pollution from the fracking or increased truck traffic could be one source, or contaminated water might leak into surface water from the fractured well.

Further, the study used only birthweight and a general “infant health index” to measure possible effects. The health index captured low birthweight, prematurity, presence of birth defects and any other apparent health problems at birth.

Low birthweight has been linked to other health and education concerns, such as asthma, learning disabilities, lower test scores, attention difficulties and infant mortality. But birthweight and the health index still may not necessarily accurately represent newborns’ overall health or predict their future health.

The researchers used birth certificates to collect their data, including the newborn’s health and the mother’s home address, race/ethnicity, education level and marital status. They focused on birthweight because it is most consistently available on birth certificates whereas other health measures may not be included on all of them.

The authors calculated multiple different statistical analyses, attempting to see if any of them did not show increased fetal risks from being close to fracking, but the calculations all revealed similar results. The researchers also tried to adjust their calculations to take into account natural variations in birthweight and infant health that occur in communities over time and mothers’ characteristics that might affect the results. Those characteristics included the mothers’s age, race/ethnicity, level of education, marriage status, child’s sex, child’s birth order and the mother’s total number children.

So what does all this mean? It means we have some evidence showing that some health concerns are slightly higher for babies who spent a lot of time within a mile or two of fracking sites while developing in the womb. But it doesn’t tell us much more than that.

We don’t know if fracking is causing the lower birthweights, and we don’t know if the children born with lower birthweights in this study will go on to have more health problems than other children. We don’t know what chemicals, or how much of them, are in the water or air around each site and whether pregnant women are exposed to those chemicals—or even how much those chemicals may or may not affect a developing fetus.

We do know that fracking is popular and probably not going away any time soon, so more researchers need to explore these child health issues and learn as much as possible about what the risks may, or may not, actually be.

The study received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. One of the three authors “holds more than $10,000 in equities and bonds of various companies, including those within the energy sector,” they disclosed.

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