Fracking may worsen asthma for nearby residents, study says

Patients are four times more likely to have asthma attacks, if they live near larger fracking wells.

The authors estimated activity metrics for the four phases of UNGD (pad preparation, drilling, stimulation and production) using the distance from patients’ homes to the wells, well characteristics and the duration of phases.

The paper, published Monday in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine, didn’t determine the exact cause of the increased attacks. As the name suggests, it used a water mixture injected into shale rock at high pressure to recover deposits of gas and oil.

The study can’t, however, pinpoint which effect of fracking leads to the increased risk of asthma attacks. The researchers availed electronic health records to recognize almost 36,000 asthma victims treated during that period in the Geisinger Health System.

Fracking can induce asthma attacks in three ways, as Barbara Gottlieb, the Environment and Health program director at Physicians for Social Responsibility who was not involved in the study explained to USA TODAY. Both these variables can influence asthma symptoms. (Technically, fracking is just one step in this four-part process.) In the study, the researchers looked at unconventional natural gas development activity in Pennsylvania, where more than 6,200 wells were drilled between the mid-2000s and 2012.

“Advice for how to minimize sleep disruption versus stress versus air pollution versus noise versus odors are all different”, Schwartz said.

Fracking has developed a bad reputation, with viral videos showing residents setting their water on fire and some reports suggesting an increase in earthquakes near natural gas development.

The findings add to growing evidence that ties health concerns to the fracking industry and unconventional natural gas drilling.

Researchers classed worsening asthma symptoms as mild, with 20,749 patients getting a new oral corticosteroid prescription, moderate, with 1,870 patients visiting the emergency room for their asthma, and severe, with 4,782 asthma patients hospitalized.

Following, the researchers measured the wells and location of the asthma patients and made comparison between patients who had and did not have asthma attacks in the same year. Asthma patients who live near wells that are in the production phase, which can last for years, are at greater risks. The researchers were unable to determine the patients’ occupation or how many times they moved to another residence.

The team’s members plan to look into specific causes for the upward trend, but they suspect air pollution or elevated stress due increased noise levels might play a role. Those who lived the furthest away from the fracking and other activity had the lowest risk of these exacerbations. They can then harvest this natural gas for energy.

“This study doesn’t prove that oil and gas extraction causes asthma, but it hints at it”, said Rob Jackson, a professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. Critics also say that potentially carcinogenic chemicals used in fracking may escape and contaminate groundwater around the drilling site.