Residents living nearer natural gas wells report more health symptoms, Yale study says
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- People who live closer to natural gas wells, including those that were drilled using "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing, report more health symptoms than those who live farther away, according to a study reported today by Yale University researchers.
The study, which drew strong negative reaction from the oil and gas industry, was published online in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal of the National Institutes of Health. It surveyed 492 people in 180 households with ground-fed water wells in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the concentration of natural gas extraction is very high.
Respondents, who were not asked about fracking, reported more upper respiratory and dermal (skin) symptoms over the past year when they lived less than a kilometer from a gas well, and fewer such symptoms when they lived more than two kilometers from a well. There was no such difference in other health symptoms reported in the survey, which included heart, gastrointestinal and neurological complaints, among others.
"The result stood even when we controlled for a lot of other things, so it wasn't just a simple correlation," said Meredith Stowe, senior author on the paper and an associate research scientist and epidemiologist at the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program. Researchers controlled for the survey respondents' age, gender, smoking status, education level, and awareness of environmental risk factors in the study.
http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2014/09/residents_living_nearer_natura.html
A Yale study has shown that residents who live closer to natural gas wells, including ones where fracking is used, report more upper respiratory and skin symptoms than those who live farther away from the wells. (Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer)
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