Collected research on health effects of fracking prompts physicians and advocates to call for stricter regulations

A natural gas fracking well pad in Valencia, Pa.
(Photo by Ted Shaffrey, The Associated Press)

A consistent pattern has emerged linking health symptoms to horizontal hydraulic fracturing to produce oil and gas. The evidence has researchers calling for new restrictions on where fracking wells can be drilled. “A paper by the Yale School of Public Health this summer showed that children living near Pennsylvania wells that use fracking to harvest natural gas are two to three times more likely to contract a form of childhood leukemia than their peers who live farther away,” reports Jon Hurdle of Yale Environment360. “That followed a Harvard study in January that found elderly people living near or downwind from gas pads have a higher risk of premature death than seniors who don’t live in that proximity.”

The oil and gas industry has insisted that its processes protects against water contamination and notes that there is no causation study proving that fracking causes any harm to groundwater. "The industry coalition cited earlier studies, including one by Duke University in 2017, which found no evidence of groundwater contamination over three years,” Hurdle reports “and another by Pennsylvania State University in 2018, which reported no deterioration in groundwater chemistry in Bradford County, a heavily fracked area of northeastern Pennsylvania.”

Hurdle continues, “In April, the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, which consists of health professionals, scientists, and medical organizations, published its most recent compendium of investigations into risks and harms linked with fracking. Since 2014, the compendium has tallied 2,239 peer-reviewed papers that found evidence of harm, with nearly 1,000 of those papers published since 2018.” Concerns about fracking harm "have prompted bans in France, Ireland, and Bulgaria," Hurdle notes.

For U.S. medical providers and advocates, the multiple studies have formed a pattern of connection. "There are enough studies now that show that fracking threatens the health of workers and communities and threatens the mental and physical health of people who work nearby and children who go to school nearby,” Dr. Ned Ketyer, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania told Hurdle. But he cautioned that the studies show correlation, not causation. "There’s enough of those associations now between fracking and bad health outcomes that should be informing regulators, politicians and industry that there needs to be a better way."