PA Environment Digest Blog: University Of Pittsburgh School Of Public Health Studies Find Shale Gas Wells Can Make Asthma Worse; Children Have An Increased Chance Of Developing Lymphoma Cancer; Slightly Lower Birth Weights

On August 15, the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health released the results of health studies of unconventional shale gas development.

The studies were designed to answer this study question: “Does living near unconventional gas development activities or other environmental hazards in Southwestern Pennsylvania increase the risk for specific health issues?”

The study area includes these counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania-- Allegheny (excluding the City of Pittsburgh), Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Dr. James Fabisiak, a toxicologist and environmental health scientist with the University of Pittsburgh, presented the results which found shale gas wells--

-- Can Make Asthma Worse: “We learned that there was a strong link between the production phase of unconventional natural gas development and severe exacerbations, emergency department visits and hospitalizations for asthma in people living within 10 miles of one or more wells producing natural gas.

“Specifically, people with asthma have a 4 to 5 times greater chance of having an asthma attack if they live near unconventional natural gas development wells during the production phase.

"We did not find such a link during the well preparation, drilling, or hydraulic fracturing phases.”

-- Lymphoma More Likely In Children: “Results indicated that children who lived within 1 mile of one or more wells had approximately 5 to 7 times the chance of developing lymphoma, a relatively rare type of cancer, compared to children who lived in an area without wells within 5 miles.

“Data suggest that those who lived closer to greater intensity of unconventional natural gas development activities had the highest risk.

“For perspective, the incidence of lymphoma is, on average, 0.0012% in US children under 20 years of age. [This study] estimates that rate would be 0.006% to 0.0084% for children living within 1 mile of a well.”

-- No Link To Childhood Leukemia, Certain Cancers: “There were no associations between unconventional natural gas development activities and childhood leukemia, brain and bone cancers, including Ewing’s family of tumors.”

-- Slightly Lower Birth Weights: “We learned that babies were about 1 ounce smaller at birth-- something that, in most cases, poses little health risk-- when born to mothers who lived near active wells during the production phase, or compressor stations or facilities accepting oil and gas waste.

“We also found that mothers who lived near active wells were more likely to have babies who were small for gestational age.

“Finally, the chance of being born prematurely was not specifically associated with unconventional natural gas development, but high levels of particulate air pollution from any source were associated with being born prematurely, consistent with previous studies from other researchers.”

Controlled For Other Known Risk Factors

Dr. James Fabisiak, the toxicologist and environmental health scientist with the University of Pittsburgh, said, “Our studies controlled for many known risk factors."

[‘Controlling for’ means removing the effects of these other variables to focus on the impacts of the exposures the studies are meant to identify.]

“So a confounding risk factor is a factor that may contribute to the incidence of that adverse effect, such as smoking, for example. We know smoking can be associated with small for gestational age or being born premature. That's one factor that we can consider when we do the birth outcome study.

“But we control it for many confounding factors. And you can see that for birth outcome, maternal age, smoking, as I said during pregnancy, et cetera, a whole host of factors to control for.

“As confounding compounding factors in asthma and other factors that we controlled for in childhood cancer, which were smoking during pregnancy, maternal age at birth and birth weight, et cetera.”

Some of these factors included--

-- Asthma: family history of asthma; patient age; season; smoking; body mass index.

-- Birth Outcome: maternal age; maternal education; smoking before or during pregnancy; gestational diabetes; community socioeconomic deprivation index.

-- Childhood Cancer: smoking during pregnancy; gestational age; maternal age at birth; maternal education; birth weight.

Measuring Pollution Exposures

Dr. James Fabisiak, a toxicologist and environmental health scientist with the University of Pittsburgh, explains how they used information on shale gas wells and infrastructure and environmental measurements to determine the exposures of children, mothers and the public.

“So we were able to utilize Pennsylvania DEP, and other state resources to give us a very detailed analysis of where these [shale gas] wells were, when they were drilled, what stages of development they were in at a given time.

“And so at least for some of the endpoints, we were actually to develop the metrics specifically to look at exposure to the individual specific stages of well development.

“This becomes problematic as I'll get to in a minute, for studies that have a much longer exposure window, such as the cancer studies.

“We also didn't restrict ourselves to just looking at unconventional natural gas wells, but other elements of oil and gas infrastructure such as compressor stations, impoundment ponds, facilities that accept oil and gas waste, other industrial activities such as [federal] Superfund sites, legacy Superfund sites that have been abandoned, that have contamination left in the ground.

“TRR [Toxic Release Inventory] sites, which are industrial sites that must report a level of all of their toxic emissions to the EPA through the toxic release inventory.

“And we also considered those sites that are on the uranium mill tailings legacy action site. And essentially tried to use those separately to find out if they had any role in these specific diseases.

“We also were able to look at ambient air pollution through a very refined method of using satellite imagery, which measures PM 2.5 [particulate] concentrations over very small geospatial scales and see if that was associated with any of the adverse outcomes.

“So not to get too bogged down in the technicality here, but we have to spend some time thinking about how we measure exposure, what do we mean by exposure?

“And so we can measure exposure to chemicals or hazards in a variety of ways. And they have a broad range in terms of their accuracy, their uncertainty, and their difficulty in performing.

“So perhaps one of the most precise would be to actually have a quantified individual measurement of some chemical on every individual in the study.

“So if I had attached an air monitor to every person who was in our study and measured the concentration that was reading on that air monitor over time, I would have a very precise measure of what they're exposed to.

“The problem is that I cannot do that in any kind of retrospective study where I'm looking at patients from the past, right? I can't attach monitors to them 10 years ago. So those are not really practical for the retrospective studies that we did.

“On the downside, the least precise would be something like just looking at residents and employment within a geographic area.

“This might be looking at taking all the counties that have fracking activities and all the counties that do not have fracking activities and looking at the rates of diseases in there without any assignment of where an individual that gets a disease is to any of the particular hazards.

“So when we looked at unconventional natural gas metrics, we are essentially using a function of a person's residence and the number of wells that are close to them.

“And we looked at varying buffer distances for the different health effects as well as the density, so the number of wells, the distance, and weighting those wells that are closer as having a more significant contribution to the exposure, a technique we call inverse distance weighting.

“And we can see that's really in the middle of what we would call the most precise, the least uncertain and the easiest to do.

“The PM 2.5 measurements are actually a little bit more precise, because we have quantified ambient measurements of these pollutants over time that was archived from satellites that have been passing over the region for the last 20 years.

“So what were the timeframes of exposure considered to be at risk?

“And this is really a function of the different diseases that we looked at. So with asthma exacerbations, we essentially looked at what the profile of exposure was at the one-day immediate to the date of that exacerbation.

“Birth outcomes essentially integrated those exposures over the entire nine months of pregnancy.

“So from the birth record, we know when a baby was born, we know the nine months that mom was in gestation during that time based on. Where she lived, we can come up with an exposure metric regarding the number and density of the various unconventional natural gas wells.

“Childhood cancer, we looked at two different windows of exposure. One is because obviously cancer is a long developing disease, we know the date that cancer was diagnosed.

“But we need to go back really quite far in time to cover when we want the most relevant exposure to be.

“So we considered either the nine months of pregnancy when mom was pregnant or the birth of the child up to the date of diagnosis. And so that's a very long exposure window many times.

“And so we integrated as best we could with the unconventional natural gas facility exposure was over that period of time.”

Click Here for the study results and fact sheets.

Click Here for comments made by some residents during the Q/A session.

Click Here for a video of the meeting. Q/A begins about 39:58 mark with former Post-Gazette reporter Dave Templeton, who with Don Hopey, reported on multiple rare cancers in a Washington County school district in 2019.

Follow Up On Study

Beginning in October, the state Department of Health will begin a medical provider education program to better prepare providers for recognizing and treating health issues related to shale gas development and air pollution generally.

The Department of Health also revised its Environmental Health webpage to provide a better mechanism for submitting environmental health concerns to the agency for evaluation.

The agency will also be reviewing cancer cases in the area as another followup to these studies.

Conventional Gas Wells Emit Same Pollution

[Note: It is important to recognize conventional natural gas wells emit the same air, waste, water and radiation pollution as unconventional shale gas wells and there are tens of thousands more of these wells across Pennsylvania.

[Note: Conventional wells must meet less stringent and less protective environmental regulations than shale gas wells and have nearly five times the number of violations of even these weak regulations, according to DEP.

[Note: Since 2016, the conventional oil and gas industry has been blocking attempts by DEP to update regulations setting more protective standards for this industry. DEP is shortly expected to issue revised proposed regulations anyway.]

State Health Plan - Threat Of Natural Resource Extraction

On April 4, the Department of Health published the Pennsylvania State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP) that outlines goals, objectives, and strategies to improve the health of all Pennsylvanians over the next five years. Read more here.

The Plan identified Environmental Health as one of eight health issues affecting Pennsylvania. The other seven include access to care, mental health, substance use, chronic diseases, infectious diseases, maternal and infant Health, injury and violence.

The assessment further identified rising health issues related to natural resource extractions [defined by the Health Department as oil and gas development] and the health impacts resulting from climate change as two of the top five threats affecting health outcomes of Pennsylvanians.

The other threats include transportation issues leading to social health disparities, escalating costs of medicines necessary to treat chronic diseases. [page 13] Read more here.

Gov. Shapiro Supports Key Recommendations In Grand Jury Report

On April 16, Inside Climate News published a comprehensive article by Stacey Burling on issues surrounding the disposal of 2.6 billion gallons of conventional and shale gas drilling wastewater generated in Pennsylvania annually that included a statement from Gov. Shapiro’s office supporting “key recommendations” in a 2020 Grand Jury Report that concluded DEP’s oil and gas regulatory program failed to protect public health and the environment.

Inside Climate News quoted Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for Gov. Josh Shapiro, as saying, Gov. Shapiro “supports implementing the report’s key recommendations” and believes “we must reject the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting our planet.”

The article also said DEP Acting Secretary Richard Negrin “has established an internal team to review the grand jury report and ‘determine the best policies to protect Pennsylvanians’ constitutional rights to clean air and pure water,’ the Governor’s Office said.

“It is considering a new criminal referral policy to improve “collaboration and efficiency” between the DEP and the attorney general’s office,” the article said.

The Grand Jury Report was released by then Attorney General Shapiro in June 2020 after what he said then was a two-year investigation uncovered systematic failure by government agencies in overseeing the fracking industry and fulfilling their responsibility to protect Pennsylvanians from the inherent risks of industry operations. Read more here.

The announcement in 2020 said in addition to exposing failures on the part of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health, the Grand Jury made eight recommendations to create a more comprehensive legal framework that would better protect Pennsylvanians from the realities of industry operations.

The recommendations included--

-- Expanding No-Drill Zones: Expanding no-drill zones in Pennsylvania from the required 500 feet to 2,500 feet;

-- Chemical Disclosure: Requiring fracking companies to publicly disclose all chemicals used in drilling and hydraulic fracturing before they are used on-site;

-- Gathering Pipelines: Requiring the regulation of gathering lines, used to transport unconventional gas hundreds of miles;

-- Assess Air Quality: Adding up all sources of air pollution in a given area to accurately assess air quality;

-- Safe Transport Of Waste: Requiring safer transport of the contaminated waste created from fracking sites;

-- Comprehensive Health Response: Conducting a comprehensive health response to the effects of living near unconventional drilling sites;

-- Limit Revolving Door: Limiting the ability of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection employees to be employed in the private sector immediately after leaving the Department;

-- Direct Criminal Jurisdiction: Allowing the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General original criminal jurisdiction over unconventional oil and gas companies.

Click Here for a copy of the Grand Jury Report. Read more here.

“Our government has a duty to set, and enforce, ground rules that protect public health and safety. We are the referees, we are here to prevent big corporations and the powerful industries from harming our communities or running over the rights of citizens,” said Attorney General Shapiro. “When it comes to fracking, Pennsylvania failed. Now it’s time to face the facts, and do what we can to protect the people of this commonwealth by encouraging the Department of Environmental Protection to partner with us and by passing the Grand Jurors’ common-sense reforms.”

How Close Are You?

To find out how close you are to oil and gas wells and natural gas industrial facilities, visit the Oil & Gas Threat Map website. Read more here.

Background On Studies

In 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Health contracted with Pitt Public Health to conduct three observational epidemiological studies focusing on asthma, birth outcomes and childhood cancers.

The study area includes these counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania-- Allegheny (excluding the City of Pittsburgh), Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

These studies focuses on the potential health impacts of human exposure to environmental risk factors, such as unconventional natural gas development activities, among others.

The first study focused on finding out if historical exposure to various environmental risk factors may be linked to childhood cancers in Southwestern Pennsylvania using existing data sources and parent interviews.

The second and third studies use information already available to find out if exposure to environmental risk factors is related to more severe cases of asthma or to increased occurrence of adverse birth outcomes in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

For more information, visit the PA Health and Environment Study webpage.

Companion Article:

-- State Dept. Of Health Apologizes For Not Listening To Communities Suffering Health Impacts From Shale Gas Development; New Health Study Results ‘Just The Tip Of The Iceberg’ [PaEN]

NewsClips:

-- The Center Square: Natural Gas Well Setbacks May Not Be Protective Enough After Health Impact Study Results

-- Marcellus Drilling News: Gov. Shapiro’s Anti-Marcellus Views Reflected In New DEP Regs [That May Be Coming Next Week]

-- Bloomberg Column: Cancer In Kids Is Too High A Price For Cheap Natural Gas - By Mark Gongloff

-- Pittsburgh Business Times: DEP Plans To Tighten Regulations On Natural Gas Drilling, Including Recommendations For 2020 Grand Jury Report

-- Marcellus Shale Coalition: University Of Pittsburgh Health Studies ‘Reproduces Previously Flawed Studies’ Not Actual Field Monitoring [But Likes One Result That Favors Them]

-- Marcellus Drilling News: Pitt Releases Fake Research, Claims PA Fracking Linked To Kid Cancer

-- Sen. Yaw Questions Legitimacy Of University Of Pittsburgh Shale Gas Health Studies

-- AP: Pennsylvania Study Suggests Links Between Shale Gas Wells And Asthma; Lymphoma In Children