Thread by @ssteingraber1

NEW RESEARCH: #Fracking in PA contaminates drinking water where pregnant women live and harms their infants.

So, here's a link to the goddamn abstract and bc I have a PhD and a full-text pre-proof, I'll do an whole thread but as a mom: THIS IS ENOUGH
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

This a first-of-its-kind study that uses exact locations of mothers' residences, gas wells, and public drinking water sources and combines them with dates of infant births, measurements of water contaminants, and timing of drilling and fracking activities. It's big data.

Results showed that prenatal exposure to a fracking well drilled within 1 km (.62 miles) of water sources, together with drilling near a mother's home, raises risks for both preterm birth and low birthweight. Study methods adroitly controlled for confounding factors.

Aside from me: preterm birth is the leading cause of disability in the United States.

Back to the results: Notably, the increases in drinking water contaminants near fracking activities documented by the research team often were not sufficient to trigger regulatory violations. The authors thus conclude that the infant health harms they found were either...

...due to increases in regulated water contaminants below the threshold level OR "unregulated contaminants that we, unfortunately, cannot observe."

Context from me: Both could be true. The federal government has legal limits for just over 90 contaminants in drinking water. No new chemicals have been added to the Maximum Contaminant Level list for 20 years nor were limits set with prenatal or infant development in mind.

Back to the results: "We find consistent and robust evidence that drilling shale gas wells negatively impacts both drinking water quality and infant health."

Personal comment: I've been reading fracking and public health data pretty much daily for 10 years, and I still cry. Is anyone okay with these data? I'm not. #BanFracking