Saint Vincent College study drills down on relationship between fracking chemicals and adverse birth outcomes
LATROBE, Pa. (KDKA) — A new national study from Saint Vincent College digs into whether certain chemicals used in fracking could affect a baby's weight and whether they're born early.
"There is something that is increasing the preterm birth rate nationally," said Mary Regina Boland, an associate professor at Saint Vincent College.
Boland managed to drill down into data at a county level across the United States, and she found counties with more fracking wells that use chemicals that target certain hormones had higher amounts of preterm births and low birth weights. The study also showed chemicals that affect estrogen and testosterone resulted in the largest increase.
"What we found was across the board that chemicals when used in fracking that involved estrogen targeting chemicals, there was a huge increase in birth outcomes, specifically for preterm birth as well. And then for testosterone, there was a less large increase, but also still very large, and they were all statistically significant," Boland said.
"What we did find was 3.789 higher preterm birth weight per increase in well density that's using these chemicals that are related to estrogen targeting compounds. So, it was a very large increase," she added.
She hopes this association study encourages some change.
"Maybe encourage chemical companies that maybe they can use different chemicals since some fracking companies actually don't use chemicals that target these compounds," Boland said.
Allegheny County has many fracking wells, and the preterm birth rate in the county is 9.9 percent, which is lower than the national average of 10.4 percent.
"It's still high. It's above 9 percent. So, there's still more work to be done there," said Boland.
Boland said while conducting this study, they adjusted for a lot of things known to impact these birth outcomes.
"We were still finding a significant signal, and so that I think is concerning to me because it means that there could potentially be something very important going on here that needs further research," she said.
Boland said, for example, they didn't look into whether it's possible fracking chemicals are getting into the water supply and affecting women that way.
"We're hoping that it will result in future study to investigate some of those things of kind of tracking down how it's happening," Boland said.
She said there needs to be more discussions on the research side and from the community side as well.
"So, thinking about how they're used, where they're used, and if there can even be things like filters used for pregnant women, we don't even know yet because we're not 100% sure it would even be through the water. Again, because this is just an association. It's like the first kind of pass-through where we find something nationally that seems to be explaining some trends. And then we can look in the future with more research and a little bit more detail," she added.
To see the full study and its results, read the published study on Environmental Health Perspectives.