Living near fracking sites linked to higher risk of early death: Study

Fracking Site in Warren Center, PA, August 23 2013, Source: Fracking Lawyer, Ostroff Law
Fracking Site in Warren Center, PA, August 23, 2013, Source: Fracking Lawyer, Ostroff Law, (CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons).

Harvard researchers provide further evidence that, as one environmental advocate has said, “fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it.”

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Elderly individuals who live near or downwind of fracking and other “unconventional” drilling operations are at higher risk of early death compared with seniors who don’t live in close proximity to such sites, according to a new study out Thursday from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Airborne contaminants from more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells across the U.S., researchers wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Energy, are contributing to increased mortality among people 65 and older residing in neighborhoods close to or downwind from what is called unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD)—extraction methods that include directional (non-vertical) drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“Although UOGD is a major industrial activity in the U.S., very little is known about its public health impacts,” Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences and one of the paper’s co-authors, said in a statement. “Our study is the first to link mortality to UOGD-related air pollutant exposures.”

Co-author Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics, population, and data science, added that “there is an urgent need to understand the causal link between living near or downwind of UOGD and adverse health effects.”

Earlier research, the Harvard Chan School acknowledged in its press release, has “found connections between UOGD activities and increased human exposure to harmful substances in both air and water, as well as connections between UOGD exposure and adverse prenatal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and carcinogenic health outcomes. But little was known about whether exposure to UOGD was associated with mortality risk in the elderly, or about exactly how exposure to UOGD-related activities may be contributing to such risk.”

To find out more, a team of 10 scholars analyzed a cohort of nearly 15.2 million Medicare beneficiaries living in all of the nation’s major UOGD exploration regions from 2001 to 2015. They also examined data collected from more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells.

For each Medicare recipient’s ZIP code and year in the cohort, researchers calculated what pollutant exposures would be if one lived close to UOGD operations, downwind of them, or both, while adjusting for socioeconomic, environmental, and demographic factors.

The closer people lived to fracked gas and other unconventional wells, the greater their risk of premature mortality, researchers found.

According to the Harvard Chan School’s summary of the study:

Those who lived closest to wells had a statistically significant elevated mortality risk (2.5% higher) compared with those who didn’t live close to wells. The study also found that people who lived near UOGD wells as well as downwind of them were at higher risk of premature death than those living upwind, when both groups were compared with people who were unexposed.

“Our findings suggest the importance of considering the potential health dangers of situating UOGD near or upwind of people’s homes,” said Longxiang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Health and lead author of the study.

The new study adds to a growing body of literature linking fossil fuels to negative health outcomes. In a recent report, the World Health Organization warned that burning coal, oil, and gas is “causing millions of premature deaths every year through air pollutants, costing the global economy billions of dollars annually, and fueling the climate crisis.”

Another recent study estimated that eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would save 74 million lives this century. Despite mounting evidence of the deadly toll of fossil fuels, President Joe Biden has yet to use his executive authority to cancel nearly two dozen fracked gas export projects that are set to unleash pollution equivalent to roughly 400 new coal-fired power plants.

So-called unconventional drilling practices have grown rapidly over the past decade, becoming the most common form of extraction in the U.S. As of 2015, the Harvard Chan School pointed out, “more than 100,000 UOGD land-based wells were drilled using directional drilling combined with fracking,” and “roughly 17.6 million U.S. residents currently live within one kilometer of at least one active well.”

Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly. It should be banned entirely.

—Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch
Oil rig, ~12219-12999 Macon Road, Saline Township, Michigan, June 22, 2012. Source: Dwight Burdette, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Oil rig, ~12219-12999 Macon Road, Saline Township, Michigan, June 22, 2012. Source: Dwight Burdette, (CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

In contrast to conventional oil and gas drilling, methods such as fracking require “larger volumes of water, proppants (sand or other materials used to keep hydraulic fractures open), and chemicals,” the Harvard Chan School noted.

Last summer, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) uncovered internal records revealing that since 2012, fossil fuel corporations have injected potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas—after former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists’ concerns about toxicity.

At the time, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, called the PSR report “alarming,” and said it “confirms what hundreds of scientific studies and thousands of pages of data have already shown over the last decade: fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it.”

“This says nothing of the dreadful impact fossil fuel extraction and burning is having on our runaway climate crisis. Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly,” said Hauter. “It should be banned entirely.”

Climate change brings serious health risks

Photo by Masao Mask on Unsplash
Photo by Masao Mask on Unsplash

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that global warming and rainfall changes cause the loss of at least 150,000 lives every year.

By César Chelala, Common Dreams, (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

To avoid many of the health impacts of climate change it is important to strengthen public-health programs.”


Much attention has been devoted in recent times to the environmental and economic effects of climate change. Much less attention, however, has been given to the possible effects of climate change, particularly global warming, on the health of the populations, particularly those from the poorest countries. This is a trend that requires prompt attention if the negative effects of climate change on health are to be avoided or minimized. According to some estimates, at least 1 in 6 people worldwide will suffer the consequences of climate change.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that global warming and rainfall changes cause the loss of at least 150,000 lives every year. This figure could increase significantly if current trends of climate change continue. The WHO also states that the risk of death and disease from climate change will at least double in the next 20 years. Paradoxically, the countries that have least contributed to global warming are the most vulnerable to its negative consequences.

Global warming can affect the health of populations both directly and indirectly. Direct effects can result from heat-related deaths or weather-caused disasters such as hurricanes and drought-related wildfires. Indirect effects can result from alterations in complex ecological processes such as changes in the patterns of infectious diseases, in the quantity and quality of domestic food production, and altered potable water supplies. Experts predict that receding waters in the Ganges River could affect the lives of 400 million people.

Climate change could also alter the geographic distribution of disease vectors and thus alter the epidemiology of vector-transmitted diseases. Some diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, dengue and encephalitis, which are spread by insects, are sensitive to climate, since mosquitoes thrive in warmer climates. Other diseases, like cholera, are closely linked to the quality of potable water supplies, which can be seriously eroded by increasing rains, resulting in flooding and contamination by microorganisms.

Climate change will seriously affect food production, since many cereal crops can be affected by higher temperatures. This will have an effect not only on the amounts of food available but also on the economies of the countries affected.

Crop failures will provoke a higher death toll in poor countries, particularly among children, as a result of malnutrition. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that almost 800 million people in developing countries do not currently have enough to eat, a figure that is bound to increase substantially as a result of climate change.

In addition, prolonged heatwaves will likely increase deaths from heart disease, since the cardiovascular system must work harder to keep the body cool. Because the elderly and the sick are more susceptible to the effects of extreme changes in temperature, heatwaves will also pose health risks to those populations. Warmer weather may also provoke increases in ground-level ozone, which will increase the frequency of respiratory diseases by damaging lung tissue and sensitizing the respiratory tract to other irritants.

Increased global warming could exacerbate the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, increase the number of environmental refugees fleeing from weather-related disasters, and augment the risk of disease migration and epidemics. While the range of health consequences is wide and their magnitude difficult to predict, children are among the most vulnerable to these changes. Since children constitute almost half of the population in many developing countries, such problems assume even greater significance.

Although human populations vary widely in their vulnerability to climatic change, one may reasonably predict that those particularly affected will be the poor and marginal populations that have less easy access to adequate health services to respond to emergencies. In this regard, climate change will exacerbate the disparities between the rich and the poor throughout the world. Not only will the poor in developing countries be affected, however, but even the poor in industrialized societies.

To respond to the challenges of climate change, however, requires more than resources and technology. What is necessary is increased education, advocacy and the creation of legal frameworks to allow the people and governments better-informed and sustainable policy decisions. It is also important to develop risk-communication strategies.

To avoid many of the health impacts of climate change it is important to strengthen public-health programs so that they can monitor and treat the spread of infectious diseases, and respond more effectively to health emergencies as they appear. Climate change is a most serious health risk. We will ignore its consequences on the health of the populations at our own risk.

Air Quality Strategy to Reduce Coronavirus Infection

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Air Pollution (APPG) is an organization in the United Kingdom made up of Members of Parliament (MPs) and their peers who work together to promote measures to tackle poor air quality.

n May 29, 2020, the APPG launched its Air Quality Strategy to Reduce Coronavirus Infection to keep air pollution low and to deliver World Health Organization Air Quality Standards.

Cover of Air Quality Strategy to Reduce Corona Virus Infection Report
Cover of Air Quality Strategy to Reduce Corona Virus Infection Report