Registry reports similar effects in residents’ shale gas health
People living close to shale gas wells, compressor stations and pipelines are experiencing fatigue, anxiety, eye irritation, rashes, breathing problems and nosebleeds, according to a report on the first 50 people to join the Environmental Health Project’s Shale Gas & Oil Health Registry.
The registry started at the end of April. The Environmental Health Project’s initial report identified symptoms consistent with those it has seen during five years of tracking health impacts related to southwestern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale gas development, said Jill Kriesky, associate director of the Mc Murray-based EHP.
“We’re not drawing any conclusions based on just the first 50 people to voluntarily sign up for the registry,” Ms. Kriesky said, “but if you look at what they’ve
reported — anxiety, asthma, stress, shortness of breath — it’s just very consistent with what we’ve learned from our clients over the years. The registry data is all pointing in the same direction.”
According to the EHP report, new or worsening symptoms of fatigue were reported by half of the participants, 70 percent cited anxiety, 44 percent eye irritation, and a third reported coughs.
A growing body of peer-reviewed epidemiological research studies also has found similar public health impacts associated with shale gas development, although the shale gas drilling industry has pushed back with studies of its own disputing those concerns and touting air pollution reductions.
The EHP registry, established with partner Genetic Alliance, a 30-year-old nonprofit health advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., will continue to gather health and exposure data from volunteer participants across the nation, Ms. Kriesky said. Of the first 50 who joined the registry, about half are from Pennsylvania, she said, with the rest from Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado, Texas, New York and Maryland. New York and Maryland have banned fracking.
“We’re working hard to get people signed up on the registry because the more we get, the more confident we can be in our analysis,” Ms. Kriesky said “We’re pleasantly surprised we’ve hit a lot of states already, but we can’t say what’s going on in them because we would never attempt to draw conclusions on the basis of five or six individuals.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Health, which started its own registry in March, has recorded similar health complaints related to shale gas development dating to 2011.
Of the 135 complaints filed with the Department of Health since 2011, more than 33 percent of the individuals reported respiratory, neurological, skin rashes and gastrointestinal symptoms, said April Hutcheson, a health department spokeswoman, in an email response to questions. More than half of those complaints came from residents of Washington, Susquehanna and Bradford counties, the three counties with the most shale gas wells.
The state’s health complaints registry, established nine months ago with a $100,000 appropriation for fiscal 2017, has only logged two complaints on its difficult-to-access web page, which hasn’t been updated with any new complaint data since March.
Sharon Watkins, the Department of Health’s epidemiologist, said the department is working on the public database. She said it’s using the funding to transfer the handwritten log of complaints from 2011 through 2016 to an electronic database, formulate a better complaint questionnaire, and pursue interviews with about nine additional individuals who have filed registry complaints since March.
“This is definitely a priority in the health department,” Ms. Watkins said. “There’s a definite commitment to provide this information to the public.”
The health department faced criticism in July 2014 for not taking complaints about shale gas drilling seriously or assessing impacts of shale gas development on public health for three years after Gov. Tom Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Committee recommended establishment of a registry.
Eventually, the EHP registry’s data — without names and identifying information — will be available to researchers and physicians to help track disease and health problems, and better determine the public health impacts and risks related to shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
Ms. Kriesky hopes it also will produce the kind of complaint data needed to help educate policymakers about the scope of health problems tied to shale gas development.
“People have stories about their health. We hear them all the time. But a lot of people have those same stories,” Ms. Kriesky said. “What the registry hopes to provide is a place to track and analyze those stories, not from just a neighborhood or county, but from drilling locations from across the country.”