Health security

Babies born near fracking sites suffer lower birth weight, poorer health – study

The 29,000 babies born each year in the US whose mothers live within 1 km of a fracking site are at risk of serious adverse health effects, likely due to the pollution produced by the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology, claims a new massive study.

Authored by a research team from Princeton, UCLA and the University of Chicago and published in Science Advances, the paper studied the impact of fracking on 1.1 million births in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2013.

“The results of our analysis suggest that the introduction of fracking reduces health among infants born to mothers living within 3 km of a well site during pregnancy. For mothers living within 1 km, we find a 25% increase in the probability of low birth weight (birth weight < 2500 g) and significant declines in average birth weight and in an index of infant health,”write the authors.