Natural gas flares from Marcellus shale wells in Tioga County, Penna.

From an Article by Sarah Boden, WESA Public Radio, Pittsburgh, August 2, 2019

A new study finds that pregnant women living near hydraulic fracking activity in Pennsylvania are more likely to develop depression and anxiety.

“These are vulnerable women who are growing another human being inside of them,” said Joan A. Casey, the study’s lead author and an environmental health scientist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Casey and her colleagues conducted the study with 7,715 research volunteers; all were expectant mothers within the Geisinger Health System, which serves much of central Pennsylvania.

“Basically … if we took 100 women and we expose them to the higher levels of fracking activity during pregnancy, four of them would develop anxiety or depression that otherwise would not have developed it,” she said.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America said in an e-mail that it takes issue with the fact the study didn’t look at environmental data.

“While these epidemiological studies claim to find possible connections based on limited data sets and assumptions, the reality here in Pennsylvania is that study after study of actual air and water sampling near these sites continue to show that shale development is being done in a way that’s protective of public health,” wrote spokesperson Nicole Jacobs.

Casey pointed out that increased traffic connected to fracking can degrade local air quality, while increasing sound pollution and other commotion in a community.

Part of the reason these mothers experienced adverse mental health issues, she said, could be due to concerns around environmental impacts, paired with a lack of control surrounding the changes.

“Mothers have reported feeling like they can’t keep their children safe,” she said. “We can’t say we’re 100 percent sure that these women are developing anxiety or depression during pregnancy as a result of living near unconventional natural gas development in the Marcellus shale, but I don’t have another explanation for what we’re observing here.”

Casey said her team controlled for a variety of factors including age, race, whether a volunteer smoked and socioeconomic status. Even after taking these factors into account, women that were living closer to a greater number of fracking wells appeared to be at an elevated risk for developing anxiety and depression.

While the study found that a woman’s depression or anxiety issues did not lead her to giving birth prematurely or having a baby with low birth weight, Casey said a mother’s mental health still affects her child.

“There is quite a bit of evidence that women who have anxiety or depression during pregnancy are at an elevated risk of postpartum depression,” she said. “We’ve all seen the literature on how postpartum depression is can be very serious and can affect both the mother the husband or father of the child as well as the child’s development.”

The Department of Health and Human Services says pediatric developmental issues related to maternal post-partum can include speech delays, behavioral and social problems, problems with mother-child bonding, shorter height, risk of obesity, and a child feeling agitated or crying more.

The study was published in the journal “Environmental Research.”

Frack chemicals and produced water and diesel exhaust can all be toxic!

From an Article by Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, July 27, 2018

Stress and depression are higher among those living closest to more and bigger wells.

People who live near unconventional natural gas operations such as fracking are more likely to experience depression, according to a new study.

For the study, which is the first of its kind and published today in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University looked at rates of depression in nearly 5,000 adults living in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region in 2015.

They found that people living near fracking-related operations are more likely to be depressed than the general population, and that stress and depression went up among people living closest to more and bigger natural gas wells.

“Previously we’ve looked at the links between unconventional natural gas development and things like asthma exacerbations, migraine headaches and fatigue,” study co-author Joan Casey, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, told EHN. “The next step was thinking about mental health, because we had a lot of anecdotal reports of sleep disturbances and psychosocial stress related to unconventional natural gas development.”

By the end of 2015, 9,669 wells had been drilled in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale, and by 2016, the region led the nation in shale gas production. While there have been other small studies on the links between fracking and depression, this is the first to investigate a link between the two using a validated survey among a larger population.

Related: Fracking chemicals “imbalance” the immune system

The researchers compared data on the number of wells, the phase of extraction, and the volume of production in order to group residents into categories of “very low,” “low,” “medium,” and “high” levels of exposure to fracking operations. To assess the severity of depression symptoms, they used a patient health questionnaire that included questions like, “How often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed, hopeless?”

“People in the highest group of exposure were 1.5 times more likely to have mild depression symptoms than those in very low exposure group,” Casey said, noting that the greatest increases in rates of depression occurred among people with mild to moderate symptoms living near high-volume fracking operations.

“Based on our observations, it seems like living near unconventional natural gas development may not cause an increase in diagnoses of severe major depressive disorders, but might exacerbate symptoms in those with mild or moderate depression, and create some depression and stress in otherwise healthy people,” she added.

In order to minimize over-reporting of depression symptoms among people concerned about the industry’s environmental and health impacts, survey participants weren’t informed that the study was related to fracking. While that strengthened the study, Casey pointed out that it also limited their ability to examine the causes of depression in those living near fracking operations.

“Some people in these communities might have positive associations with natural gas extraction,” she pointed out. “Maybe they’re leasing their land and getting economic benefits, so it’s actually lessening their symptoms, while others may only be getting exposures and have concerns about its health impacts, which could be worsening their symptoms.”

The researchers also looked at electronic health records to determine whether there was an increase in physician-diagnosed sleep disorders or prescriptions for sleep aids in the region, but did not observe an increase in those instances associated with proximity to fracking operations.

Another question unanswered by the study is whether exposure to the chemicals being released into the environment could play a role in the increase of depression symptoms among those living near unconventional natural gas operations.

“I think we’ve probably now done enough epidemiological studies showing the links between unconventional natural gas extraction and health,” Casey said. “The next step will be to tease apart what our exposure pathways are.”

“Is this being caused by air pollution and volatile organic compounds? Is it more about perception and psychosocial stressors than actual exposure? We just don’t know the answers to these questions, and I think to be able to move forward, we have to start unraveling those mysteries.”

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