Ever wondered if your asthma attacks can be tied to the fracking wells near your house? You are probably right.
Asthma patients are 1.5 to four times more likely to have asthma attacks if they live near bigger or a larger number of unconventional natural gas development wells, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
The researchers at Johns Hopkins University partnered with Geisinger Health System and conducted the study using electronic health records from 2005 to 2012 in north and central Pennsylvania.
Among the 27,000 identified asthma cases with patients age 5 to 90 that met the study’s criteria, about 20,000 were categorized by the researchers as having mild attacks (new oral corticosteroid orders), 1,800 were moderate attacks (emergency room visits), and 4,700 suffered from severe attacks (hospitalizations).