A dozen people are scurrying around a church basement in Youngstown, Ohio. They鈥檙e arranging tables and chairs, setting up paperwork, and hanging up signs that read 鈥淥hio Health Registry.鈥�
鈥淭he Ohio Health Registry is really an attempt to collect the contacts of people who live close enough to any aspect of shale development, that they might be affected,鈥� said Dr. Deborah Cowden, a family physician from the Dayton area, who started this effort.
Cowden drove 3.5 hours east this morning to organize the registration, while others came in from Oberlin, Cleveland and Lake County to register people in Youngstown.
鈥淭his is the medical questionnaire, and I鈥檓 going to read some instructions,鈥� a registrar tells one person who has shown up to fill out the forms, which takes about 15 minutes.
Participants are asked about their proximity to gas development, and about any current health symptoms 鈥� everything from levels of fatigue, nausea, and asthma, to whether they have a diagnosis of cancer and their mental health 鈥� and their family health history.
Truck driver Martin Senganec, 60, filled out the registration forms at a similar event in nearby Lowellville. He鈥檚 heard about a new being permitted near his home.
鈥淚 live less than a mile from what they鈥檙e building there, and I鈥檓 worried about it,鈥� he said.
Senganec remembers the magnitude 3.0 earthquake near here five years ago, that Ohio . He鈥檚 also concerned that this area has become a dumping ground for fracking wastewater, a high salinity, chemical-laced brine.
Sengenic doesn鈥檛 think the state is ensuring that his drinking water well will be protected from contamination.
鈥淭hey say it鈥檚 not going to harm,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 have well water, all the people around here have well water, and that鈥檚 what I鈥檓 worried about. If that hurts that鈥nce the well is contaminated, you can鈥檛 do nothing with it.鈥�
Sengenic doesn鈥檛 know how the health registry will help.
鈥淚鈥檓 not sure, to be honest with you. It might not do anything, I don鈥檛 know,鈥� he said.
Links Between Fracking And Health
More and more studies have been making connections between living near gas development, and the risk of some health problems, like and , , and
Cowden wants the health registry to provide data that will help further this kind of research, as fracking continues to grow in the state.
鈥淚f we are going to do this, why are we not attempting to keep track, so that we might be able to help people if they have a problem?鈥� she asked.
Ohio regulators say they do respond to health concerns. But Rebecca Fugitt, assistant chief of the at the Ohio Department of Health, says they don鈥檛 get many complaints from citizens about the fracking industry.
鈥淚t鈥檚 less than five a year,鈥� she said. 鈥淩eally, we don鈥檛 get very many.鈥�
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates the oil and gas industry, also gets few health complaints from people living near these operations.
by citizens to ODNR between 2009 and 2018, and found just 10 reporting headaches, rashes and breathing problems. But ODNR did receive 438 complaints about odors, according to The Allegheny Front鈥檚 research. Certain in the air.
Fugitt says the health department does respond to citizens who think pollution from oil and gas development, or anything else, is harming their health.
鈥淲e work with them on a case by case basis to investigate their complaint,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd then if necessary we coordinate with other state agencies to collect environmental data as needed to respond to their concerns to determine if they have been exposed to any contaminants.鈥�
Fugitt says Ohio tracks various health statistics, just not specifically in relation to fracking activity.
鈥淚 Think It鈥檚 Shameful鈥�
But some health advocates say Ohio Department of Health鈥檚 efforts to respond to individual complaints is not enough.
鈥淚鈥檒l tell it like it is, I think it鈥檚 shameful,鈥� said Raina Rippel, who runs the
Rippel wants the government to pro-actively collect community-wide health data on people in shale gas communities, so it can better regulate the industry, and protect public health.
and do have registries for people living near the oil and gas industry to report their health concerns. But Rippel says these efforts are inadequate.
So her organization started a in 2017. An of the first 100 to register found that people living within a quarter mile of a gas development were more likely to report coughs, headaches, and anxiety, compared with those a mile or more away.
She says this data should be collected in a more systematic way.
鈥淲e have to do our best to fill in the gap,鈥� Rippel said. 鈥淚 think that this is really us, these small groups, these groups that don鈥檛 have a lot of resources, doing the work we know needs to be done. Hopefully the states and/ or the federal agencies will ultimately pick up the ball that they鈥檝e dropped.鈥�
Marcellus Drilling News, an industry publication, , writing that it encourages people to blame every headache and cough on gas development.
Providing Data For More Research
The group behind the Ohio health registry plans to offer its database to scientists.
鈥淲e鈥檙e actually a little more than just a registry because we鈥檙e also collecting baseline health data,鈥� said organizer Deb Cowden.
Researchers say there could be some use for this data, but there is concern about the validity of citizen-led health registries.
Brian Schwartz, professor of Environmental Health and Engineering, Epidemiology, and Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has found an association between fracking and exacerbation of asthma in nearby residents, would be concerned that participants in the health registries might not be representative of the community at large.
鈥淒o registry members represent all persons in an area, all affected persons in an area, or just a very selected subset of persons in an area?鈥� he asked in an email to The Allegheny Front.
Elise Elliott is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her found a link between how close people in Ohio live to unconventional gas wells, and reported health symptoms, like stress and fatigue. She says health registries can still be helpful.
鈥淭hese types of studies really help with hypothesis generation,鈥� Elliott said. But to be useful to researchers, she said, 鈥渋t really matters how the data is collected and what kind of data is collected.鈥�
The group in Ohio is not directly working with researchers in its data collection. But Deb Cowden says it is being done with researchers in mind, to be helpful to them.
Her registry so far has collected information from about 65 people, and with more events like the one in Youngstown, is hoping to reach 200 by the end of the year.
This is part of the series " examining claims made by Ohio residents and how state regulators have responded. The series is supported by the and the .
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