ASSESSING WHETHER SHALE DEVELOPMENT AFFECTS HUMAN HEALTH

The rapid expansion of shale oil and natural gas development in the United States brings significant opportunities along with questions and controversies about its potential effects on the health of people living nearby. Widespread media reports about contaminated water and air have fueled community concerns. Might living near shale development put people at increased risk of adverse health effects? The scientific literature is growing, with use of a range of methods to assess questions about whether and how people’s health might be affected by shale operations. This presentation will summarize how to assess the potential for health risks, what health research has told us to date, and the questions that remain. It will put the available health studies into a larger context of the various approaches commonly employed to determine the potential for adverse health effects from the development of shale resources. For example, some recent studies start with health outcome data for people in communities near shale operations and then estimate whether adverse effects are associated with proximity to and/or density of the operations, while other studies start with measures of exposure to chemicals potentially associated with shale development and, combining this information with toxicological data, estimate human health risk. Ideal studies would include reliable measures of both exposure and health outcomes in the same human population. The presentation will conclude with a proposed path forward to answer the many remaining questions with research that is not only of high quality, but has the credibility needed for acceptance by individuals and organizations with widely divergent views on shale development and use in the development of sound policy.