Grantee Research Project Results

Work has continued on two projects exploring the feasibility of using Vital Statistics Natality data to measure environmental health impacts. The first will examine the impact of pollution from the 9/11 attack on infant health outcomes and use of special education services. Several previous studies have produced inconclusive results regarding the impact of the dust cloud on outcomes such as prematurity and low birth weight, and none have used longitudinal data following up on the affected infants. Some of the difficulties involved in identifying the effects of the cloud include the fact that women in the affected areas may be different than women in other areas, the fact that women in the affected cohort were affected by severe stress as well as by the cloud, and the general lack of longitudinal data following children from birth to older ages. The current research uses Vital Statistics Natality data for New York City, which has been linked to information about the childrens' use of special education services. Strengths of the research design include the ability to compare affected infants to their own siblings to control for differences in the characteristics of exposed and unexposed sample of mothers; a focus on mothers residing in the affected area and nearby areas, so that arguably all women in the sample were exposed to stress due to 9/11 and differences should be mainly due to the effects of pollution; and the ability to follow up with the affected infants to see whether they are disproportionately represented in the special education caseload. Preliminary analysis of the data has been conducted and it is planned that a draft will be written in the next several months.

 

The second project will examine the impact of oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania on birth outcomes. Many of the residents of western Pennsylvania, where oil and gas drilling is concentrated, rely on private wells for drinking water. These wells are largely unregulated and untested by the state. Recent research suggests that wells within 1 kilometer of an active horizontal fracturing site may be contaminated by methane gas, which raises the possibility of other types of contamination. This project will compare births to women residing close to active drilling sites to those of women further away, and will further compare women with well water to those using publicly monitored water systems. Assembling the data for this project has been computation intensive because it is necessary to measure mother’s distance to oil and gas wells as well as the boundaries of public drinking water districts but the data has now been assembled and is ready for analysis.