Abstract
This paper explores the impact of shale gas and oil fracking wells on infants’ health at birth across Oklahoma counties. The empirical analysis makes use of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test, as well as the (long-run) Pooled Mean Group method. The results clearly document that there is a unidirectional relationship between fracking activities and three alternative indexes of infants’ health at birth, as well as a significant impact of fracking on infants’ health indicators. In addition, the results illustrate the substantial role of fracking through the drinking water quality channel.
Highlights
Hydraulic fracturing has been an important innovation in the energy sector, especially after 2006 in the case of the Oklahoma state
This study explored the impact of the fracking wells on infants’ birth health across Oklahoma counties
The findings indicated that the closer the mother’s residence at birth to fracking wells, the more negative are the effects on the infants’ birth health
Summary
Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has been an important innovation in the energy sector, especially after 2006 in the case of the Oklahoma state. The empirical analysis will investigate how fracking across Oklahoma counties affects infants’ health conditions born to mothers living up to certain distances from a fracking well. Such fracking activities could affect public health through the channels of water quality and air pollution. The analysis is implemented for various distances of maternal residents from the fracking wells It explicitly considers the mechanism of drinking water as a potential driver of the association between fracking and infants’ health at birth. We got 121,862 births within 1 km; 148,783 within 5 km; 157,664 within 10 km; and 128,485 within 20 km from the wells
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