Local medical workers and citizens in Ohio have collaborated to create the Ohio Health Registry, a grassroots initiative that’s collecting baseline health and demographic information from residents who live near fracking operations, according to news reports.
There is growing evidence that living near fracking—the extraction of natural gas from shale—may be associated with myriad health issues, including headaches, lower birth weights, anxiety, and cancer. The Ohio Health Registry is intended to help collect data and aid in the further study of these risks.
While public health researchers see value in such efforts, they have some concerns with data collection and quality. In a July 26, 2019, Allegheny Front article, Elise Elliott, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said these types of studies can be especially helpful for generating hypotheses to further examine potential links between unconventional gas drilling and health issues.
Read the Allegheny Front article: Fracking in Ohio: Amid industry activity, residents start their own shale gas-related health registry