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In the cancer study, researchers found that children who lived within 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of a well had five to seven times the chance of developing lymphoma compared with children who lived 5 miles (8 kilometers) or farther from a well. That equates to 60 to 84 lymphoma cases per million children living near wells, versus 12 per million among kids living farther away. For asthma, the researchers concluded that people with the breathing condition who lived near wells were more likely to have severe reactions while gas was being extracted compared with people who don’t live near wells. However, researchers said they found no consistent association for severe reactions during periods when crews were building, drilling and fracking the well. The four-year, $2.5 million project is wrapping up after the state’s former governor, Democrat Tom Wolf, in 2019 agreed to commission it under pressure from the families of pediatric cancer patients who live amid the nation’s most prolific natural gas reservoir in western Pennsylvania. An extremely rare form of bone cancer, Ewing sarcoma, had been diagnosed in dozens of children and young adults in a heavily drilled area outside Pittsburgh, and those families were instrumental in pushing Wolf to commission the study. But the researchers said they found no association between gas drilling and childhood leukemia, brain and bone cancers.
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