Professor Michael Greenstone Discusses How Fracking Impacts Infant Health

Harris Public Policy Professor Michael Greenstone was featured in the Chicago Policy Review, discussing how maternal proximity to sites of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," causes a decline in infant birth weight.

"The impact on health outcomes diminished at distances greater than three kilometers from the fracking sites, suggesting that effects from fracking were localized to a measurable radius," writes Kris Vallecillo. Greenstone, as well as his co-authors Janet Currie and Katherine Meckel, "addressed four problems that have prevented previous attempts from broadly examining the effects of fracking on health." Their work had a large sample size, examined multiple indices of infant health, tested for effects at different maternal distances from sites of fracking, and compared health outcomes of fracking-exposed children to those of their siblings in an effort to control for mother-fixed effects.

Full coverage available at Chicago Policy Review.