Exploring Disparities in Maternal Residential Proximity to Unconventional Gas Development in the Barnett Shale in North Texas

Jennifer Ish, Elaine Symanski and Kristina W. Whitworth
Additional contact information
Jennifer Ish: Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health in San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA
Elaine Symanski: Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH), Houston, TX 77030, USA
Kristina W. Whitworth: Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health in San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-9

Abstract: Background : This study explores sociodemographic disparities in residential proximity to unconventional gas development (UGD) among pregnant women. Methods : We conducted a secondary analysis using data from a retrospective birth cohort of 164,658 women with a live birth or fetal death from November 2010 to 2012 in the 24-county area comprising the Barnett Shale play, in North Texas. We considered both individual- and census tract-level indicators of sociodemographic status and computed Indexes of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) to quantify relative neighborhood-level privilege/disadvantage. We used negative binomial regression to investigate the relation between these variables and the count of active UGD wells within 0.8 km of the home during gestation. We calculated count ratios (CR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to describe associations. Results : There were fewer wells located near homes of women of color living in low-income areas compared to non-Hispanic white women living in more privileged neighborhoods (ICE race/ethnicity + income: CR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.48–0.55). Conclusions : While these results highlight a potential disparity in residential proximity to UGD in the Barnett Shale, they do not provide evidence of an environmental justice (EJ) issue nor negate findings of environmental injustice in other regions.

Keywords: unconventional gas development; index of concentration at the extremes; maternal and child health; Barnett Shale; environmental justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/298/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/298/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:3:p:298-:d:200064

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().