Exposure to shale gas fracking chemicals has been linked to any number of adverse human health impacts, from asthma to sore throats to chemical burns to cancers, but a new Duke University-led study says that exposure also promotes fat cell development.
The study, published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal “Science of the Total Environment,” said mice exposed to a range of chemicals in wastewater collected near unconventional shale gas operations in West Virginia and Colorado, showed body weight increases of between 5 and 10 percent.
The weight gains are consistent with increases in both the size and number of fat cells that occurred in laboratory experiments on living mouse cells exposed to a mixture of 23 commonly used fracking chemicals.
“We did see the same effects,” said Chris Kassotis, researcher at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and lead author of the new study. “All three stimulated and increased fat cell size and proliferation and fat cell number.”
And the study also noted that mice, whose metabolism works much the same as that of humans, also showed the weight gains when exposed to even very low concentrations of the fracking chemicals.
“We saw significant fat cell proliferation and lipid accumulation, even when wastewater samples were diluted 1,000-fold from their raw state and when wastewater-affected surface water samples were diluted 25-fold,” Mr. Kassotis said. “Rather than needing to concentrate the samples to detect effects, we diluted them and still detected the effects.”
Mr. Kassotis said the research “doesn’t show that people are getting fat from fracking,” but does find that exposure to even small amounts of wastewater from fracked shale gas wells can alter the metabolic health of mice.
He said that further research is underway to assess whether similar weight gains will occur in humans or animals who come into contact or drink contaminated surface water, and to identify if, in addition to weight gain, exposure to fracking wastewater increases the risk of other metabolic health problems like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The new study builds on previous lab studies by Mr. Kassotis and colleagues, including one in 2016 that shows pregnant mice exposed to a mix of 23 chemicals used in shale gas well fracking are more likely to experience metabolic, reproductive and developmental health impacts, including increased weight gain.
According to the study, funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the University of Missouri, more than 1,000 chemicals have been used for hydraulic fracturing in the United States — though not all or even most are found in individual wells — and wastewater spills have been reported at up to 20 percent of active well sites.
“There’s a limited understanding of potential adverse health effects of people living near these shale gas well locations,” Mr. Kassotis said, “and a lot we don’t know about human exposures.”
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey
First Published: June 21, 2018, 12:55 a.m.
