"Johns Hopkins Study Links Fracking And Premature Births"

"New research from Johns Hopkins University suggests pregnant women living near fracking wells in Pennsylvania are more likely to give birth prematurely or have high risk pregnancies.

“Now that we know this is happening we’d like to figure out why,” said Brian Schwartz, lead researcher and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Is it air quality? Is it the stress? They’re the two leading candidates in our minds at this point.”

Schwartz and his colleagues studied the records of more than 9,000 mothers who gave birth in north and central Pennsylvania between 2009 and 2013. They compared the data with information about natural gas fracking wells in the region."

Sean Cockerham reports for McClatchy October 8, 2015.