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

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)

SUBMITTER: Ish J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6388132 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature