Domestic groundwater wells in Appalachia show evidence of low-dose, complex mixtures of legacy pollutants.

Lack of water quality data for private drinking water sources prevents robust evaluation of exposure risk for communities co-located with historically contaminated sites and ongoing industrial activity. Areas of the Appalachian region of the United States (, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia) contain extensive hydraulic fracturing activity, as well as other extractive and industrial technologies, in close proximity to communities reliant on private drinking water sources, creating concern over potential groundwater contamination. In this study, we characterized volatile organic compound (VOC) occurrence at 307 private groundwater well sites within Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Accuracy of self-reported distance to nearest unconventional oil and gas well in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia residents and implications for exposure assessment.

Self-reported distances to industrial sources have been used in epidemiology as proxies for exposure to environmental hazards and indicators of awareness and perception of sources. Unconventional oil and gas development (UOG) emits pollutants and has been associated with adverse health outcomes. We compared self-reported distance to the nearest UOG well to the geographic information system-calculated distance for 303 Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia residents using Cohen's Weighted Kappa.

Predictors of early life residential mobility in urban and rural Pennsylvania children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and implications for environmental exposure assessment.

Background: Residential mobility can introduce exposure misclassification in pediatric epidemiology studies using birth address only.

Objective: We examined whether residential mobility varies by sociodemographic factors and urbanicity/rurality among children with cancer.

Methods: Our study included 400 children born in Pennsylvania during 2002-2015 and diagnosed with leukemia at ages 2-7 years.

Conventional Fossil Fuel Extraction, Associated Biogeochemical Processes, and Topography Influence Methane Groundwater Concentrations in Appalachia.

The production of fossil fuels, including oil, gas, and coal, retains a dominant share in US energy production and serves as a major anthropogenic source of methane, a greenhouse gas with a high warming potential. In addition to directly emitting methane into the air, fossil fuel production can release methane into groundwater, and that methane may eventually reach the atmosphere. In this study, we collected 311 water samples from an unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production region in Pennsylvania and an oil and gas (O&G) and coal production region across Ohio and West Virginia.

Investigation of Sources of Fluorinated Compounds in Private Water Supplies in an Oil and Gas-Producing Region of Northern West Virginia.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a class of toxic organic compounds that have been widely used in consumer applications and industrial activities, including oil and gas production. We measured PFAS concentrations in 45 private wells and 8 surface water sources in the oil and gas-producing Doddridge, Marshall, Ritchie, Tyler, and Wetzel Counties of northern West Virginia and investigated relationships between potential PFAS sources and drinking water receptors. All surface water samples and 60% of the water wells sampled contained quantifiable levels of at least one targeted PFAS compound, and four wells (8%) had concentrations above the proposed maximum contaminant level (MCL) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).