Health Statistics Suggest Drilling, STDs Not Linked

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

When House Democrat Mike Sturla defended his comment about natural gas drillers spreading STDs among Pennsylvania’s “womenfolk,” he pointed to a presentation a Bradford County community hospital delivered to Governor Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission in May.
The Troy Community Hospital report did reference “an increase in sexually transmitted diseases,” in the years since drilling had increased in Bradford County. But administrator Staci Covey said she was relying on anecdotal evidence, and couldn’t provide hard statistics to back up her claim.
A preliminary look at Pennsylvania Department of Health data refutes the argument that drilling communities are experiencing increased STD rates. Cases of gonorrhea and syphilis in the commonwealth’s top 11 drilling counties have remained relatively level, when you compare figures from 2006 (the year before Marcellus Shale drilling began) and 2010. And while chlamydia cases have increased in 10 of those drilling counties, they’ve also shot up in 57 of 66 counties statewide. (Philadelphia County wasn’t included in the DOH statistics.)

Census figures for the 11 drilling counties – StateImpact focused on places where more than 100 drilling permits have been filed this year – have stayed relatively level of the previous decade. (That’s mostly because transient drillers weren’t counted in last year’s census, since many of them aren’t permanent residents.)
Gonorrhea Cases:

COUNTY	2010	2006	2010 vs. 2006
Bradford	9	10	-1
Butler	31	20	11
Forest	1	0	1
Greene	3	5	-2
Lycoming	103	47	56
McKean	4	5	-1
Susquehanna	1	3	-2
Tioga	4	1	3
Warren	3	3	0
Washington	101	128	-27
Westmoreland	74	74	0
Statewide totals	6350	6248	102

Chlamydia Cases:

COUNTY	2010	2006	2010 vs. 2006
Bradford	99	117	-18
Butler	198	183	15
Forest	12	6	6
Greene	69	40	29
Lycoming	369	271	98
McKean	88	69	19
Susquehanna	38	16	22
Tioga	70	48	22
Warren	47	26	21
Washington	465	290	175
Westmoreland	502	407	95
Statewide totals	28090	22287	5803

Syphilis Cases:

COUNTY	2010	2006	2010 vs 2006
Bradford	0	1	-1
Butler	1	0	1
Forest	0	0	0
Greene	0	0	0
Lycoming	1	2	-1
McKean	0	0	0
Susquehanna	0	0	0
Tioga	0	0	0
Warren	1	0	1
Washington	1	1	0
Westmoreland	2	3	-1
Statewide totals	131	139	-8

Data source: Pennsylvania Department of Health

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