A University of Chicago study recently revealed older adults living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania were more likely to be hospitalized for cardiovascular diseases than those who lived in New York, where fracking is banned, according to UChicago Medicine.

Prachi Sanghavi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at UChicago and the senior professor on the paper, first became interested in studying the health effects of fracking in the early 2010s during the fracking boom.

Sanghavi’s team collected Medicare claims data for tens of thousands of patients between 2002 and 2015 in both northern Pennsylvania and New York. They found a connection between the development of new fracking sites and increased rates of hospitalization for health conditions, including acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and ischemic heart disease.

Past studies have uncovered elevated levels of airborne hydrocarbons and other pollutants near fracking sites. However, a relationship between those pollutants and negative health effects hasn’t been established yet.

Learn more: UChicago Medicine > Increased hospitalizations for heart attacks, heart failure seen in older adults living near fracking sites