Clusters galore. [Investigating cluster groups of cancer in Los Angeles]
- California Department of Health Services, Berkeley (USA)
Public agencies are receiving increasingly frequent requests to investigate space-time clusters of rare, noninfectious diseases, particularly cancer and birth defects. There is no biologically plausible explanatory hypothesis in most of these cases. The public usually attributes clusters to environmental hazards. What proportion of observed clusters is due to chance Registries recognize 80 types of cancer. The binomial theorem suggests that 17% of census tracts or towns will have at least 1 of the 80 types of cancer elevated at the p = .01 level during a decade of observation. In California, there are 440 towns with populations of less than 10,000. In the United States, there are 29,000 such towns. Thus, the number of towns with chance reportable cancer clusters is enormous. Empirical data from the Los Angeles-USC Cancer Registry confirms what probability theory predicts, i.e., many census tracts have at least one type of cancer elevated to a statistically significant degree. Thus, using spatial clustering from registry data to generate hypotheses or priorities for environmental characterization would steer us into costly investigations of random fluctuations in the majority of census tracts. Instead of examining the Poisson probability of a particular type of cancer to members of the public who report a cluster to use, we should tell them about the number of towns or census tracts in our jurisdictions that, each decade, can be expected to report this or some other kind of cancer of chance alone.
- OSTI ID:
- 5772311
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-890937-; CODEN: AEHLA
- Journal Information:
- Archives of Environmental Health; (USA), Vol. 45:5; Conference: 1. annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, Upton, NY (USA), 13-15 Sep 1989; ISSN 0003-9896
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Data available from birth and death registries and cancer registries in the United States
Industrial pollution and cancer in Spain: An important public health issue
Related Subjects
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
ENVIRONMENT
HEALTH HAZARDS
EPIDEMIOLOGY
LOS ANGELES
MAN
NEOPLASMS
PUBLIC HEALTH
ANIMALS
CALIFORNIA
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
DISEASES
FEDERAL REGION IX
HAZARDS
MAMMALS
NORTH AMERICA
PRIMATES
USA
VERTEBRATES
540110*
540210 - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (1990-)
540310 - Environment
Aquatic- Basic Studies- (1990-)
550900 - Pathology