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CANCER MORTALITY AMONG UNITED STATES COUNTIES WITH HAZARDOUS WASTE SITES AND SOLE SOURCE DRINKING WATER CONTAMINATION
Citation:
Griffith, J., R. Duncan, W. Riggan, AND A. Pellom. CANCER MORTALITY AMONG UNITED STATES COUNTIES WITH HAZARDOUS WASTE SITES AND SOLE SOURCE DRINKING WATER CONTAMINATION. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-89/399 (NTIS PB90245952), 1989.
Description:
Since the late 1950's more than 750 million tons of toxic wastes have been discarded in an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 hazardous waste sies (HWS). he uncontrolled discarding of chemical wastes creates the potential for risks to human health. tilizing the National Priorities Listing (NPL) of hazardous waste sites developed by the U.S. Environmetal Protection Agency (EPA), this study identified 593 waste sites in 339 U.S. counties in 49 states with analytical evidence of contaminated ground drinking water providing a sole source water supply to an estimated "at risk" population. or each of the 339 identified counties we extracted age-adjusted, site-specific cancer mortality rates for 12 major sites for the decade 1970-1979, for white males and females, from U.S. Cancer Mortality and Trends 1950-1979. sing this publication, each county in the U.S. was also coded as to whether it had an excessively high number of deaths and the total number of non-HWS and HWS counties showing excess numbers of deaths were enumerated for each selected cancer. ignificant associations (p <0.002) between excess deaths and all HWS counties were shown for cancers of the lung, breast, bladder, stomach, large intestine, and rectum for white females when compared to all non-HWS counties. owever, we were unable to identify consistent geographical patterns that would suggest a broad distribution of gastrointestinal cancers associated with HWS throughout the United States, although we did identify a cluster of excess gastrointestinal cancers in counties located in EPA Region 3. hile it is clear that more definitive studies are necessary to actually assess the magnitude of any adverse health effects associated with waste site polluted ground drinking water, it appears that HWS locations may be used as an initial index of exposure to toxic chemicals when a mechanism exists for the dissemination of toxic waste to exposed populations.