Impact/Purpose:

We hypothesize that the CEEI-As will be a significant predictor of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and cognitive impairment. Given that prior work has demonstrated that Hispanics are more likely to live in areas with higher groundwater As levels, we also hypothesize that CEEI-As levels will be higher among Mexican Americans than non-Hispanic whites.

Description:

Arsenic (As) is a ubiquitous environmental toxin that causes a wide range of diseases. To date, however, there is no methodology for calculating the impact of cumulative As exposure on health outcomes in the US. The current project will develop and validate the Cumulative Environmental Exposure Index (CEEI) for As (CEEI-As) as a novel environmental public health indicator (EPHI).

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Project Information:

By incorporating geographic information systems (GIS) technology with publicly available groundwater data, we will map individual residences (current and past) onto previously collected groundwater As levels in those locations. We will then calculate a CEEI that sums the As levels per water source times years utilizing that source, which equals μg/L-years. The effects of CEEI-As levels will be compared to that of current drinking water source As levels on disease status. 600 individuals aged 40 and over (50% Mexican American, 60% female) will be re-contacted and evaluated from Project FRONTIER, an ongoing community-based participatory research study designed to examine the epidemiology of health issues facing rural-dwelling adults and elders. Interviews regarding water consumption history and water samples will be collected by re-contact from this existing cohort and data will be incorporated into the Project FRONTIER database.

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