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USE OF EXISTING DATABASES FOR THE PURPOSE OF HAZARD IDENTIFICATION: AN EXAMPLE
Citation:
Schreinemachers, D M. USE OF EXISTING DATABASES FOR THE PURPOSE OF HAZARD IDENTIFICATION: AN EXAMPLE. Presented at 2004 Environmental Public Health Tracking Conference, Phildelphia, PA, March 24-26, 2004.
Description:
Keywords: existing databases, hazard identification, cancer mortality, birth malformations
Background: Associations between adverse health effects and environmental exposures are difficult to study, because exposures may be widespread, low-dose in nature, and common throughout the study population. Therefore, individual risk-factor epidemiology may not be the right tool. A better method is provided by a series of multidisciplinary studies, starting with an hazard identification study, such as an interregion comparison. This presentation shows how existing databases routinely collected by Federal Agencies, can be used for the purpose of hazard identification.
Objective: Spring and durum wheat grown in the U.S. are mostly produced in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Chlorophenoxy herbicides are the predominant herbicides used on these crops. Since information on chlorophenoxy herbicide use per county is not available, wheat acreage per county is used as a surrogate exposure measure. Associations of cancer mortality and birth malformation rates with wheat acreage per county were investigated.
Methods: Cancer mortality for 1980-89 deaths and birth malformation for 1995-97 births were extracted from existing databases maintained by NCHS. Agricultural information was obtained from the USDA website. Only rural, agricultural counties were included in the study. Analyses were performed based on individual or grouped counties, depending on the levels of adverse health outcomes.
Results: Increasing wheat acreage per county was observed to be associated with increasing rates of cancer mortality and birth malformations.
Conclusions: Results show that existing databases, despite their limitations, can be used for the purpose of hazard identification.
This is an abstract of a proposed presentation and does not necessarily reflect EPA policy.