Four Corners States Biomonitoring Consortium: Lessons Learned During Implementation.

Building on a history of collaboration in environmental public health and biomonitoring activities, laboratory and environmental epidemiology leaders in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah created the Four Corners States Biomonitoring Consortium, which is now in its third year of activities. In this article, we briefly highlight some lessons learned during the implementation phases of the consortium, including the processes of collaborating to identify common environmental exposure concerns, prioritizing those concerns, identifying cohorts and communities with potential risks of excessive exposure, developing a model for conducting exposure investigations, and the challenges presented during the implementation phases and early fieldwork activities. Detailed information on these topics can be found at www.4csbc.org. The advantages of collaborating with, and leveraging the resources of, state Environmental Public Health Tracking Networks and Public Health Emergency Preparedness programs are discussed. Using one example from the early stages of this work, we also discuss the potential of biomonitoring as a vehicle for empowering the public to make informed choices to control their exposures and to influence public health decisions, support science-based environmental health policy and program development, and respond to emerging environmental exposure concerns.

Spatio-temporal patterns of bladder cancer incidence in Utah (1973-2004) and their association with the presence of toxic release inventory sites.

BACKGROUND: The authors analyse the spatio-temporal variations of the incidence of bladder cancer between 1973 and 2004 in Utah at the census tract level (496 areas) to highlight areas of high and low relative risks that remained so throughout the 32 year period. Using these identified areas, a novel strategy is used to carry out a geographical case-control study of association between the risk of bladder cancer and presence of Toxic Release Inventory sites, where areas with stable high RRs are 'case areas' and all remaining areas with stable non increased risks are 'control areas'. RESULTS: The time trend of bladder cancer risk fluctuated over the study period: A steady decrease was observed, followed by an abrupt increase from 1992 to 2004. Using a Bayesian space-time model, 93 census tracts were classified as having an excess relative risk and 81 a lower relative risk, sustained over the 32 years. We showed that these high relative risk areas for bladder cancer were associated with the presence of Toxic Release Inventory sites, after adjusting for the proportion of Latter-Day Saint Church members as an area level proxy for smoking habits. CONCLUSIONS: Our study has demonstrated that the modeling of data in time and space has additional benefits over a purely spatial analysis. In addition to highlighting the areas with high and low relative risks, this model also allows the simultaneous study of persistency of spatial patterns over time and detection of 'unusual' time trends that may warrant further investigation.

Comparison of different methods for spatial analysis of cancer data in Utah.

BACKGROUND: The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) and SaTScan software are used by the Environmental Epidemiology Program (EEP), Utah Department of Health, to investigate health concerns and exposures in Utah (USA). Recently, the EEP acquired the Rapid Inquiry Facility (RIF). The RIF enables access of additional dimensions of data, identifies potentially exposed populations, and computes disease rates and relative risk statistics for that potentially exposed population. OBJECTIVE: In this article we present a comparison of the SIR, SaTScan, and RIF methodologies in an investigation of cancer rates in residents living over contaminated groundwater plumes near Hill Air Force Base (HAFB) in Utah. METHODS: For this study, we used cancer data from the Utah Cancer Registry for cancers of the lung, kidney, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. We used SIR and the RIF to investigate the cancer rate in a defined population within the study area during six consecutive 5-year time intervals (1975-2004). We used SaTScan and the RIF to explore the study area for clusters. RESULTS: The RIF risk analysis and SIR are mathematically identical. SIR is set up and computed by programming SAS; the RIF risk analysis, on the other hand, is set up through four menu-driven steps. The RIF disease-mapping feature enhanced the interpretation of SaTScan results. We found kidney and lung cancer to be statistically elevated for the potentially exposed population for one and two periods, respectively. SaTScan found two clusters, one outside the potentially exposed population and one that included a portion of that population. CONCLUSION: The RIF is an easy-to-use and useful tool that extends the ability of the investigator to conduct analysis of disease rates and interpret the findings.

Evaluation of spatial relationships between health and the environment: the rapid inquiry facility.

BACKGROUND: The initiation of environmental public health tracking systems in the United States and the United Kingdom provided an opportunity to advance techniques and tools available for spatial epidemiological analysis integrating both health and environmental data. OBJECTIVE: The Rapid Inquiry Facility (RIF) allows users to calculate adjusted and unadjusted standardized rates and risks. The RIF is embedded in ArcGIS so that further geographical information system (GIS) spatial functionality can be exploited or results can be exported to statistical packages for further tailored analyses where required. The RIF also links directly to several statistical packages and displays the results in the GIS. METHODS: The value of the RIF is illustrated here with two case studies: risk of leukemia in areas surrounding oil refineries in the State of Utah (USA) and an analysis of the geographical variation of risk of esophageal cancer in relation to zinc cadmium sulfide exposure in Norwich (United Kingdom). RESULTS: The risk analysis study in Utah did not suggest any evidence of increased relative risk of leukemia, multiple myeloma, or Hodgkin's lymphoma in the populations around the five oil-refining facilities but did reveal an excess risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that might warrant further investigation. The disease-mapping study in Norwich did not reveal any areas with higher relative risks of esophageal cancer common to both males and females, suggesting that a common geographically determined exposure was unlikely to be influencing cancer risk in the area. CONCLUSION: The RIF offers a tool that allows epidemiologists to quickly carry out ecological environmental epidemiological analysis such as risk assessment or disease mapping.