Identification

Title

Risk of childhood cancers associated with residence in agriculturally intense areas in the United States

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The potential for widespread exposure to agricultural pesticides through drift during application raises concerns about possible health effects to exposed children living in areas of high agricultural activity. OBJECTIVES: We evaluated whether residence in a county with greater agricultural activity was associated with risk of developing cancer in children < 15 years of age. METHODS: Incidence data for U.S. children 0-14 years of age diagnosed with cancer between 1995 and 2001 were provided by member registries of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. We determined percent cropland for each county using agricultural census data, and used the overall study distribution to classify agriculturally intense counties. We estimated odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for all ages and 5-year age groups for total cancers and selected cancer sites using logistic regression. RESULTS: Our study results showed statistically significant increased risk estimates for many types of childhood cancers associated with residence at diagnosis in counties having a moderate to high level of agricultural activity, with a remarkably consistent dose-response effect seen for counties having ≥ 60% of the total county acreage devoted to farming. Risk for different cancers varied by type of crop. CONCLUSIONS: Although interpretation is limited by the ecologic design, in this study we were able to evaluate rarer childhood cancers across a diverse agricultural topography. The findings of this exploratory study support a continued interest in the possible impact of long-term, low-level pesticide exposure in communities located in agriculturally intense areas.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79s1s9s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

This article is in the public domain, and is published with permission from Environmental Health Perspectives.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact