Abstract LB-297: Mortality trends from lung and bronchus cancer in Boone County, W.V., USA before and after mountaintop removal mining practices

Abstract

Abstract Publically-available databases (CDC/NCI) report causes of mortality at the national, state and recently, county level. However, county or sub-county-wide health in West Virginia is difficult to assess due to the rural, sparse and isolated nature of many counties. In Boone County, WV, villages are arranged in a narrow, winding valley or ‘hollow’ lying between mountain peaks and situated along a creek or river. This region, rich with subterranean coal seams, has been mined for over 100 years; however, mountaintop removal mining (MTR), which began in the 1980s, now allows for the removal of previously-inaccessible seams by surface mining techniques in the top third of a mountain. Mountaintop removal mining has increased dramatically and current estimates suggest greater than 30 percent of West Virginia’s coal is produced using this technique. For people residing near MTR sites, dust particulates or other mobilized constituents (minerals, metals, coal, or excipients) may present a health hazard by entering the food chain via vegetables or fruit grown in a home garden, through drinking water, or by breathing or ingestion. To evaluate whether the rate of lung and bronchus cancer deaths have changed over the past fifty years, mortality records were examined from 1962 and 1972-3 (before mountaintop mining removal was widely used) and compared with those from 2006-12. The Chi-squared statistic was used to compare the frequency distributions for the rate of lung and bronchus cancer deaths in eight age categories between 1962, 1972-3, and 2006-12. We found the three time periods were significantly different from one another (α=0.005), and that the number of lung and bronchus cancer deaths had increased in those aged 45 years or older. Smoking rates and socioeconomic status within the county have remained relatively constant during the past decade. Taken together societal and environmental changes and medical advances have influenced causes of mortality in this coal-rich Appalachian county. Citation Format: Lynn M. Crosby, Christina DeVera, Kaylene Charles, William Orem. Mortality trends from lung and bronchus cancer in Boone County, W.V., USA before and after mountaintop removal mining practices. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-297. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-LB-297