Examining The Correlation Between Environmental Cancer Risk, Incidence, And Mortality And Measures Of Environmental Justice

Abstract

Introduction. This study assessed spatial variations in cancer risk and cancer outcomes (incidence and mortality) by racial and socioeconomic composition in South Carolina. Methods. Cancer risk data were ascertained from the 2005 National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA). Cancer outcomes (measured by incidence and mortality counts for 2006-2010) were retrieved from the South Carolina Central Cancer Registry. All cancer data were georeferenced to the 2000 Decennial United States Census tract boundaries in three counties. A Spearman's rank-order correlation was performed to determine the relationship between cancer risk or cancer outcomes and characteristics of environmental justice (percent Black, poverty, and low-income). Correlations were performed in SPSS 22.0. Bivariate choropleth maps were created in ArcGIS 10.2 to represent the geographic associations between cancer data and environmental justice. Results. We observed an inverse relationship between cancer risk and cancer incidence (rs = -1.90, p = .040). Total cancer risk was positively correlated with percent (%) Black (rs = .324) and % poverty (rs = .474), yet negatively related to % income (rs = -.542). Bivariate maps showed that 80% of the tracts with high cancer incidence/high percent Black population were also high cancer mortality/high Black population tracts. No high incidence or high mortality tracts were observed with simultaneously high total cancer risk. Conclusions. Our findings have implications for reducing environmental and cancer health disparities. Future studies should explore cancer risk and cancer causing risk factor clusters in diverse groups in the tri-county area assessed. With a better understanding of patterns of risk, we can develop tailored interventions and community-based environmental health programs that will inform, change, and create policies to reduce environmental health inequalities.