Abstract
Objective: To investigate the risk of congenital anomalies in relation to an index of geographic density of landfill sites across 5×5 km grid squares in England. Methods: 2 km zones...
Highlights
For sites handling special wastes, we found a spatial association between geographic density of landfill sites and risk of hypospadias and epispadias at the scale of 565 km grid squares
Allowance for over-dispersion, there were no significant associations with sites handling non-special or unknown waste types
The positive association found here for hypospadias and epispadias broadly accords with results from our previous study, in which exposures were classified in terms of distance to the nearest landfill site.[7]
Summary
Landfill sites From a database of all landfill sites in Great Britain,[7] data were obtained on 16 272 landfill sites in England. Because of concerns about the quality and completeness of the landfill data before 1982, when registration of sites became compulsory, the main analysis is restricted to 8804 sites with opening dates confirming that they were operational at some time between 1982 and 1997 These sites include 607 that handled special (hazardous) waste and 8197 with non-special or unknown waste type. The number of birth-years within 2 km of a landfill site and the total number of birthyears within each 565 km grid square were computed by summation and a landfill exposure index computed as the ratio. Rates of congenital anomalies were calculated for each of these four categories; we obtained unadjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the second, third and top categories compared with the bottom category, that is, grid squares with a landfill exposure index of zero. We carried out analyses by logistic regression using a generalised linear mixed model (GLMM) to allow for over-dispersion due to sparse data.[24]
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