Use of GIS in analyzing environmental cancer risks

这项建议的总体目标是审查癌症风险与潜在环境暴露之间的联系的地理差异，特别是砷暴露，然后确定随着地理规模的变化，这些联系的同质性。地理信息系统的使用使得将不同地理级别的描述性属性信息的多个来源与健康结果数据联系起来变得更加可行。使用地理信息系统可以维护和分析数据元素之间的空间关系。砷暴露可能是导致膀胱癌、肺癌、肾癌和皮肤癌的原因之一。此外，众所周知，砷在不同的地理位置是不同的。亚利桑那州有几个地理划分的数据集，可以用来从流行病学角度探讨砷暴露与癌症发生之间的关系。亚利桑那州癌症登记处提供了膀胱癌、肾癌和肺癌的地理编码癌症发病率和死亡率数据。皮肤癌数据来自一项完整的基于人群的病例对照研究。砷浓度可以从亚利桑那州进行的多媒体、多途径调查中获得。这项拟议研究的具体目标是：1)评估空间尺度，并确定癌症死亡率地图集使用的尺度与该州内可能更有用的尺度之间的关系；2)在不同地理尺度上评价各种癌症与砷暴露之间的关系。这项提案提出了一个有凝聚力的研究团队，其中包括亚利桑那大学和州卫生机构内各学院的教职员工，并将利用各州机构收集的档案数据和已完成的皮肤癌和环境暴露流行病学研究。

The overall goals of this proposal are to examine geographical variation in the association between cancer risk and potential environmental exposures, in particular arsenic exposure, and to then determine the homogeneity of the associations as the geographical scale changes. Uses of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have made it more feasible to link multiple sources of descriptive attribute information for various geographic levels with health outcome data. The use of GIS allows the spatial relationships between the data elements to maintained and analyzed. Arsenic exposure may be a causal agent in the development of bladder, lung, kidney, and skin cancers. Furthermore, arsenic is known to vary across geographical locations. Several geographically delineated data sets exist in the State of Arizona that allow for epidemiological exploration of the relationship between arsenic exposure and cancer occurrence. Geocoded cancer incidence and mortality data are available from the Arizona Cancer Registry for bladder, kidney, and lung cancer. Skin cancer data are available from a completed population-based case control study. Arsenic concentrations are available from a multimedia, multipathway survey conducted in Arizona. The specific aims for this proposed research are 1) to evaluate spatial scales and determine relationships between the scale used by the Atlas of Cancer Mortality and scales potentially more useful within the state and 2) to evaluate the relationships between the various cancers and arsenic exposure for the various geographical scales. This proposal presents a cohesive research team that encompasses faculty and staff from various colleges within the University of Arizona and state health agencies and will utilize archival data collected by various state agencies and completed epidemiological studies of skin cancer and environmental exposures.