ArticleThe Science of the total environment2015
Modeling groundwater nitrate concentrations in private wells in Iowa.
Article in The Science of the total environment, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 158 citations in OpenAlex.
- Validating a continental-scale groundwater diffuse pollution model using regional datasets.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2019Pooled it
- Ingested nitrate and nitrite, disinfection by-products, and pancreatic cancer risk in postmenopausal women.International journal of cancer · 2018Trial
- Drinking water nitrate, disinfection byproducts, and prostate cancer incidence in the Agricultural Health Study.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2026Article
- Ingested nitrate and nitrite, drinking water disinfection by-products, and incidence of thyroid cancer among licensed pesticide applicators and spouses in the Agricultural Health Study.Ecotoxicology and environmental safety · 2026Article
- Optimizing potato yield predictions in Uttar Pradesh, India: a comparative analysis of machine learning models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Nitrate and disinfection by-products in drinking water and risk of ovarian cancer.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2025Article
- A review of geospatial exposure models and approaches for health data integration.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2025Review
- Drinking private well water: Groundwater quality and management of wells in southern Alabama.Journal of water and health · 2025Article
- Reference conditions and threshold values for nitrate-nitrogen in New Zealand groundwaters.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2025Article
- Nitrate exposure from drinking water and dietary sources among Iowa farmers using private wells.The Science of the total environment · 2024Article
- Article
- Ingested nitrate and nitrite and end-stage renal disease in licensed pesticide applicators and spouses in the Agricultural Health Study.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2024Article
- US drinking water quality: exposure risk profiles for seven legacy and emerging contaminants.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2024Review
- Nutrient Explorer: An analytical framework to visualize and investigate drivers of surface water quality.Environmental modelling & software : with environment data news · 2023Article
- An investigation of the seasonal relationships between meteorological factors, water quality, and sporadic cases of Legionnaires' disease in Washington, DC.Epidemiology and infection · 2023Article
- Article
- The Utility of Machine Learning Models for Predicting Chemical Contaminants in Drinking Water: Promise, Challenges, and Opportunities.Current environmental health reports · 2023Review
- Knot selection for low-rank kriging models of spatial risk in case-control studies.Spatial and spatio-temporal epidemiology · 2022Article
- Drinking water sources and water quality in a prospective agricultural cohort.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2022Article
- Drinking Water Disinfection Byproducts, Ingested Nitrate, and Risk of Endometrial Cancer in Postmenopausal Women.Environmental health perspectives · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Contamination of drinking water by nitrate is a growing problem in many agricultural areas of the country. Ingested nitrate can lead to the endogenous formation of N-nitroso compounds, potent carcinogens. We developed a predictive model for nitrate concentrations in private wells in Iowa. Using 34,084 measurements of nitrate in private wells, we trained and tested random forest models to predict log nitrate levels by systematically assessing the predictive performance of 179 variables in 36 thematic groups (well depth, distance to sinkholes, location, land use, soil characteristics, nitrogen inputs, meteorology, and other factors). The final model contained 66 variables in 17 groups. Some of the most important variables were well depth, slope length within 1 km of the well, year of sample, and distance to nearest animal feeding operation. The correlation between observed and estimated nitrate concentrations was excellent in the training set (r-square=0.77) and was acceptable in the testing set (r-square=0.38). The random forest model had substantially better predictive performance than a traditional linear regression model or a regression tree. Our model will be used to investigate the association between nitrate levels in drinking water and cancer risk in the Iowa participants of the Agricultural Health Study cohort.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.