ArticleEnvironmental geochemistry and health2021
Brain cancer incidence rates and the presence of nuclear reactors in US states: a hypothesis-generating study.
Article in Environmental geochemistry and health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of Regional Housing Hardship on Spatial Variation in Cancer Incidence: Does Housing Stress Increase Cancer Incidence?GeoHealth · 2024Article
- Raman Spectroscopy as a Tool to Study the Pathophysiology of Brain Diseases.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe etiology of brain cancer is poorly understood. The only confirmed environmental risk factor is exposure to ionizing radiation. Because nuclear reactors emit ionizing radiation, we examined brain cancer incidence rates in the USA in relation to the presence of nuclear reactors per state.
methodsData on brain cancer incidence rates per state for Whites by sex for three age groups (all ages, 50 and older, and under 50) were obtained from cancer registries. The location, number, and type of nuclear reactor, i.e., power or research reactor, was obtained from public sources. We examined the association between these variables using multivariate linear regression and ANOVA.
resultsBrain cancer incidence rates were not associated with the number of nuclear power reactors. Conversely, incidence rates per state increased with the number of nuclear research reactors. This was significant for both sexes combined and for males in the 'all ages' category (β = 0.08, p = 0.0319 and β = 0.12, p = 0.0277, respectively), and for both sexes combined in the'50 and older' category (β = 0.18, p = 0.0163). Brain cancer incidence rates for counties with research reactors were significantly higher than the corresponding rates for their states overall (p = 0.0140). These findings were not explicable by known confounders.
conclusionsBrain cancer incidence rates are positively associated with the number of nuclear research reactors per state. These findings merit further exploration and suggest new opportunities for research in brain cancer epidemiology.
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